Crime prevention series

Preventing retail crime in shopping centres and malls

Published in:
Preventing retail crime
Susan Geason and Paul R Wilson
Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1992
ISBN 0 642 17047 9 ; ISSN 1031-5330
(Crime prevention series) ; pp. 47-59

History

The term 'shopping mall' is used to describe a cluster of shops and stores designed and developed as one architectural unit (Brantingham, Brantingham & Wong 1990). They may be small, large, covered, uncovered, one or many-storeyed, with exposed or undercover parking, or none at all.

Shopping malls are an American invention, evolving out of main street shopping centres. The first recognisable shopping mall was built in 1907. With the post-War baby boom and the move to the suburbs, small malls were integrated into the plans for new communities. Continued growth and the proliferation of cars saw the emergence of larger malls serving mobile regional populations. Most recently, huge regional malls housing office complexes and cinemas as well as department stores, specialty chains and individual boutiques have appeared.

Initially the private developers who built malls usually chose to site them in upper-income areas, where the mall evolved into 'town centres' where people went to socialise as well as shop. This no longer holds true, and malls are appearing in areas which attract customers with a lower socioeconomic background, creating new problems for mall management.

Malls fall into five major categories: neighbourhood malls; community malls; regional malls; city centre malls; and multi-use megamalls (Brantingham, Brantingham & Wong 1990).

Neighbourhood malls are often anchored by a supermarket and serve up to 40,000 people. Community malls add a large inexpensive chain store and serve up to 150,000 people from several neighbourhoods. Regional malls usually support two main department stores and a large number of smaller specialty shops. These malls are usually located on busy roads - neighbourhood malls on local streets, community malls on arteries, and regional malls on major highway intersections.

More recently, city centre malls have appeared in North America. These can be built underground, such as the Pacific Center in Vancouver, Canada; or, like the Reading Terminal mall in Philadelphia and Toronto's Eaton Centre, as part of an urban redevelopment program, replacing an older centre development.

Multi-use megamalls join hotels, cinemas, restaurants, bars, offices, sports arenas and even amusement parks with traditional shops within one vast structure - for example, the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada. In Australia, malls have been built as part of town centre developments comprising office blocks, cinema complexes and restaurants - Bankstown Square in Sydney's south-west is such a development, as are Belconnen Mall and Woden Plaza in Canberra.

City centre malls and megamalls attract a much more mixed clientele than other malls. Many of the new users are simply looking for a place to rest or come to cause nuisances, commit thefts or traffic in drugs.

Britain has developed the 'stand-alone' - one large, mainly food, supermarket surrounded by parking, often with a petrol station attached, where shoppers can shop, fill up and run.

Australian malls

Wherever America goes, Australia is never far behind, and we are already moving towards vast regional malls. By the end of 1992 the refurbished Westfield Miranda Shoppingtown in Sydney will open a $200 million extension, making it more than a kilometre long, the largest regional shopping centre in Australia.

Already 20 per cent of Australians use regional centres. Westfield, which owns the largest proportion of regional centres in Australia - 21 out of 60 - attracted 150 million shoppers in 1990, and this is growing (Sydney Morning Herald 17 June 1991). In 1991 their Eastgardens centre catered to 7.5 million visitors, up from four million in 1988.

Riverside Plaza, Queanbeyan, is a good example of an Australian regional mall

Australians increasingly see browsing around shops as a leisure activity, though many still want to get in and out quickly. Some centres have already specialised to attract a particular group - Harbourside at Sydney's Darling Harbour, for example, concentrates on food, fashion and tourism. Some observers see specialisation as the way of the future.

City centres depend on 9-to-5 workers and focus on the more luxurious and easily portable end of the market - fashion and recreational goods, along with quick food outlets for the lunchtime crowds. This is the mix, for example, at Skygarden, the newest luxury shopping centre in Sydney's central business district.

But what goes around comes around. A Sydney architect was commissioned recently to revamp a huge Los Angeles centre, and intends to try to make it feel more like shopping on a street in the good old pre-mall days.

