International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 38

What recent property crime trends in Western Europe tells us about the crime drop
The Crime Drop and the Security Hypothesis
This type of results had led Van Dijk, Kesteren, and Smit to generalize their
hypothesis, still presented as such, of the effect of security measures on the crime drop in
their 2007 report on the ICVS and EU ICS surveys of 2004–2005 by noting that “the ICVS
data on precautionary measures against burglaries shows significant increases in the use
of such measures in all participating countries. Improved security may well have been one
of the main forces behind the universal drop in crimes such as joyriding and household
burglary” (Van Dijk, Kesteren, and Smit 2007, 16).
Graham Farrell, Nick Tilley, Andromachi Tseloni, and Jen Mailley have taken a
particular interest in this hypothesis, which they call the “security hypothesis,” since 2008.
At the time, they expressed a rather clear-cut opinion on the debate surrounding the causes
of crime drop:
It is pretty embarrassing to criminology as a profession that nobody has come
close to explaining the huge drops in crime experienced in industrialized
countries in the last decade or so. There have been some fascinating attempts
and much imaginative scholarship (since at least the set of studies in Blumstein
and Wallman [2000]), but ultimately nothing convincing (Farrell et al. 2008, 17).
They also stated that criminologists, including themselves, keep as a secret that, in
fact, “we do not really know what happened” (Farrell et al. 2008, 17).
Their response to this situation consisted of broadening the supposed impact of the
hypothesis related to security devices. This security hypothesis was applied to the crime
drop as a global phenomenon, and not in terms of its manifestations according to the types
of offense: “Our hypothesis is that change in the level and quality of security has been a key
driving force behind the crime drop.”
The first elements that they propose to support their thesis came from the BCS and
concern vehicle-related thefts.
They do not stop at merely indicating that the drop in the number of vehicle-related
thefts occurred during a period in which the amount of security devices increased:
The proportion of cars in England and Wales without immobilizers fell from
77% to 22% between 1991 and 2006, and those without central locking from
60% to 12%. . . . But still, of course, any simple correlation between crime and
security does not establish causation. Triangulation from other indicators was
therefore required (Farrell et al. 2008, 18).
To do so, Farrell, Tilley, Tseloni, and Mailley cited two other results taken from the
BCS. The first has already been mentioned, since it involves the evolution in recovered
vehicles from among stolen vehicles: “Temporary theft, after which vehicles are recovered,
accounted for two-thirds of the observed crime drop” (Farrell et al. 2008, 18).
The second concerns the method of entry into the vehicle. They observed that “the
bulk of the decline in car thefts was accounted for by a decline in the forcing of door locks”
(Farrell et al. 2008, 18).
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