Hello all.
It is wonderful to meet you.
Just to know who I’m talking to,
Can you raise your hands
If you have already committed a crime?
(Laughter)
I see that some of you do not want to scare those sitting next to them,
(Laughter)
Or perhaps you have forgotten
Evasion of payment of wages, theft of office supplies,
Stealing goods from the store in childhood,
(clap)
Tax evasion,
(Laughter)
All of them are indeed crimes.
I work a lot with police, judges and politicians,
So I’m afraid I can not give you any hint
Whether you have violated the law,
(Laughter)
But I will share with you the secret:
People who raised their hands
Naturalists!
(Laughter)
Nine out of ten people have already committed a crime
At some point in their lives.
Do not feel neglected, just because you did not.
(Laughter)
There is a whole branch of criminology devoted to your study.
Your address has been allocated:
You are constrained for life.
(Laughter)
I am not here today to justify our immoral actions.
On the contrary, crimes that seem trivial may have devastating effects.
Think about the potential impact of driving under the influence of alcohol.
The impact of tax fraud on our economy.
The impact of vandalism, garbage, graffiti,
For allowing children to play in the street.
But at the same time, I do not want to close the doors
The largest, and most definitely a Greek prison,
Just because we broke the law at some point.
I think we are human beings,
As a human being, I think we are deeply affected
Provoke and entice crime
Existing in our society.
All of us have turning points.
We all face moments, as our ethics transcend their power.
If my work in the field of crime has taught me one thing,
It is that human behavior
Is more flexible than we would like to believe,
Today, I would like to share some ways with you
Where conditions constitute even the worst human behavior.
And more,
I want to show you that we can greatly reduce crime,
Treat the moments that make us criminals.
Let me explain this,
The first step to understand
How can we become more secure and happy
Require us to solve a great mystery.
It is about car theft,
It is epic, spread across nations and decades.
Some may recall that in the 1980s, early 1990s,
Car crimes were a serious and growing problem.
Driving stolen cars has become a fun ritual of attaining teenagers.
It was normal to go to your car
To find the window is cracked and the audio system is stolen.
In the early 1990s, something changed.
Car ownership was on the rise, but car theft declined.
The decline continued for more than two decades.
The transformation was exciting.
Look at England, Wales or Scotland,
There, the probability is six times lower
Go out of your door to find your car stolen
Than 25 years ago.
Cars were stolen less than a million times in the United States last year.
What has changed fundamentally?
Why do we act better?
I will give you a hint.
This is Nissan Sunny.
These are the Bluebird Nissan.
If you have owned either of them in the UK in the past years,
I have bad news for you:
Your car was more likely to be stolen
Whether you own any other type of car.
These are Honda Accord 1996, the most stolen car in America last year.
We conclude that thieves have poor car taste.
(Laughter)
But the reason that these cars are most likely to be stolen,
It is old and hopelessly locked.
An old car can be penetrated by a coat or a brick,
There is no warning to scare you
When a screwdriver runs screws to run,
Or connect the ignition wires together.
When these cars came out of circulation,
This has led to a significant reduction in car thefts.
Now, the truth is
That modern cars are still easy to steal
If you know how.
Just need to buy
Some simple technical equipment from the black market.
And you need some planning.
But most of the car thieves were opportunistic.
For the majority this amount of planning is far away.
Make crimes less tempting, more difficult,
Was enough to reshape millions of resolutions each year,
And to prevent millions from committing crimes.
Let’s solve another mystery:
To understand how to handle the moments that turned us into criminals.
This happened in the sunny resort of Australia: Surfers Paradise.
It is one of those places that thrives on tourism and nightlife.
But in the early 1990s, his reputation fell apart.
Violence was widespread in night clubs and bars,
Sometimes causing deaths.
One punch can kill you.
Not because of its own strength,
But from a secondary injury when your head hits the pavement.
In 1993, something changed suddenly.
Violence in bars and clubs,
Decreased by 52% in just one year.
So what made the difference?
Was the insurance again?
