Recent Book: If You Start Right: Crime Prevention through Environmental Design
| Date | 01 April 1978 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7805100229 |
| Published date | 01 April 1978 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
and, it was alleged, an official govern-
ment coverup.
The book traces the scandal from
the arrest and trial of some messenger
boys for "going to bed with a gentle-
man at 19 Cleveland Street," to a libel
suit won by the Earl of Euston against
Ernest Park, editor of the North London
Press, to the culmination ofthe scandal:
the trial and sentencing of
Arthur
Newton (Lord Somerset's solicitor) for
conspiracy to obstruct the course of
justice by assisting the brothel owner
to fleeto America.
H. Montgomery Hyde is an English
barrister and
author
of over forty
books. He is best known for his works
on criminal trials. The story is told in
aremarkably clear and amusing
manner. Lord Somerset fled England
upon learning
that
authorities were
considering awarrant for his arrest
and many of the letters he wrote to
his sister and friends in England
during his 36 year exile
abroad
are
reproduced. He eventually died on the
French Riviera in 1926 and his pre-
cipitateflight added to the presumption
of guilt.
It
is a great pity
that
he did
not return and face the music as he
very likely would have been acquitted.
All in all, an accurately researched
and crisply told story - a certainly to
be remembered chapter in criminal
history.
DANIEL
P.
KING
IF YOU START RIGHT
C.
RAY
JEFFERY:
Crime Prevention through Environmental Design.
Sage Publications. Cloth £12.50. Paper £5.25.
Those of us who are committed to
examining methods of Crime Preven-
tion often look at the situation in the
United States of America with horror
and try to convince others
that
"it
could happen here". To illustrate the
point the Office of Housing Manage-
ment in Washington issued in 1975 a
Technical Memorandum on Safety and
Security in Public Housing (we would
call it local government housing). The
memorandum indicated
that
nearly
90 %of residents ina particular project
kept their front doors locked even
when they were at home. 58 per cent
of them felt they needed hand guns to
protect themselves IN
THE
CON-
FINES
OF
THE
HOUSING
PRO-
JECT
and 22 per cent had already
obtained "something for protection".
The
author
of the memorandum
believed
that
a change in the approach
to designing public housing projects
would probablyreduce the
opportunity
for burglary, robbery, rape and
vandalism.
In his book C. Ray Jeffrey elaborates
upon this theme and bases his argument
on the premise
"that
neither punish-
ment nor treatment is effective against
crime or recidivism", nor will they be
effective within the system as now
designed". Jeffery proposes a new
approach to crime control in this
revised edition of a work first published
in 1971.He puts forward the view
that
in medicine we can eradicate disease at
April 1978
its source. Why then should we not do
the same with crime? He says
that
yellow fever disappeared when the
swamps were drained and polio was
prevented by introducing appropriate
vaccines. Using the same parallel he
says an advanced cancer victim is made
comfortable and allowed to die. In a
crime context Mr. Jeffery says
that
instead of trying to cure the hardened
mature criminal we should forget him
as a failure and concentrate instead on
preventing the commission of a crime.
This is best done apparently by altering
the physical environment which makes
a crime possible. Many experienced
police crime prevention officers might
agree with the author!
Mr. Jeffery refers to many earlier
papers, articles by our own Home
Office and others by the Federal
German Republic etc. to prove his
points and his book is sprinkled with
graphic illustrations of the burglary
pattern, rape incidence and crime
trends in various parts of the U.S.A.
To the avid reader of criminology his
book will present yet another facet to
this subject. To adequately summarise
the
book
is almost impossible but
anyone at present hooked on the
sociological approach to crime pre-
vention will find it interesting reading
and may even see environmental design
as a better solution to crime than trying
to change human nature. A.S.
218
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