Crime prevention series

Schools

Published in:
Preventing graffiti and vandalism
Susan Geason and Paul Wilson
Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1990
ISBN 0 642 14936 4 ; ISSN 1031-5330
(Crime prevention series) ; pp. 45-61

Education Departments in a number of countries are facing enormous financial losses through arson and vandalism in primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions. In New South Wales, the cost of arson in public schools had reached $100 million per year by 1987-88 and was increasing at 20 per cent annually (Parliament of New South Wales Public Accounts Committee 1988).

In 1983 the New Zealand Government was reporting almost 12,000 annual incidents of vandalism at a cost of $2.8 million in its education institutions (School Damage File 1983). According to one commentator, the cost had increased five fold by 1988 (Stoks 1988, personal communication). By the same year, the UK Department on Education and Science was spending between £25 and £30 million on vandalism in English schools (Crime Prevention News 1988).

The motivation for school vandalism and arson is not clear cut. Many experts believe that much of what is called vandalism is not actually vandalism in the legal sense of wilful damage, but results rather from unintended use; casual misuse and designers' failure to anticipate the way in which products and facilities are used; or failure to accommodate the users' requirements, so that the users "adapt" the environment. Others believe that much vandalism is caused by the failures of urban planners, policy makers, financial planners, designers, architects, administrators and custodians of facilities, which provoke and make possible a wide range of behaviour which is then misclassified as vandalism.

It emerged from the New South Wales Committee's Public Accounts (PAC) investigation that some schools were partly to blame for arson attacks because doors and windows were often left unlocked, computer paper was left lying around, and security lights were not turned on. And the PAC was told that most fires were lit to hide signs of forced entry.

Francis Stoks (1982) believes the most useful ways of addressing the problems of vandalism and graffiti are based on sociological, psychological and ergonomic approaches. He maintains that target hardening is the most expensive and fruitless strategy. He also warns that every setting for vandalism should be analysed separately as a complex system of influences, and that it is dangerous to generalise on solutions for vandalism.

On the other hand, the United Kingdom's Department of Education and Science, while acknowledging the role of instiling a sense of ownership and pride in pupils, has taken a situational crime prevention approach to reducing crime, arson and vandalism in schools in its Building Bulletin 67 - Crime Prevention in Schools: Practical Guidance (1987).

Arson in New South Wales schools

The extent of arson in the New South Wales public sector prompted the Government's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to carry out an inquiry into the problem in 1988. According to committee estimates, the cost of deliberately lit and suspicious fires in New South Wales schools rose from almost $5 million in 1985-86 to $11 million in 1987-88, the latter comprising 27 per cent of all arson in the state.

The incidence of arson and the level of damage have risen steadily in recent years. In 1983-84, for example, 103 fires cost $4.2 million in building restoration costs, while in 1987-88, 88 fires cost $10 million - $6 million of the latter in one fire alone in Narooma High School.

These statistics do not adequately convey the true costs of arson in schools, however. The estimated $600,000 cost of restoring burnt buildings at Pittwater High School for example, does not take into account the cost of donated equipment, student and teacher time spent in cleaning up and salvage, the cost of demountables for temporary accommodation, or the disruption to students.

The incidence of fires in public schools was higher than that in Colleges of Advanced Education, Universities and Colleges of Technical and Further Education, and the committee speculated that this might be due to the greater number of public schools, their accessibility, discipline problems, the age composition of students, patterns of after-hours use and community attitudes.

The PAC found that, despite the size of the problem, the Education Department did not have a comprehensive risk management system. It therefore endorsed Treasury initiatives of February 1988 (published as Asset Appraisal Guidelines), which directed the Department of Education to review standards, planning procedures, and available surplus sites.

Electronic surveillance

The Education Department had, however, initiated a major schools electronic security surveillance program. Although this was piloted as early as 1977, it was not until the mid-1980s that rising public concern led the Government to allocate a further $40 million to improving school security. By the end of 1988, 339 schools were connected to the Department's Electronic Surveillance System, and connection is planned for all 969 metropolitan schools by 1992.

