2. The history of the development of the Standard

The development of the European Standard on Crime prevention by Urban Planning and Design can be traced in three stages: (1) The launch of the Technical Committee 325 in 1995; (2) the development of a pre-standard from 1996 until 2001, and (3) a revision of the standard until 2007. The first co-operators in the TC325 on Crime Prevention by Urban Planning and Building Design were academic experts with a background in criminology, architecture and urban planning, who strongly supported the principles of CPTED: Paul van Soomeren, director of the planning and security consultancy “dsp-groep” in Amsterdam, was commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior; Tim Pascoe participated on behalf of the British Building and Research Establishment (BRE); and Bo Gronlund, architect and associate professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts represented the Danish Crime Prevention Council. These pioneers acted as official security consultants for their national governments. In Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom contacts to the respective National Standardisation Institutes were established and a first TC meeting could be held in Copenhagen in 1995 to launch the Technical Committee 325. O.B. Petersen from Denmark held the chair together with the Danish Institute for Standardisation as the secretariat in the Technical Committee 325. In April 1996 Paul van Soomeren from the Netherlands was appointed to the chair and the Dutch Institute for Standardisation provided the secretariat in the Working Group on Urban Planning.

The general character of the work in the following 2 periods can be described as this: The representatives from participating countries (usually the chairman of the Working Group) prepared a text, which was circulated to the other participants in the Working Group for review prior to a meeting. Meetings were held in different European cities, hosted by the National Institutes for Standardisation in cooperation with local practitioners either from the police, architects or the city council, who organised field trips to illustrate how the idea can be applied in practice. At the meetings the partners discussed principles, comments, addendums, rejections and the wording. After a meeting it was again mainly the chairman of the Working Group who included the suggestions made during the meetings in the text, and a new version was sent out to be reviewed. This procedure should be repeated to improve the Standard until all participants would support the result, and the document could be sent to a formal vote. 

The development of the Pre-Norm ENV14383-2 (1996 – 2001)

Under the chairmanship of Paul van Soomeren a document was elaborated in the Working Group, which was finally brought to a formal vote among all CEN members in 2001. Between 1996 and 2001 several countries joined the process one by one: France (June 1997), Sweden (1997), Austria (October 1997), Italy (February 1998), Spain (June 1998), Belgium (December 1998), Switzerland (1998), Estonia (February 2000). Several efforts to involve Germany failed, and Germany officially has remained opposed to the idea of standardisation in that field until today. Finland was part of the Nordic Crime Prevention Council and closely connected to Sweden and Denmark. Norway participated only once in the early stages. The southern- and east-European countries like Slovenia, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic or Poland never showed an active interest in the development of the Standard.

After 5 years of deliberation the Standard on Crime Prevention by Urban Planning and Design was sent to a formal vote. The result of that vote showed Austria, France, Sweden and Switzerland opposed to the document, Germany had declared no interest in the standardisation of this subject, and Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland and Portugal abstained from voting. Nevertheless, in 2001 the Standard was approved with the majority of votes. Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom voted in favour of it. Some countries voted for the Standard although they had not contributed to the development, but obviously did not want to obstruct it. On the other hand, Austria and France, who were involved in the development, rejected the standard in the final vote due to some national conflicts. Sometimes the early enthusiasm for the Standard at some point turned into resistance. This obviously had to do with changing political attitudes in the particular institutions - in city councils, ministries, the police and urban planning departments, which appointed representatives into the Technical Committee 325. Nevertheless, in 2002 the Standard was published by CEN as the European Pre-Norm ENV14383-2.

From a European Pre-Norm to a Technical Report (2003 – 2007)

With the completion of the work on the Standard and the publication as a Pre-Norm (ENV14383-2) the process came to a standstill for a considerable time. The Ministries who had funded the leading experts in the Technical Committee 325 considered the process to be finished and stopped the financial support for further participation in the CEN. This lead to the resignation of both the chair of the Technical Committee 325 (Carl Ilving, Denmark) and the chair of the Working Group (Paul van Soomeren, The Netherlands), which meant a complete break-up and dissolution of the Technical Committee 325.

In 2003 Herbert Siegrist and Werner Frei from Switzerland and the Swiss Standardisation Institute (SNV) took over the chair with the intention to rescue the Technical Committee 325 and regenerated the work. At that occasion also the Working Group on Urban Planning experienced a re-launch. Francois Wellhoff from the Ministere Equipement in France took the chair together with the French Institute for Standardisation AFNOR as the secretariat in the Working Group after the resignation of Paul van Soomeren in 2002. However, instead of guiding the experimental period, the Standard was modified and a new process of deliberation was launched. Subsequently, the initiative and the enthusiasm to further develop the Standard on Crime Prevention by Urban Planning and Design shifted from Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain and United Kingdom, who were most active in the first stage of the development of the Standard, to Italy, France, Denmark, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland. All other countries were passive observers, who never attended a meeting nor interfered in the process. Austria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom had withdrawn completely from the Working Group.

In 2007, after a number of revisions and amendments the new version of the standard was sent to a formal vote again, and this time 12 countries voted in favour (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland). Only Germany voted against it, and Italy and the United Kingdom abstained from voting, which seems rather astonishing, because these countries had been very active in drafting the standard. Fifteen CEN member states did not respond to the vote: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. The abstinence of the Netherlands and Spain in this final vote obviously shows that they had lost interest after the revision of the Standard.