Or perhaps a major shift in police plans?
Or tougher penalties?
No.
Many things were small.
I work at the Jill Dando Institute for Security and Crime Sciences
At the University College London,
Known as GDI.
Director of Jill Dando Institute is Professor Richard Wertley,
One of the team members was academics, businessmen, officials,
Who designed together this great decline in crime.
They have worked from a simple hypothesis
That the causes of violence are usually very trivial:
Such as trees around spilled drink and occasional scramble,
Or fighting on the few taxis available by the end of the night,
Or pretend to affect the emotional or defend the pet.
They have reduced the chances of these things happening.
First, try to reduce alcohol consumption.
Reduced the number of beverage incentives,
Less happy hours, the two shows and three less,
Make sure you make non-alcoholic drinks cheaper,
And that food is available most of the time.
In the end, you are less likely to be affected by people if you are balanced
It is less likely to misinterpret things in the crowd.
Defining space has reduced conflict.
I do not know if you notice,
But it is difficult to enter into a conflict
If not the other party interested.
So they worked on finding
Mixed environment more than customer types,
And not only attract drink lovers.
They changed their message,
Prevent those who are drunk from entering,
To experience new consumer behavior.
They trained security personnel differently.
Instead of intimidating people and embarrassing them,
Security officers tried to create a welcoming environment,
They expected and mitigated the conflicts.
Together, these changes are what caused this decline in crime.
What I find interesting is this,
Is not their quest to make things safer,
But to make it nicer.
Reducing pressure and stress
Is a very good way to reduce violence,
Partly because little of it is actually deliberate.
A number of local governments in England and Wales
Improving late-night transportation in the city center.
They found that rates of violence declined,
With fewer people wading at night to look for trouble.
If they did,
I think they will find that sexual assaults have also declined,
Where fewer women are jumping in unlicensed and unlicensed vehicles
To arrive at their homes on cold nights.
Taxi drivers hate Uber everywhere!
But by reducing costs and increasing the availability of taxis,
And reduce the anonymity of the driver and passenger,
I think that is causing a decline in violent crimes.
These examples illustrate
That we can reduce the crimes of violence and robbery
Treat the moments that make us criminals.
There is more.
Sometimes the chances of committing crimes can be completely prevented.
In America, bus drivers were stolen at high rates,
So some US states started
Apply a system where the driver can no longer pay the rest of the account.
They installed deposit boxes to be paid.
Drivers can no longer access the money.
Sometimes we need to form
Environments, and criminal decision-making
More accurately.
Next time to go to the store,
I want you to think,
Does the design encourage or encourage the commission of a crime.
7-Eleven chain stores did it in the eighties.
After consulting convicted thieves,
They decided it was better
Move the cash desk from back to front.
And also get rid of all signs on the windows
So that the cash desk is visible from the street.
They improved the lighting inside and outside the store.
And reduce the number of entrances and exits.
Over a decade,
Where it has been applied across the country,
Robberies decreased by two thirds,
While theft rates were rising everywhere else.
It is now clear
You need to consider the circumstances of the crime in detail
And develop tailored schemes to reduce crime.
The intrusion and burglary became less everywhere
When people developed insurance for their homes.
But government agencies have discovered
That the alleyways behind the houses, improve the lighting,
Has made a difference.
It should be clear that this is not only police function.
Entrepreneurs, engineers, technicians, and designers can change crime rates.
After all, is there a more enticing goal than this for graffiti?
But what about it?
Apparently, this brand, unlike its predecessor,
Lasted two years
Before someone can pin an “F”.
(Laughter)
Now you may be a bit skeptical about this approach to reducing crime.
You may think that crime is because of poverty.
Or that criminals are very corrupt,
It will not stop them from staying behind bars.
In both cases, if we make one type of crime less tempting
Criminals will find opportunities to commit other crimes.
My colleague at Gill Dando Institute, Professor Kate Bowers,
I specifically searched this question.