The system is designed to detect intruders once they are inside the building and works on a matrix of infra-red detectors which are connected to a central base station via modem and telephone lines. No alarm is given at the site, but the system allows the base station to monitor the location of an intruder in the building and report that position to security guards.

As a 1983 survey showed that 67 per cent of damage to schools was mainly external, the system has some drawbacks. For example, it does not detect intruders until they are inside the building and within the infra-red detection range, an neither does it offer protection against damage such as graffiti on the outside of school buildings. It provides only limited protection from fires which are well under way before they affect the inside of the building, and it cannot detect smoke alone.

In both New South Wales and Victoria, the incidence of damage at schools covered by electronic surveillance has declined visible, but the PAC noted problems with the surveillance system, particularly with switching it on. In some schools, this was delegated to cleaners, teachers, community groups or others. Sometimes people simply forgot to turn them on, and where community groups used the school after hours, there could be a gap in protection between the end of the school day and start of evening activities.

As well, alarm systems publicly reported as installed in some schools were not fully operational, and two systems could not be operated on request - one due to damage, the other because the headmaster did not know how to activate it.

Surveillance in country schools

Country schools are covered by a separate scheme in which the Department installs return-to-base security alarm systems in high-risk areas within the school, and installation, monitoring response and maintenance is carried out by private contractors chosen by the Public Works Department. So far 119 out of 145 schools are in the program, and it is expected that the remainder will be included in 1989.

Evaluation

The PAC's report is critical of the way in which the Education Department handled the whole electronic surveillance systems program. In contrast with the Victorian program, that in New South Wales was slow to start, more expensive and less effective. Planned risk and financial management and strategy were lacking, and co-ordination in the Department was poor. The committee consequently recommended that an independent cost-effectiveness analysis of the existing Schools' Electronic Surveillance System be conducted.

This analysis, conducted by Coopers and Lybrand Chartered Accountants, concluded that the Education Department's electronic surveillance system could not deal with well-organised vandalism, theft or arson (Sydney Morning Herald 6 October 1989). Although attacks on schools linked to the system were less costly than attacks on totally unprotected systems, installing the system in all 2,300 primary and secondary schools in New South Wales was not economically justifiable, given the high cost of installation and maintenance, the report said.

Joint Police/Education School Community Awareness Security Program (South West Area)

This program was piloted in 1988 to counter illegal entry, vandalism and arson through increased community and school awareness. The program is staffed full time by a team of four consultants - two police and two teachers - located at Heckenberg in Sydney's south west.

Its main strategies are:

• School Watch - passive patrols of schools at night and on weekends by members of the community;
• curriculum workshops - lessons on pride in the school;
• crime prevention workshops, which teach young people ways of preventing crime;
• student participation and clubs.

Mobile and static security guards

In 1987-88, $1.6 million was spent on mobile security patrols to protect high-risk schools, and in special cases such as bomb threats, static or sit-in guards were used. Security guards are also being used to back up electronic surveillance systems. The New South Wales Education Department has begun to employ, train and provide physical support to its own guards rather than using contract operators. This will cost $4 million annually.

The Victorian Education Department maintains that dedicated security patrols - patrols exclusively employed to secure departmental property in tandem with the electronic surveillance system - have proven superior to private company area security patrols.

The Victorian surveillance system

Unlike New South Wales, Victoria started systematically installing silent alarm systems in a number of high-risk schools in 1977, and by 1983, about 600 metropolitan schools had been connected. As of 1988, 830 out of a total of 2,200 schools had alarms - 1,475 had systems, and 51,625 had detectors.

The PAC noted that "the capital cost of the New South Wales surveillance system ($4 million for metropolitan schools alone) appears to be significantly more expensive than the Victorian system, with no demonstrable gain in performance" (p. 51). In fact, the New South Wales system has had 30 per cent more false alarms than the Victorian system.

In Victoria 45 per cent of entries or alarms identified lead to arrests, while in New South Wales in 1988 some 241 offenders had been apprehended, and 50 charged. Some 87 per cent of those apprehended in New South Wales were under 18 years of age, with one as young as six.

