Preventing Car Crime in Car Parks

The Home Office Police Research Group (PRG) was formed in 1992 to carry out and manage research relevant to the work of the police service and Home Office Policy Divisions. One of the major police department divisions which acts as customer for the PRG is the Home Office Crime Prevention Unit which was formed in 1983 to promote preventative action against crime. It has a particular responsibility to disseminate information on crime prevention topics. The object of the present series of occasional papers is to present research material in a way which should help and inform practitioners, including the police, whose work can help reduce crime. Foreword In his speech launching Car Crime Prevention Year in February, the then Home Secretary announced that the Home Office would be publishing research it was carrying out on car crime in car parks. This report is the outcome. The car park, as a managed facility, provides a great deal of scope for controlling car crime. Nevertheless, as this and previous studies have shown, thefts of and from cars can be a serious problem in some car parks. Earlier work has largely focused on evaluating initiatives taken in single car parks. This study takes a wider look at the car park industry, examining the problem of car crime in many different sorts of public car parking environments commonly found in our city centres and towns, and at train stations. The study shows that there is a great deal that car park owners and operators can do to control the problem of car crime, identifying operating methods which are inherently more secure than others. The task is how to encourage car park operators to take car crime into account in their management of car parks. The study discusses the merits of two issues currently receiving attention from the police and consumer groups – the development of a market for secure car parks, by providing motorists with more information about the security levels in car parks, and increasing car park liability for crime. Acknowledgements Many people helped in the course of this study. We would particularly like to thank the following for their help and contributions to the project: Inspector Brian Cain at Derbyshire Constabulary, who provided the data from the ACPO Eastern Region study quoted in Section 2 of this report.