Its team examined 102 successful crime prevention initiatives,
To see if the crime rate has been compensated
As their rate increases in neighboring areas,
Or that the low rate of the type of crime
May be achieved at the expense of increasing another type of crime.
What did they find?
In a quarter of cases,
They found that some crimes had moved to neighboring areas,
But this transition was not complete,
The result was fewer crimes.
In half of the cases,
There has been no transfer of crimes,
In a quarter of the cases, they found something else to happen,
Instead of a decline in crime in an area leading to an increase in another region,
The decline in crime had the effect of halo:
Where the crime rate has spread in neighboring areas.
When you think about it, you’ll find it logical.
If you prevent a gang from shooting,
Or you underestimate the insult of one who is drunk,
You are preventing the possibility of retaliation nearby.
If you stop stealing a bicycle,
You reduce the temptation
A depressing victim to do one robbery also,
Or buy a stolen one from the black market for its license.
When you enter a store these days,
It does not occur to me to steal something.
But what if I went yesterday, and the shopkeeper was back,
I was in a hurry,
I went out without paying?
The commission of a crime reshapes our knowledge horizons,
Knowing that a common crime does that too.
Imagine that you are a grown up teenager
Where teenagers routinely steal cars.
How can this not affect your view of acceptable behavior?
The commission of a crime increases the friction with other criminals
And harmful interactions with the criminal justice system.
A number of studies have tracked people during their lives,
To study the impact of different events on the behavior of individuals.
They conduct a secret study,
If they find teenagers
Committed the same crimes in adolescence,
And only one of them was arrested and punished,
Their lives are different in unexpected ways.
Instead of becoming the person who arrested him
Less likely to commit a crime,
Where he was deterred,
They found that the person who was convicted and punished
Are more likely to participate in crimes after years.
So our success in reducing crime is not only real,
But also has wider advantages.
For this reason
I think we are close to solving another bigger mystery:
Crime rates have declined significantly recently.
Better business and individual insurance,
A design approach designed to reduce the temptation to commit a crime,
She has the most credit for it.
I’m really optimistic
We are on the cusp
New science of crime prevention.
But I have a deep concern:
I’m afraid we’re all going to let that happen.
To invest in crime prevention based on experience and evidence,
We need to divert resources from traditional reactions to crime,
And abandon the beliefs lingering in our minds about the crime and its causes.
Those on the left, like to believe
That poverty and inequality are the sole cause of crime,
And that we can not do anything about the crime
Unless we deal with these well-established social issues.
Those on the right believe that the crime is the cause of society’s tolerance
And that if we do not have more police and severe penalties
We can not do anything about the crime.
We all strongly believe that
The source of the crime is the criminals.
We try to punish or change criminals
Instead, use more effective methods,
And address the moments that drive people to crime.
I have always wondered about the mystery of our obsession with criminals.
Perhaps due to media accounts of the crime:
They bombard us every day and raise fear for support for punitive policies.
Perhaps it is our diet of moral tales and crime novels,
Such as detective stories and James Bond films,
Where the film ends with the arrest of the villain,
Or better still, that falls off the edge of the cliff.
Or perhaps simply, we are eager for a less complex world.
Where complex problems like crime have one simple solution.
Where people
Either good overall or incredibly bad.
Whatever the reasons,
We always forget
Our behavior changes according to the circumstances we face.
Forget that we change and mature as we age.
Repentants are proof of that.
Forget that in real life,
The film continues for a long time after the arrest of the offender.
If car theft is still easy, you will still be robbed.
Binge drinking cultures and stressful environments
Will continue to breed violence.
I want to change our view of crime,
So we can change our reaction to it.
So I invite you all today to confess
That we can greatly reduce the crime
By addressing the moments that turn us into criminals.
I invite you to challenge those who say we can not do anything about crime,
And those who say
We can only prevent crime by creating larger prisons.
I invite you to support, vote for
Politicians who want to prevent crime are not only punished.
If you do that, I think we can create a better world
More secure and happy,
Than it is today.
A world that helps us all to be good.
thank you
(clap)
”
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