In the cheaper Victorian program, the government uses eight companies to design systems. These companies are small and work almost exclusively for the Education Department. Tendering is done through school principals.

The School Damage File, New Zealand

Following considerable publicity about school vandalism in New Zealand, a working party was set up in 1979 in the Department of Education and produced a report in 1982 called "Measures to Combat Vandalism Against School Property" (NZ Department of Education, 1982).

The working party identified school design, curriculum and social climate and community factors as influences on vandalism in schools. It also recommended that notes be prepared to help designers identify materials susceptible to damage.

The Architectural Directorate of the Ministry of Works and Development was asked to prepare these notes. They expanded the concept of notes to include many other formats for use not just by designers, but also by property supervisors, maintenance workers, administrators and school principals.

According to the Department's School Damage File, (1983) no conclusive pattern of vandalism emerged across schools. Expenditure on vandalism damage repair bore no consistent relationship to the size of the school population, or the city or region in which the school was located.

The working party therefore concentrated on two strategies for reducing vandalism - the social and "nuts and bolts" strategies. Statistics showed that individual students were often responsible for multiple incidents, suggesting that the problem was more social than physical. The Working Party concluded that, when a small number of individuals are involved, it may be more efficient to modify anti-social behaviour through distractions, incentives and discipline, rather than through vandal proofing the physical environment.

Nevertheless, as it often provided opportunities or even provoked vandalism, the physical environment was seen as a major contributing factor.

Working on the knowledge that all damage, however caused, ultimately influences the way pupils use the school, and thus affects school vandalism (Pablant & Baxter 1975), the team broadened the scope of the study from pure vandalism to property damage in general.

The initial survey of 16 secondary schools seemed to show no apparent consistent pattern in variables such as school size, average age of building, racial mix of students, and the socio-economic status of the community in which the school was located. In schools where vandalism and property damage seemed lowest, school principals were also found to be motivated, enthusiastic and personally interested in individual students.

It was obvious, too, that damage problems and solutions to property damage were already well known to property supervisors and principals. While property supervisors were damage-proofing items such as toilet paper dispensers, principals were experimenting with management and social strategies such as school personalisation through participatory landscaping, litter control incentive schemes etc.

Francis Stoks (1985) characterises it as an "enormous, continuous and expensive nationwide experiment in which all the participants - property supervisors, school principals and staff, and to a lesser degree architects - were operating in isolation". They were simply not sharing notes on common problems and solutions. The issue then was not inadequate knowledge to combat the problem, but how to co-ordinate this knowledge and circulate it more widely.

To determine the extent and nature of vandalism in schools and find out what people thought caused it, the Education Department chose two highly-vandalised schools, consulted with staff and students, examined the vandalism and took photos. The result was an illustrated "cookbook" type of resource, with each page dedicated to single "recipe" for describing one way of solving a school vandalism problem It was reproduced in a loose-leaf format and was called The School Vandals Reduction Bulletin.

A study was done of 16 more schools to collect more design data to include in the schools' damage information system. Workshops were held in some of the schools to discuss the project generally, to solicit support for the concept of a school damage resource, and especially to test the bulletin information gathering system on a range of different people. About 100 new bulletins were produced in this way.

The bulletin's name was changed from Vandalism Bulletin to Damage Bulletin. All the bulletins went into the new School Damage File. For examples of pages from the New Zealand Deparmtent of Education Property Damage Bulletin see Appendix I.

Extreme target hardening strategies such as stripping off architectural features and removing toilet cubicle doors were rejected as they often challenge vandals into further wilful damage. Instead, using crime prevention through environmental design theories - which maintain that those who identify positively with the physical environment are less likely to damage it and might even prevent others from doing so - the Working Party developed strategies through the File to encourage student investment in the school environment, for example by involving them in designing, building and caring for the school. (Landscaping, adventure playgrounds, outdoor seating, display arts and mural projects are examples of student participation projects consistently proven to have a substantial effect on reducing vandalism.)

