24
Jun
2014
By Calvin at 10:28 GMT, 11 years ago
A story in the on-line Daily Examiner (New South Wales, Australia) today concerns the removal of some seats from a large bus shelter in the town of Grafton in an attempt to reduce anti-social behaviour.
The Clarence Valley Council works and civil director met with an Aboriginal liaison officer with the NSW Police, a crime prevention officer and a council representative before reaching the decision to remove the seats along with introducing a few other measures. There are plans to eventually replace the shelter with one designed without opportunities for anti-social behaviour to take place, using the principles of ‘crime prevention through environmental design’.
Read the full story here: http://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/news/seats-gone-from-shelter/2297943/
The readers’ comments section beneath this story are largely not supportive of the council’s actions; several citing problems for disabled people not being able to sit to wait for a bus. It seems that although the seats were encouraging inappropriate loitering (probably by street drinkers) they were also being used legitimately by those for which they were intended, namely waiting bus passengers. In their enthusiasm to remove the seats to deal with one problem the council has now caused a different one!
This isn’t the first time this has happened and won’t be the last. I personally recall a pedestrian underpass being (rightly) closed due to a high level of robbery and assault before the improved surface crossing facility was put in place. Quite rightly this action drew much criticism and darting about amongst the traffic by the displaced pedestrians!
One can’t help wonder if a correct ‘problem solving’ method had been followed things would have turned out differently.
Obviously I don’t have the full detail behind this story, but this is nevertheless a good example for all of us engaged in crime prevention work to think about the unintentional consequences of our best intentioned actions.
Problem Solving: http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/home/521/problem-solving/
