As part of the Design Out Crime project from the Home Office's Design and Technology Alliance Against Crime, the Sorrell Foundation was commisioned to run a project with secondary schools, exploring the crime issues that affect young people and how they might be resolved through design.
The project gives young people a voice, establishes communication routes with policy-makers and provides insights that can help develop briefs for designers.
Read on to find out about:
The context
School violence in the UK
Everybody wants children to have safe and healthy environments in which to learn and develop and fortunately, most schools provide this. Some, however, have problems with crime and violence that can put teachers and children in danger and undermine teaching and learning.
Another significant area of youth victimisation is bullying. No official crime statistics currently exist to capture the extent of bullying as it is technically not classed as a crime. Only recently has the requirement for schools to record incidents of bullying been established.
What’s already being done
The Government has made tackling bullying in schools a key priority. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has encouraged all schools to set up a peer mentoring scheme to combat bullying and peer pressure. Results have been shown to include improvements in behaviour, self-confidence and student-teacher relationships.
The Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 has substantially strengthened schools’ powers to tackle violent crime by enabling the screening of pupils using arch and wand metal detectors.
The Schools Project
There is a two-way flow of influences with bullying: what happens in schools is often influenced by factors at home and in the community and, in turn, bullying in schools can spill out into the wider world. This strongly suggests the problem cannot be successfully dealt with in isolation.
The Schools Project was set up to gather information from young people about their experiences of crime and bullying, not just in school but in the community in general.
Mapping crime issues
At the Young Design Centre, during trips to London, each group of young advisers split into three teams to identify crime issues in three different situations: at school, on the journey to and from school and in the community.
Developing ideas
Working in their teams, the young advisers began to examine the crime issues they had identified. For the 2009-2010 project, advisers were asked to apply for the role of team reporters, with the task of investigating crime issues in more depth. The reporters shared their findings during the next workshop, using photography, film and PowerPoint presentations.
Visualising
The young advisers created visual boards about the crime issues they had identified then worked with Sorrell Foundation facilitators to develop their boards into a presentation with scripted short role-plays.
Final presentations
The 2008-2009 Design Out Crime pilot project culminated in a presentation at the Home Office, followed by another, specially requested, to the 32 London Metropolitan Borough Police Commanders. Advisers taking part in the 2009-2010 project presented what were called their Young People’s Briefs – summaries of their findings on crime issues – to audiences of decision-makers and community leaders. After each presentation, audience members were invited to join the groups onstage for further discussion.
The young advisers’ findings
At school
The most common problems at school were with bullying and intimidation. Fighting and vandalism were also cited.
Pupils also talked about theft of both cash and possessions. 99 per cent of young people now own a mobile phone and these were the most commonly stolen items, followed by bicycles.
Because of the way the school is built, there are a lot of hidden places. Young adviser, Bolton
Almost all the groups said problems mainly happened in unmonitored/unsupervised areas such as toilets, changing rooms, playgrounds, school gates, car parks, stairwells and corridors.
There were calls for
- Better use of websites to share information, especially about communal events
- More extended school services and extracurricular activities to help students make friends and build confidence
- More active school councils
- Increased responsibilities for prefects
- Closer monitoring of CCTV to deal with bullying
- Better lockers or other secure facilities
- Secure, lockable bike sheds
- Graffiti to be allowed in designated areas, but cleaned off immediately everywhere else
Journeys to and from school
Young advisers in all areas reported feeling vulnerable on journeys to and from schools — and from a very consistent set of factors.
Fighting between schools doesn’t get sorted because it involves pupils from different schools. Nothing gets done. Young adviser, Nottinghamshire
Bus stops and buses were repeatedly cited as problem areas where pupils might be threatened, e.g. by rivals from other schools. Pupils walking to school repeatedly spoke of feeling intimidated in parks and other public places, alleys and street corners. Inadequate lighting was said to make this worse and London young advisers also cited inadequate CCTV.
Other problems included
- Peer pressure
- Fear of carrying valuables – cash and electronic devices such as phones and MP3 players
- Poor road safety
In the community
The wider community was where the greatest number and widest variety of problems were identified. Problems included drugs and alcohol abuse, gangs and intimidating groups, a lack of facilities, boredom and a poor relationship with the police.
Other problems cited
- Young people being negatively represented by the media
- Fear of being robbed of electronic devices, jewellery and trainers
- Cyber-bullying
- Dangerous roads as a result of young people speeding
- Racial discrimination
- Serious crime including burglary, knife crime and arson
- Knives being carried for intimidation
- Poor environmental conditions encouraging disrespect, vandalism and crime
Results
London
Chief Superintendent Joe Royle of Safer Transport Command, Metropolitan Police, asked to meet a selection of advisers to discuss crime issues relating to transport. This meeting gave rise to several new issues for discussion.