Where schools did not lend themselves to student participation and construction, attention was paid to the state of repair and colour schemes of paintwork, correct functioning of toilets, wash basins, drinking fountains etc. and many other property maintenance strategies which have an indirect influence on vandalism.

Evaluation

For reasons of cost, the School Damage File was not widely circulated, so the effectiveness of the program was never measured. Another problem was that the program required a central clearing house for receipt, editing and publishing and distribution of the loose-leaf pages, and the clearing house function disappeared under a massive government restructuring and privatisation program.

The DES Study, UK

The importance of carefully recording the type, time and circumstances of offences as an aid to defining prevention strategies was also stressed by the UK Department of Education and Science (DES) in its 1987 manual, Crime Prevention in Schools: Practical Guidance.

With vandalism in English schools costing between £25 and £30 million a year, the Department of Education and Science commissioned an investigation by consultants who visited 11 schools and one polytechnic college in six local education authorities. Of those, one or two were suffering severe and recurrent damage, but the rest had succeeded in overcoming major problems of malicious damage.

The review looked at various initiatives undertaken by local education authorities to combat theft, arson and vandalism and found they fell into four broad categories.

• Security - alarms, locks and the like to prevent unauthorised access and detect intruders and fires.
• Management practices designed to keep premises in good repair and to encourage support from pupils, staff and parents.
• Design modifications to minimise breakage and reduce replacement costs, improve security and reduce spread of fire.
• Strategic planning to deploy resources most effectively, co-ordinate effort and define roles and responsibilities.

The report concluded that, though many authorities still regarded crime prevention as a matter of introducing hardware, good housekeeping and good management were likely to be the most cost-effective ways of preventing damage. It also stressed the importance of incorporating effective design strategies into new schools.

The project team evaluated various anti-vandalism/theft measures for their cost effectiveness: the results are reproduced below.

A framework for prevention

The DES project team stressed the need to identify the level of risk and the nature of risk in schools. To identify the level of risk, they said, the following factors should be considered:

• location;
• nature of the site;
• building construction and design;
• day-to-day management of the building;
• type of school;
• history of damage incidents;
• value of the building and its contents.

Example of locational factors adding to risk are:

• public footpath through site;
• public housing in vicinity;
• no overlooking from neighbouring houses and roads;
• area of high social stress and deprivation.

Some site factors adding to risk would be:

• undulating topography and concealing shrubbery;
• no fencing;
• no lighting;
• open;
• many entrances to site and school buildings.

Some building factors adding to risk are:

• combustible building material;
• large areas of low-level glazing;
• glazing near playing fields;
• flat roofs and easy access to roofs;
• hidden alcoves and entrances;
• secluded loading bays;
• louvred windows.

Examples of management factors adding to risk are:

• unsecured building materials and contractors' equipment;
• unsecured inflammable materials;
• rubbish containers near backyards which can be overturned and set alight;
• haphazard procedures for making deliveries;
• poor directions for visitors;
• no on-site knowledge of resetting and checking alarm systems;
• poorly understood procedures for fire escapes and locking up;
• unsecured ladders.

The team prescribed different preventive measures for preventing damage etc. when the school is occupied, when it is unoccupied, and when it is in use outside normal hours. For example:

The school when occupied

Types of damage and loss:

• wear and tear;
• accidental damage;
• malicious vandalism;
• theft.

The focus of prevention:

• an ethos stressing pride in place;
• preventive maintenance to reduce opportunities for damage and help keep down replacement;
• deterrence of casual intruders;
• protection of equipment while in use.

The school when unoccupied

Types of damage or loss:

• break-ins;
• malicious attack;
• arson and accidental fires;

The focus of prevention:

• reduce opportunities for fire-raising;
• prevent unauthorised access;
• deter unauthorised access;
• store and protect valuables.

The school in use outside normal hours

Times of risk:

• fetes;
• sports days;
• parent days;
• start of term;
• end of term;
• delivery days;
• extra-curricular evening activities.

The focus of prevention:

• warnings to people to keep their belongings in sight;
• clear signs for visitors;
• extra vigilance by staff;
• safely locking up all school equipment;
• provision of effective lockers;
• locking of sensitive zones.

