London Underground

Crime and insecurity
In the mid-1980's, the London Underground began to put forth its first efforts to incorporate crime prevention into its routine management activity. Earlier, crime management was largely conceived a matter only for the police, with the metro management being mainly attentive to purely operational tasks. This change in crime prevention approach was caused by a number of factors. First of all, there was a dramatic growth in criminal incidence within the London Underground. Thefts from passengers continued to be reported in large numbers while robberies increased by sixfold between mid-1970's and the mid-1980's. Secondly, the world had just experienced an accelerated growth of scientific interest in and knowledge about crime prevention techniques. And last but not least, the devastations caused by the 1987 fire at King's Cross station called for drastic metro reconstructions in which the recently developed crime prevention knowledge could easily be incorporated.

Source: López, M.J.J., Crime Prevention Guidelines for the Construction & Management of Metro Systems, Den Haag: RCM-advies 1996, pg. 15-18.

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