Malls & crime

Shopping centres and their retail tenants must attract increasing numbers of customers to survive, but more people, cars and merchandise also attract crime. Shopping centres have become focal points for theft of, and from, vehicles as well as shoplifting, passing bad cheques, and credit card fraud. Crimes against persons - purse snatching, robbery, abductions and sexual assaults - have been infrequent in Australia, but the recent shooting of seven shoppers in a mall at Sydney's middle-class Strathfield has shattered the complacency of the public, mall managers and the police alike.

Shopping centre management has to answer to community residents, local law enforcement officials, customers and individual retailers. All of these expect shopping malls to be safe places to shop and spend leisure time. As a result, shopping centre developers and operators in the United States are now viewing security as a major design consideration when planning a new mall or renovating an existing one (Potter 1984), and mall managers are spending an increasing percentage of their operating budgets on security personnel and equipment.

Unlike most other industries, however, shopping centre operators seldom pay for security programs. Although capital expenses such as closed circuit television (CCTV), alarms and communications systems are generally considered to be construction costs, the security department's operating budget is paid from common area maintenance (CAM) charges levied against tenants on the basis of space leased. But because CAM charges are added to rent, shopping centre managers are under constant pressure from tenants to keep them low.

Malls as crime `nodes'

One way of looking at criminal events is to see them as the convergence of potential offenders and victims in specific behavioural settings at particular times and places (Clarke 1980). By looking at the way people move around in the course of everyday activities, we can predict where their paths will cross.

Criminal activity seems to occur at or on the way to the end points or `nodes' of criminals' routine daily travel - the offender's home, work or school sites, and favourite shopping areas and entertainment spots.

The crime rate increases further when a node such as a shopping centre or mall attracts the sorts of groups most likely to commit crimes - teenagers, alcoholics, drug users, the unemployed. To develop effective situational crime prevention strategies, we must understand shopping malls and the populations who use them.

Factors affecting crime in malls

The relationship between crime and shopping areas has been well documented in criminology. Situational crime prevention techniques can be used to solve the problem, but understanding the environment surrounding the crime is crucial.

Shopping mall crime problems appear to occur in predictable patterns that depend on:

• the location of the mall;
• the types of malls situated in a shopping region;
• the design of the mall, its grounds and facilities;
• the mall's administrative and security systems; and
• the security systems used by individual mall tenants (Brantingham, Brantingham & Wong 1990).

Information about the type, location, design, administration and store security of a mall should make it possible to predict whether a mall will have crime problems and what these will be.

Location

Crimes in and around malls include burglary, robbery, theft, vandalism, graffiti, nuisance behaviour and violence to the person.

Because they were built in middle-class affluent suburbs and were accessible only by car, older malls tended not to attract great numbers of crime-prone groups. However, newer city malls, those with movie theatres and bars, and those near public transit stops, are vulnerable.

Research shows that crime nodes produce crimes in nearby areas which become part of offenders' normal travel paths. The growing practice of councils allowing the construction of apartment blocks near malls simply places the most `at risk' type of housing (flats are often empty during the day and vulnerable to entry) in an 'at risk' location (Felson 1987).

Design

Design seems to be the key to property and nuisance crimes in and around malls. Nuisance behaviour is most frequent near high-activity spots that attract juveniles or areas where non-buyers hang out. Thefts seem to occur in busy stores with easy access. Burglaries occur near busy stores with blind entrances.

People sitting in one place for a long time, noisy conversations, unusual behaviour, especially by juveniles, derelicts or drunks, can all be perceived as nuisances and can generate fear of crime among mall users.

Design influences people's use of space, and in fact design is used to control behaviour - either to encourage mall users to buy or to prevent nuisance behaviour. Lack of benches, for example, encourages people to buy food to get a seat. Railings on balconies are often designed to make it uncomfortable to lean for long periods.

Malls are faced with the dilemma of wanting to be seen as 'town centres' while wanting to keep out undesirables. As public spaces real town centres did not have this luxury.

CPTED strategies for reducing crime in and around malls

Researchers from the University of Queensland's Architecture Department examined the relationship between break and entry and the urban and architectural environment of small shopping centres in Brisbane (de Gruchy & Hansford 1980) and found the following.