Finally, the team came up with this seven-point plan for preventing vandalism, damage and arson in schools.

1. anticipate vulnerable areas;
2. design with use in mind;
3. design for robustness;
4. make positive use of casual surveillance;
5. securely store valuable items;
6. deter casual access and intrusion;
7. foil the determined intruder.

School Watch in the UK

Acting on recommendations of the Association of County Councils' 1987 working party on arson, the education authority in Stockport launched a self-help scheme aimed at drawing the problem to the attention of the whole community.

In consultation with police, fire services and the council's insurers, the education authority initiated its Schoolwatch campaign, a two-pronged attack on vandals - improving school security and acquainting the public with the real costs of damage in Stockport's schools.

In Schoolwatch, neighbourhoods adopt their school buildings, much as Neighbourhood Watch participants watch their neighbours' homes. Stockport's campaign is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK.

School burglaries in London

Tim Hope (1986) surveyed 59 London schools, focusing on single-sex boys' and co-educational secondary schools which had the highest rates of burglary among Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) schools, and found that a quarter of the schools accounted for over half the burglaries, while half the schools produced no more than a tenth of the total number of burglaries.

The survey provided information on the characteristics of burglary, the area where the schools were located, the design of school buildings, and certain aspects of their management. Using site plans, the authors came up with a formula for school design types. At the low end of the design spectrum were small, compact schools mostly built before 1920. Their sites were small and restricted and had no grass, trees or shrubs. They were brick, with small window areas. The authors called them small, old and compact schools - SOC schools for short.

At the other end of the spectrum were large, post-1945 remodelled schools with sprawling buildings set in extensive grounds which were often grassed and landscaped. Buildings varied substantially in height and often had lots of windows. These were called LMS, or large, modern and sprawling schools.

Two facts emerged: SOC schools had significantly fewer burglaries than other schools; as schools more closely resembled the LMS design tendency, differences in burglary rates became much more variable.

The survey found that: neither the areas in which schools were situated nor the characteristics of their pupils accounted for differences in burglary rates, though these factors increased the probability of burglary when combined with design factors; and differences in design rather than the higher number of pupils in LMS schools seemed to account for higher burglary rates.

It seemed, therefore, that the little old schools were not attractive to burglars, perhaps because they provided fewer opportunities for burglary. Broadly speaking, opportunities for burgling schools fall into three types - access, degree of surveillance, and the availability of property.

The SOC schools offered fewer opportunities to burglars for the following reasons.

• They were less accessible, with their high, brick perimeters, heavy wooden sash windows with grilles, strong external roofs and difficulty in getting onto the roof.
• Surveillance was usually better because they were built in densely populated areas rather than in the suburbs. They were usually close to roads so their perimeters were well lit. Their smallness meant neighbours and resident caretakers could see most of their exteriors.
• Being small, and often split up, these schools had less equipment to steal.

LMS schools, on the other hand, were located in the suburbs away from main roads; their size meant more access points for burglars and less chance of being seen once inside; and with more pupils and multi-purpose and evening use, these schools were more likely to have valuable equipment.

The authors concluded that school design significantly influences the burglary rate, and raised three possibilities for prevention - building different sorts of schools, changing educational policies, or trying to patch up the design faults in existing schools.

Being realistic, they opted for piecemeal environmental improvements to the schools that most needed it - in the London case, the large, modern and sprawling schools. They recommended three major improvements:

• additional night-time surveillance at the most vulnerable schools;
• improved lighting at LMS schools to enhance surveillance and scare off intruders;
• improved crime prevention management, for example tighter security on entries already used by thieves, better co-ordination where fire regulations and security measures conflicted, and more sensible security and storage measures for audio-visual equipment.

The authors warned that the two major types of crime in schools - nuisance burglaries usually done by young adolescents on the one hand, and professional burglaries or malicious vandalism on the other - pose different problems for school authorities. A prevention strategy focusing on greater security for school equipment using alarms, safes etc. might prevent professional burglary, but might be ineffective against nuisance burglaries. A strategy concentrating on making it more difficult to break into schools - particularly LMS schools - would probably prevent both types of burglary, but would be much more difficult and costly to achieve. They concluded that preventing burglary in schools essentially becomes a matter of choice between costs and benefits.

