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Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) and built-environmental manifestations in Accra and Kumasi, Ghana

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Crime Prevention and Community Safety Aims and scope

Abstract

Households in Ghanaian cities have responded to crime by fortifying their houses, a practice referred to as crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). Though little researched in Ghana and Africa in general, this article, based on in-depth interviews with police officers, city planners and community members as well as a household survey, reveal that CPTED through target hardening is a widespread practice across different socio-economic residential neighborhoods of Accra and Kumasi. It was found that rising crime rates and the fear of crime have led to adoption of target hardening measures such as high walls, metal burglar-proofed windows and doors, security doors/special door locks and so on, which tend to create ‘security islands’ with limited impact on community crime incidence. While CPTED has been widely applied in Western cities to restructure the physical layout of communities to reduce crime through community efforts, there are marked differences in the Ghanaian context. In particular, households’ responses to crime through target hardening have the tendency in the long-term to weaken social cohesions, with limited impact on community crime levels. Interestingly, the household survey results show relatively low level of community solidarity in middle and upper-class neighborhoods as measures for fighting crime.

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Notes

  1. The terms ‘neighborhood’ and ‘community’ are used interchangeably in this study.

  2. Self-contained houses are normally single-storey buildings containing between two and five rooms, surrounded by high walls with(out) barbed wires or electrical fences, and normally hosting a nuclear family or a single household. This housing type is very popular among the Ghanaian middle/upper class households. On the other hand, compound houses usually consist of rooms housing several households with varied backgrounds (ethnic, religious, occupation and so on) who share common open courtyard and facilities such as toilets, bathrooms and kitchens.

  3. The classification of the different socio-economic neighourhoods is based on earlier studies (see Benneh et.al, 1993; Songsore et al, 1998, 2005; Agyei-Mensah and Owusu, 2010; Owusu and Agyei-Mensah, 2011).

  4. In Ghana, local governments are defined as Metropolitan, Municipal or District Assemblies. Metropolitan Assembly is for a large city with population of 250 000 or more; Municipal Assembly refer to a town with a population of 90 000–250 000 and; District Assembly is defined as a district with population of 75 000 or more with a small town as the administrative capital and surrounded by rural areas.

  5. Murdered Ecobank manager tried to unmask one of usSuspect myjoyonline.com/news/2014/December-18th/murdered-ecobank-manager-tried-to-unmask-one-of-us-suspect.php, accessed 31 January 2015.

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Acknowledgements

This work was carried out with the financial support from the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. However, the views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors.

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Correspondence to George Owusu.

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Owusu, G., Wrigley-Asante, C., Oteng-Ababio, M. et al. Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) and built-environmental manifestations in Accra and Kumasi, Ghana. Crime Prev Community Saf 17, 249–269 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2015.8

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