Designing Out Crime: Hot Products Insights

• 12% of 11-16 year olds in England have had a hot product stolen from them in the last three years.
• 34% of thefts took place in school and 24% occurred in streets.

We asked a range of people about hot products ...

Male voice 1

I’ve got iPods, I’ve got mobile phones.  This is the iPhone.  I’m a gadget freak, I’m a gadget freak.

Male voice 2

This is my mp3 player.  I’ve been taking photos with it today.  Street Art. Banksies.

Female voice 1

The iPod, yeah.  It’s my life.

Female voice 2

It’s, like, who has the best phones sort of thing [laughs]

Female voice 1

Me!

Female voice 2

Who has the best, like, mp3 player on their phone?  Who plays their music the loudest?

Male voice 3

One time when I went out, unfortunately, I had them in an outside pocket of my cargo pants and a chap decided to put his hand down there, take it and run off.

Female voice 3

I’ve had my phone pick pocketed but not in London – in Newcastle.  I had it taken out of my bag and I was a bit annoyed because I had to get everyone’s numbers. 

Female voice 4

If my phone gets stolen my main concern is my phone numbers and my photos. Anything personal to me.  The phone doesn’t make any difference – you can get a new phone.  But it’s like an invasion of your privacy.

Male voice 4

I’ve got the new iPod phone so I don’t get it out unless I really need to.  I don’t use the earphones either. I just pick up whatever earphones I have, but I tend not to use the iPod ones because they are like so recognisable.

Male voice 1

When I get on a bus and I see a whole group of kids jumping on the bus I put my volume down so I am aware of what they are talking about and everything.

Male voice 2

Yeah, so you have a pin code on it, so if you turn it off and you can’t turn it back on again without it

Male voice 4

Well I’m on pay as you go, so that doesn’t matter because I’ve got like a maximum of £10 on my phone which, if it does get stolen, that’s not the end of the world. 

Peter Cochrane, futurologist, co-founder Cochrane Associates, ex Chief Technology Officer BT. 

If you are in Korea today and you ask for a card, that is a credit card, they ask you if you’d like plastic with that, because the credit card is your mobile phone. That technology is heading our way. The prospect for crime is obvious. We’re going to have to get a lot smarter in the future because when I look backwards we’ve just developed products and then, as an afterthought, we’ve thought about security. As we go for more and more convergence we’re going to have to build security in. 

Beth, 16 years old

When I was using my mp3 in an RS lesson, I left it on the top of my bag, like, open and we did an exercise where we had to get up and go around the room and look at different sheets and when I came back it was gone so I know that it was somebody within the room but there is nothing you can really do.

Jackie, 16 years old

One day I brought my camera into school and I’d left it in my bag and I left my bag in a classroom and during the end of the day I realised that my camera wasn’t in my bag anymore.  I wasn’t really supposed to have it at school in the first place so I don’t think they could have done much about it.

Catherine, 16 years old

I used to go to a, sort of, dancing lessons straight from school and I went one day and, sort of, just chucked my stuff, I didn’t realise until I went home that I didn’t have my phone.  I didn’t really report it to anybody because it’s, like, my fault and my mum and dad would say, like, you can’t trust anybody.

Justin, 16 years old

I was on my way coming home from football on the tram and around ten other boys came onto the bus and at that time I had my phone out and they came up to me and they asked to see my phone and at first I said no and then more of them came over and I ended up handing over my phone.

Interviewer

Did you report it to the police?

Justin

I was meaning to but I never got around to doing it.

Felix, 17 years old

I wouldn’t be as unhappy if I lost my iPod because most of the music on my iPod I get straight off my computer, it’s not like stuff that I’ve collected from my friends. Whereas my phone is. I get, my friends, like they’re in the grime scene and they make their own music and you have to go and find them, like when they’ve got their phone and they’ve got to send it to you again. 

Ciara, 16 years old

We were walking up a road and as we got to a bus stop we realised we were being followed.  They stopped my friend who was, like, at the back of our group.  They searched him and, like, stuff and took his phone and wallet and things and when the boys realised that they were kind of intimidating to us they started to chase us.  Some of the boys we know, we know them, like we know their groups. And so there’s a certain school they go to and we, like, know boys who go to that school, so if we are with those boys they can, sort of, stop it and be, like, these are my friends so don’t like rob them. Or, like, sometimes they bring the stuff into school and like put everything onto the tables and, like, yeah £5 for that phone, or something like that, so they can just get our stuff back for us.

Jackie

Well, my idea was just like having a fake phone with you because that way, if it’s identical to your phone, like, if someone tries to steal it off you, you can just throw them your fake phone and they won’t know its fake. I had some kind of like voice detector thing. If you say a word that you don’t usually say, like the phone would detect it and automatically send a signal to 999.

Ciara

There could be things like help taxis, like here, that sort of if anyone is in, like, a lot of trouble and they just need to get away from like certain places then they could sort of just get into a taxi that gets paid by someone else or pay another time because sometimes its not nice, after you’ve been mugged, to be walking around because you feel very vulnerable

Catherine

I think there should be, like, a sensor on you, which detects all the valuable products on you and if, like, you are so far away from a product, like if you leave it somewhere and it’s stolen, it like sets off an alarm so you like know you’ve left it somewhere and you can, like, notify the police if it’s been stolen or something like that.

Felix

There’s an idea here with the hidden pockets, and it’s an idea that, like, fashion designers should try and incorporate into many of their clothes, where like, you won’t be able to visually notice that they’ve got, like someone else has got like a phone or an iPod just hanging out of their pocket quite obviously. So, for example, you could have one like on the side of your arm which is quite, not so obvious on the side of your arm or the inside one is one I quite like a lot.