• Incidents were most likely to happen when occupancy was lowest.
• Windows were the most vulnerable point of illicit entry and the rear facades of buildings were attacked twice as often as the sides and three times as often as the fronts.
• The influence of private security patrols on the distribution of break and entry was minimal.
• The existence of after-hours premises nearby did not discourage crime. In fact, it might even have brought offenders into the area.
• Alarms did not reduce the risk of shop-breaking, but lowered the success rate, as they interrupted some offenders.
• The sorts of businesses in a shopping centre did not influence the type of crime committed there, but the type of environment did. For example, the siting of a large, paved car park behind the shops attracted skateboarders and may have caused 'accidental' damage in one shopping centre, and a late-opening skating arena adjacent to the paved car park probably made the problem worse.
• A retail premises of solid construction, with secure windows and door locks and adequate lighting both inside and out, would be less vulnerable to a shop-breaking attack than a similar premises with poor security and low lighting.
• The ability of close neighbours to see what is going on (natural surveillance) seems to be the best protection for medical premises.

As a result of their investigation, de Gruchy and Hansford came up with a number of strategies for reducing crime in small shopping centres, some easily within the means of most shop-owners and others involving some capital outlay.

They recommended that shop-owners protect themselves in the short term, at little extra cost, in the following ways.

• Improve internal shop surveillance by removing as many obstructions as possible from the front window display so passers-by, or even official security guards, can get a clear, unobstructed view of the inside of the shop.
• Leave interior lights on all night.
• Leave outside lights on all night, especially in the rear of the premises.

Strategies involving some outlay included:

• good quality deadlocks on all doors;
• security grilles on all windows, particularly at the side and back; and
• installation of a security alarm system.

The authors also recommended longer-term strategies for local authorities, architects, town planners and commercial property developers to reduce the overall risk of shop breaking in shopping centres.

For example, local authorities should encourage residential development within sub-centres by offering developers incentives such as commercial floor space bonuses. This would make shopping centres less isolated by ensuring that there were people on the street after trading hours.

In the design of shopping centres the number of enclosed structures should be minimised and the level of natural surveillance maximised.

De Gruchy and Hansford suggested the following design for shopping centres, incorporating an open rear service court overlooked by residential development.

Increasing surveillance

Designing or redesigning vulnerable spaces so that the people who work, live, or pass by there can monitor activity and discourage crime by their very presence - that is, to enhance surveillance - is one of the major tenets of crime prevention through environmental design, and a popular situational crime prevention strategy.

Case study: reducing theft from shopping bags in the Birmingham Markets, United Kingdom, by design changes

The Birmingham Bull Ring is one of the largest retail markets in the United Kingdom, with over 1000 stalls, some occupied six days a week selling fresh food, clothing, household goods and antiques. There are four main market areas: two Bull Ring Markets open six days a week, one indoor market selling most of the meat, fish and poultry, and the Bull Ring Open Market with fruit and vegetable stalls. Other markets are the under-cover Rag Market and the outdoor Flea Market, which open three days a week.

The most common form of crime in these markets was the theft of purses or wallets from shopping bags. The offences occurred in a very specific area of the city centre and at very specific times - Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the busiest market days, between 11 a.m, and about 6 p.m., and the thefts occurred most often in the two markets with the more densely packed stalls rather than in the three with the more spacious layout.

The Open Market, which suffered a high level of theft, had been replanned in 1983. The narrowest access way between stalls was increased from 2.5 m to 3 m or more, with more space behind the stalls and wider cross access ways, and a new lighting system was installed in the Rag Market. As well, the police carried out a covert operation against purse thieves in 1982.

Results: The program was evaluated by Poyner & Webb (1987) from London's Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, with the following findings.

• Crime had decreased in both the Open Market and the Rag Market.
• The incidence of purse theft in the Open Market had fallen by 40 per cent between 1983 and 1984, and by 70 per cent between 1983 and 1985.
• The police action seemed to have redistributed the crime rather than preventing it, with most of the thefts from the Open Market and the indoor Market Hall displaced into the Rag Market.
• The installation of the new lighting system in the Rag Market was followed by a drop in crime between the summers of 1983 and 1984.
• The reduction in crime in the Rag and Open Markets was accompanied by a smaller reduction in the surrounding area. That means the whole markets area benefited from an improvement in the worst area of risk, as thieves found the area less attractive.