Design tips for vandal-proofing schools

The following design tips come from the Greater London Council Architects' department's Security Design Guide (White 1979). They can be used in any public building.

Doors and windows

• Hinges which face out and are illuminated should be fixed so that pins cannot be removed from the outside of the building.
• All vulnerable windows (on the ground floor, for example) should have adequate locks.
• Generally, metal sash or centre-pivoted windows are more secure. Louvred windows are extremely vulnerable and difficult to secure and should be avoided, as should horizontal sliding windows unless they are fitted with adequate fasteners. In general, all windows and fanlights should be fitted with some sort of mechanical restraint which limits openings to a maximum of 127 mm.
• Doors should be solidly built, with solid cores if possible. If glazed vision panels are used in doors to improve surveillance, they should be kept to a minimum size.
• Doors to high-security stores should be lined on the outside with sheet metal and fitted with good quality five-lever locks. Cheaper locks will suffice on classrooms or rooms without a specific security risk. Most doors in school buildings should be the same standard as fire doors.
• Adequate and properly-installed stops or buffers will prevent much accidental damage to doors. To prevent damage to lightweight partitions from continually slamming doors, install storey-height door frames, securely fixed to floor and structural ceiling. Knobs are preferable to level handles.

Lavatories

Lavatories are focal points for vandalism, so their design requires an interplay of management, planning and design decisions. It is possible to design vandal-resistant lavatories.

• Lavatories should be centrally located and staffed by a supervisor who should also be responsible for cleaning.
• Their floors should be designed to cope with flooding, by falling to gullies or channels.
• Cisterns should be secured in a locked service duct with can be reached from outside the lavatory, though the general provision of concealed plumbing may be too expensive.
• Spray taps dispensing blended water rather than plugs in wash basins soon repay the higher original outlay.
• Stainless steel pans outlast conventional pans, which are quickly demolished.

Building design

The GLC's approach inside buildings is to concentrate on the detailing of three or four key areas to reduce opportunities for vandalism. Where supervision is good - for example where the sides of buildings are overlooked by the schoolkeeper's house - break-ins are rare.

• Schoolkeeper's or caretaker's house should be sited to give supervision of main entrances and as much of the building as possible.
• The school building should also relate to the community, so that neighbours can supervise by overlooking the schoolkeeper's entrances.

The very shape of buildings is critical to their degree of security, particularly in single-storey buildings.

• Concealed inner courts are particularly vulnerable and need a high degree of security in detailing doors and windows.
• Detailing can aid break-ins - for example the stepping of flat roofs and rooflights can act as a ladder, and deep recesses and reveals can act as a shield.

Open-plan designs used in recent buildings make surveillance by police and public much easier.

Summary

A United Kingdom study concluded that school design significantly influences the burglary rate and raised three possibilities for prevention - building different sorts of schools, changing education policies, or trying to patch up design faults in existing schools. Essentially, they said, it came down to a comparison of costs and benefits. They opted for additional night-time surveillance on the most vulnerable schools, improved lighting and improved crime prevention management such as tighter security on entries already used by thieves, better co-ordination between fire and security regulations, and better security and storage measures for valuable school equipment.

Other measures used in schools in the UK, Australia and New Zealand for reducing school burglary, vandalism and arson include:

• School Watch programs, in which the local community are asked to take responsibility for surveillance.
• Electronic security surveillance programs incorporating detectors inside schools connected to a central base station via modem and telephone lines, with response by security guards.
• Community awareness programs run by police and education authorities.
• Education programs in schools, crime prevention workshops and student participation in clubs.
• Improved security measures and better target hardening in schools.
• A centralised information system on vandalism problems and solutions - for example the New Zealand School Damage File - to share knowledge quickly among schools.

All that is required in some cases is commonsense and a heightened sense of responsibility among staff and pupils, so they lock up valuables, lock doors and remember to turn on alarms.