This study is a preliminary analysis to measure effectiveness of the 'Crime Prevention Design Project' which has been done as a 2012 model project of the City of Seoul administration. The Seoul city has attempted to reduce the crime rate and fear of crime in areas by applying and expanding the CPTED technologies mostly tried on the existing apartment households to ordinary residential housing areas and schools.
The above project was implemented in two sites ; Yumni-dong in Mapo-gu and Gongjin junior high school in Gangsoe-gu. In the former case, while salt way, safety keeper's house, safe electric poles were established, residents' active participation was promoted for improvement of residential environment.
And in the latter case, with "dream" as a major theme, facilities such as dream wall, dream stage, and dream ground were established as participation of both students and teachers in the project process were also encouraged.
This study basically tried to analyze the effectiveness of the project by conducting questionnaire surveys to participants and site observations before and after implementation of the project. It was found that for the Yumni-dong' case, the level of fear of crime, which had been higher than that of nation's average before the project, was reduced (by 9.1%) below that of nation's average. At the same time, attachment to the areas increased by 13.8%. And for Gongjin junior high school's case, students' perceptions of incivilities around school and fear of crime were reduced by 7.4% and 3.7%, respectively.
It appears that visible effects observed above, in spite of the fact that this post factor examination was done only two months after the establishment of various facilities and programs in both places, are attributable to the following factors. Firstly, through residents' participation in the process of collecting opinions and ideas such as public hearings and also in the process of establishing facilities and programs (for example, doing paintings on the walls of their own houses, taking part in education programs), residents and students themselves have continued to be able to observe on-going changes in their community and school. In this process, it seems that both increase in attachment to community and school and reduction in fear of crime have come to take place simultaneously. In other words, following the term frequently used in the CPTED, a sense of ownership for the territory appears to have been strengthened. Secondly, installation of social stabilizer may make differences. Various facilities and devices in both Yumni-dong and Gongjin junior high school have been established indeed to decrease the then-existing unstable activities on the one hand and to promote positive activities and behaviors on the other hand. That is, through establishing and encouraging the use of sporting appliances and playing facilities, natural surveillance has been increased and students' attention has been redirected from deviant behaviors to positive ones. Perhaps more important than establishing various facilities is that constant and well-maintained school and communities may have sent members of school and communities and potential criminals signals that those areas have been well under policy concern and consideration, which may be said to be policy effects in terms of so called broken window theory.
With opening of new government administration, a variety of policy measures have been taken to make Korean society safe from crime, including efforts to eradicate four major social vices in Korea. It is anticipated that Seoul city's projects will play an enormous role in making safer society afterwards and also that application of the second-generation CPTED may attract much more attention. It may be another contribution of the project discussed above that through the Seoul project partnership among citizens, business, university, research institutes, and government agencies have been established even in crime prevention area. Currently, the Korean Institute of Criminology has planned to conduct in early next year main research to examine the effectiveness of the Seoul city's projects, including analysis of crime rate changes.