REVIEW ARTICLE
CPTED or Security? - Financial and Legal Liabilities, and Ethics for Local Government, Police, Planners, Architects and CPTED Practitioners, and the ICA
Prof. Terence Love, Ph.D.
CEO, Design Out Crime and CPTED Centre, Perth, Australia
Trudi Cooper, Ph.D.
Director, Social Program Innovation, Research and Evaluation (SPIRE) Group,
Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, Australia
First published: 12 March 2025
Cite the article: Love, T. (2025). CPTED or security? - Financial and legal liabilities, and ethics for local government, police, planners, architects and CPTED practitioners, and the ICA. The CPTED Journal of The International CPTED Association. Available at: https://www.thecptedjournal.net/2025-love_cooper.html
Author correspondence: [email protected]
DOWNLOAD PDF
***
Abstract
As in any professions, legal and financial liability are significant aspects of CPTED professional practice. Avoiding such liabilities depends on CPTED decisions that are ethical, equitable and legal. A key issue is the difference between CPTED undertaken equitably for the public good, and CPTED used to benefit of a specific group, individual or organisation, ignoring costs to others. There is an intrinsic ethical and legal tension between the two.
In the case of public-facing agencies implementing CPTED, providing CPTED to benefit a specific group, individual or organisation without similar benefit to others exposes CPTED practitioners to legal and financial liabilities. The use of CPTED to benefit specific groups, individuals or organizations in the protection of their assets (human or physical) is widely known as ‘security’. Understanding this difference between CPTED in the public realm, and security in the private realm, challenges many CPTED assumptions and professional practices. The existence of these challenges, and the subsequent suite of liability problems for CPTED professionals and client agencies, is suggested within the relatively new International Standards Organization CPTED standard – ISO 22341:2021.[1]
This paper outlines multiple practical examples of conventional CPTED practices that result in financial and legal liability when security CPTED approaches are implemented for specific groups, individuals or organizations by agencies acting for the public good. An addition finding of this analysis is that ISO 22341 clearly defines CPTED theory and practice as completely different activity from Security theories and practice. The paper concludes with guidance to help avoid such financial and legal liabilities for CPTED practitioners and their clients and to reduce the liabilities for the International CPTED Association in the institutional support of such practices in their certification of professional CPTED training.
Keywords: CPTED, professional practice, legal and financial liabilities, ethics, security
[1] See https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:22341:ed-1:v1:en
Cite the article: Love, T. (2025). CPTED or security? - Financial and legal liabilities, and ethics for local government, police, planners, architects and CPTED practitioners, and the ICA. The CPTED Journal of The International CPTED Association. Available at: https://www.thecptedjournal.net/2025-love_cooper.html
Author correspondence: [email protected]
DOWNLOAD PDF
***
Abstract
As in any professions, legal and financial liability are significant aspects of CPTED professional practice. Avoiding such liabilities depends on CPTED decisions that are ethical, equitable and legal. A key issue is the difference between CPTED undertaken equitably for the public good, and CPTED used to benefit of a specific group, individual or organisation, ignoring costs to others. There is an intrinsic ethical and legal tension between the two.
In the case of public-facing agencies implementing CPTED, providing CPTED to benefit a specific group, individual or organisation without similar benefit to others exposes CPTED practitioners to legal and financial liabilities. The use of CPTED to benefit specific groups, individuals or organizations in the protection of their assets (human or physical) is widely known as ‘security’. Understanding this difference between CPTED in the public realm, and security in the private realm, challenges many CPTED assumptions and professional practices. The existence of these challenges, and the subsequent suite of liability problems for CPTED professionals and client agencies, is suggested within the relatively new International Standards Organization CPTED standard – ISO 22341:2021.[1]
This paper outlines multiple practical examples of conventional CPTED practices that result in financial and legal liability when security CPTED approaches are implemented for specific groups, individuals or organizations by agencies acting for the public good. An addition finding of this analysis is that ISO 22341 clearly defines CPTED theory and practice as completely different activity from Security theories and practice. The paper concludes with guidance to help avoid such financial and legal liabilities for CPTED practitioners and their clients and to reduce the liabilities for the International CPTED Association in the institutional support of such practices in their certification of professional CPTED training.
Keywords: CPTED, professional practice, legal and financial liabilities, ethics, security
[1] See https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:22341:ed-1:v1:en