Basildon
A community safety manager for the council expressed interest in inviting members of the group to present to the Community Safety Scrutiny Committee.
Bolton
Local police officers and police community support officers said they were keen to explore and improve relationships between them and the pupils by holding further meetings at the Academy.
Bradford
Integrated Youth Worker Tamara McDonald said her team would champion further work with Community Safety and Drugs and Alcohol teams, supporting the young advisers in taking the project further.
Merthyr Tydfil
A police officer from the town spoke directly to the advisers about improving relationships between young people and the police.
Nottinghamshire
A Mansfield community safety manager identified opportunities for the group to present their findings to key partners, while the Youth Offending Team intends to share findings with councillors
How designers can help
School-related crime and bullying issues can easily appear intractable. In some cases they may even seem like unpleasant, but ineradicable facts of life. However, the information collected by the Schools Project also gives a clear indication of how this kind of research can help designers make a difference. Laying out the most common problem areas and the factors that contribute can turn an apparently chaotic morass into a clear set of material problems for which solutions can be attempted.
Designers’ addresses to the problems identified will, to some extent, depend on how they interpret the data. Is it a question of finding individual solutions to each problem or should these problems be seen as symptoms of something wider? Is a mix of targeted and more systemic solutions required? Is carrot better than stick or vice versa?
Design opportunities
The young advisors identified a series of issues that affect young people across the five locations. Each of these could be seen to represent a design opportunity.
Communication
The young advisers found there was a need for better communication between young people and the police, bus drivers, shopkeepers, teachers and peers. They said improved relationships would encourage trust and respect and help them feel more supported in their communities. As one young adviser from Bolton put it, ‘When the police do talk to us the conversation is minimal. They only ask about crime, they ignore you and sometimes don’t even believe you.’
Places and spaces
The desire to feel ownership over spaces and a sense of belonging was a common theme. Advisers emphasised that young people often feel intimidated and frightened, avoiding parks, roads and alleyways because of the presence of gangs. A young adviser from Basildon said, ‘If the environment is better – open and lighter – then the behaviour of people will change, and get better.’ Improving visibility and safety through street lighting may be a priority issue for designers to address.
The school environment
There was generally a call for a more civilised approach to safety and security at school. In particular, advisors wanted adequate storage for personal belongings and safe but unintimidating security measures, especially in bullying and vandalism hotspots like unmonitored toilets and school gates. They clearly identified a design opportunity here, a young adviser from Bradford neatly encapsulating the problem: ‘How do you make schools safe without them looking like prisons?’
Journeys to and from school
Bullying and fighting occur at points of convergence along many school goers’ routes to school. The young advisers described problems on buses, at bus stops and while walking. One adviser from London said, ‘Bus stops become crowded after school, with people just hanging around. There’s nothing to do so young people start on each other.’ The advisory groups also emphasised that provision for cyclists is often poor, both on the roads and in schools. Design solutions to some or all of these issues would clearly benefit numerous young people.
The virtual world
The young advisers said cyber-bullying, through mobile phones and the internet was a serious problem. The anonymity allowed by some technologies means that many victims do not know their abusers, making cyber-bullying hard to avoid or control. A young adviser from Nottinghamshire said, ‘Cyber-bullying happens a lot! As a perpetrator you feel safe because you’re removed from the victim. It can be done from anywhere.’ Bullying and disputes that take place online can easily spread to school, resulting in physical fights. The young advisers saw this as a major area of concern.
The big picture
As well as identifying individual problems, the Schools Project also gives designers the opportunity to consider the school-related crime issues in the round. Looked at as a whole, the data suggests strongly that young people face their greatest difficulties in the wider community. As one young adviser from Bradford put it, ‘Crime — it’s after school, that’s when it all starts.’
In the community, the thread that linked almost all the other problems was boredom.community. But how can schools with limited resources offer pupils more activities?
The solution might lie in other problems. Rivalry between schools was highlighted. Might shared activity between schools be a way of decreasing rivalry — and making best use of limited resources for extracurricular activity? Young advisers also asked for better information about the opportunities on offer to them: might a web resource on existing opportunities reveal that the need for schools to offer extra activities was not as great as first imagined?
To some extent, these are just examples, suggesting roles for designers in laying out, interpreting and acting on the data as a whole. As such, the Schools Project demonstrates perfectly just how integral this kind of research is to the design process. Whether dealing with products, layouts, systems or services, design is about interventions in the material world and only by understanding real-world circumstances in depth can designers ensure that their interventions are effective.