EDITORIAL
Editorial: The Resurrection of The CPTED Journal
Gregory Saville, Editor-in-chief
First published: 12 March 2025
Cite the editorial: Saville, G. (2025). Editorial: The resurrection of The CPTED journal. The CPTED Journal of The International CPTED Association. Available at: https://www.thecptedjournal.net/2025-editorial-saville.html
Author correspondence: [email protected]
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Welcome to the reborn version of The CPTED Journal. This is the second iteration of our publication. In 2002 our journal commenced annual publication for the next four years. That was a different time. The IBM Deep Blue supercomputer had beaten world chess master Gary Kasparov announcing the AI revolution; scientists extended human reach beyond our planet and landed the first-ever rover on Mars; scientists used DNA analysis to prove the evolutionary theory that all people emerged from African savannah’s eons ago. And reinforcing the connectedness of people everywhere, in 1997 computer scientists launched the World Wide Web making the world, truly, a global village. These were triumphs of scientific research that has changed the world – arguably for the better.
This new journal is also an international collaborative effort by researchers, scholars, and CPTED practitioners. It is our goal to apply scientific research to the theory and practice of crime prevention through environmental design. We obviously cannot claim our impact is anything like the Internet, AI, or DNA, but we do commit to rigorous research standards, ethical practice to make people’s lives better, and the scientific method in our publishing standards.
In short, our goal in this journal is to employ a scholarly peer review process, careful attention to evidence and data, and research articles on CPTED that follow rigorous and objective standards. Our mission echoes that of the International CPTED Association: to create safety environments and improve the quality of life through the use of CPTED principles and strategies.
The first iteration of the CPTED Journal occurred during heady days for the International CPTED Association. The ICA formed in 1996 and within a few years had a few hundred members, an annual conference, and CPTED chapters starting in other parts of North America and Europe. Then in 2002, the ICA launched The CPTED Journal.
The inaugural issues of The CPTED Journal appeared the old-fashioned way, from a graphic design artist and printed in hard copy. There were four issues of the journal from 2002 to 2006. We have scanned all those issues and they appear under the printed issues section on this journal website.
Back then we did not employ a formal peer-review process, although every article was carefully scanned for accuracy and edited for clarity by the staff of the Center for Advanced Public Safety Research – a research center I ran at the University of New Haven. While not subject to blind peer review, those first articles were a much higher standard than you might find in a magazine or newsletter. Then, as now, we were careful to vet articles for original data, research methodologies, and theory-based evidence. Of course we were not confronted with the specter of AI-generated content back then! Luckily, our editorial board was populated by a talented group of respected international CPTED scholars and practitioners with deep knowledge of the CPTED enterprise.
That produced some remarkable studies in those early years:
- Australian police inspector, Phil McCamley, published his research from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney about a new way to assess CPTED results;
- Joowon Kim and Youngki Park published their research from South Korea about applying the new space syntax theory to CPTED;
- Julie Mair and Michael Mair, researchers at Johns Hopkins University, published research on public health and violence;
- Veronique Levan from the Sorbonne University in Paris described second-generation CPTED in the neighborhood of Belleville, and Stephen Postlethwaite, from the UK’s Hampshire Police, published his research on over-lighting and fear;
- Paul van Soomeren published his research on Dutch street prostitution; and,
- Current ICA President, Macarena Rau, published a study on community appropriation limits in Chile.
The final articles appearing in that first iteration of The CPTED Journal included Hiroyuki Iseki’s study, from the University of California at Los Angeles about crime on transit facilities, and my research with Gerard Cleveland on Second Generation CPTED and capacity-building. We wrote our article in homage to urbanist Jane Jacobs, the original author of the landmark 1961 book, Death and Life of Great American Cities that gave rise to the ideas leading to the birth of CPTED.
Publication ceased in 2006 – ironically, the same year that Jane Jacobs died. Now – 18 years later – we have returned. The time and effort to publish a journal remain a challenge. For example, this first issue has faced delays, COVID, and setbacks of which I, as editor, take responsibility. Further, today we also confront numerous new challenges, such as generative Artificial Intelligence, deepfakes, online predatory journals, corporate paywalls, and others.
In spite of the challenges, we remain dedicated to an annual online publication with the latest in CPTED. We retain our original ISSN numbering system for indexing purposes, since those original studies were of such high quality we do not want that research to be lost. We also aim to keep our content open access – or at least with ICA membership as the lowest bar possible to provide the latest in high-quality, CPTED research.
We are interested in many topics in the issues ahead. We watch carefully the latest research on CPTED, such as GIS mapping studies of crime displacement or predictive algorithms in CCTV. We read about hostile architecture and community planning that embeds CPTED. We follow the work of criminologists who explore different angles of the crime opportunity equation. We watch presentations at the ICA conferences, such as how residential burglars choose their targets or how CPTED might be used unethically against marginalized populations. All these topics are relevant to the CPTED Journal and we welcome researchers to submit their work.
As an online publication we will release studies at different times in the year as they become available following our peer reviews. The final edition at year’s end will include all the articles submitted that year and we will submit those for eventual indexing. This will provide a steady stream of research and, we hope, it will trigger subsequent research on topical issues.
CPTED is at a hinge point in history and The CPTED Journal aims to contribute to a positive direction for our movement. With challenges in the physical, political and social environments, we must explore relevant and effective CPTED methods. With emerging theories such as Third Generation CPTED, trauma-based prevention, architectural biophilia, and many others, the CPTED Journal aims to place our field at the core of quality of life and future crime prevention. We are thankful to our contributors in this issue – they offer some exciting new perspectives. We are grateful to the dedicated members of our editorial committee. Finally, to our readers, we encourage you to submit your work and follow the latest in CPTED.
Welcome to The CPTED Journal.
Gregory Saville,
Editor-in-chief