As reducing congestion was obviously the key to reducing crime, market security staff also got rid of stallholders who gathered large crowds around them to make a sales pitch.

This study demonstrates how crime can be reduced by improving the design of a shopping area to reduce congestion and enhance surveillance, in this case by widening access ways and improving lighting.

In Australia, Westfield Limited builds small kiosks or shopping island in open spaces where crowds and trouble build up. By asking people if they need help, shop assistants can move people on who are just hanging around (Des Hayes, Westfield Limited, personal communication 1991).

Architecture as well as design of malls is changing. The earliest malls simply converted a footpath into a private space by enclosing it. Neighbourhood malls were usually L-shaped. Community and regional malls typically had a pair of major stores as end anchors with smaller stores arranged along a straight walkway between them. Larger malls tended to have a few smaller, narrower side walkways. The stores on these malls were usually narrow but deep, which maximised shop space and minimised public space. However, these linear designs create clusters of people at every major entrance or intersection, producing points of conflict between individuals.

More recent regional malls and 'post-modern' megamalls have a much more complex layout, with multiple levels and open courts. This disperses crowds, making the mall feel less congested, but also reducing the number of spots where people might congregate. There are fewer nuisance problems associated with loitering in post-modern malls than in older malls.

Poor design can also create crime opportunities outside malls. For example, the design of a parking lot can make car theft or break-ins easy as well as making them dangerous for staff after dark.

The management of Australia's Westfield chain of shopping centres is consciously designing security measures into the construction of new shopping centres and incorporating them into renovations. Westfield takes responsibility for the security of the perimeter of the mall - except where tenants' back doors open onto a public street - using target-hardening techniques such as strong doors and locks, access control by electronic security at entry points boosted by CCTV after hours, and loading docks enclosed by roller shutters.

Westfield's head of security is involved early - liaising with electrical engineers on the placement of security points for alarm systems, and with architects on doors, locks, for example lighting systems. The company's leasing strategy is to seek a retail mix that not only maximises sales, but enhances security.

In its newest malls, Westfield is compartmentalising types of retailing to improve security. For example, eating areas are separated from financial institutions by passages or walkways that can be sealed off in an emergency, such as a bank robbery, to minimise the risk to shoppers.

Public or private space?

There is one problem associated with security which may become increasingly important in newer regional, city centre and megamalls - a conflict over whether a mall is public or private space. Although a mall is usually considered private space, it may be converted to a public space if it becomes a major pedestrian thoroughfare. This has profound implications for both the control of nuisance behaviour and criminal opportunities.

At Toronto's Eaton Center, for example, mall security staff originally controlled undesirable behaviour by issuing $53 trespass tickets, enabling management to evict 30,000 people, primarily teenagers, derelicts and others in 1985. A legal challenge overturned the practice: the courts ruled that, as the mall owners had allowed subway routes through the property, they had given up their normal rights to control access and to expel people (Brantingham, Brantingham & Wong 1990). As large numbers of teenagers and derelicts now loiter in the mall, management has begun to remove benches and adopt other design strategies to deter them.

A similar problem bedevils Vancouver's largest megamall complex. The mall development will eventually house a hotel, a regional pub, a casino, a major fast food franchise, several office towers, several food fairs and two multi-screen movie theatres as well as hundreds of specialty stores, a number of grocery superstores, several major department stores and on-site parking for 11,000 cars. It hopes to attract 40,000 people a day. Major apartment complexes are planned for the surrounding area.

As a condition of its development permit, the mall had to permit a 24-hour public easement through its parking levels to connect a nearby light rail transit stop and an adjacent arterial road. Because some parts of the mall are clearly private space and other would now be regarded as public space, security arrangements are confused.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police staffs a one-person office on site, but has no plans to carry out general security for the complex. Individual stores have their own security arrangements but are not responsible for common areas. Mall security covers some common areas, but the high-traffic areas that might be regarded as the most risky, are not covered by any security measures. There has already been a shooting between rival teenage gangs in the insecure, apparently public space.