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Retrofit design for preventing theft on the university campus

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Abstract

No other crime affects more students, faculty, and staff on the university campus than theft. While it is common for campus officials and community members to implement anti-theft strategies, few of these efforts are ever examined empirically, let alone experimentally, making it difficult to rule out alternative explanations for any changes observed. The present study employed a completely randomized experimental design to test the effect of retrofit anti-theft solutions proposed by the situational crime prevention, design against crime, and broken windows literatures. Fifty-two classrooms were randomly assigned to receive either five dry erase markers made to appear old and used or five unaltered dry erase markers. Results show that old and used appearing targets were approximately 36% more likely to remain in the classrooms at the end of the exposure period compared to those not receiving the treatment.

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  1. An a priori power analysis (i.e. one performed before a study is conducted) is preferred to retrospective approaches (a.k.a. observed power), since after-the-fact methods have been shown to add no additional insight in place of the p-value itself; indicating sufficient power when the p-value is small and insufficient power when large (Chernoff 2009; Gerard et al. 1998).

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Bonnie Fisher, Michelle Protas, Michelle Wojcik, Paula Sonneveld, and the rest of the editorial staff at Security Journal for their insightful comments, generous support, and overall enthusiasm for creative solutions. A special thanks is also due to the secretaries and department heads from the departments of Educational Leadership and Technology, Communication and Media Studies, Music and Performing Arts, Psychology, World Languages and Cultures, Accounting and Finance, Management and Business Administration, Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Teaching and Learning, Kinesiology and Health Studies, School of Nursing, Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Physics, Computer Science, Industrial and Engineering Technology, Sociology and Criminal Justice, History and Political Science, and Mathematics at Southeastern Louisiana University for generously providing this study with access to their classrooms.

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  1. Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice, Southeastern Louisiana University, 1205 N. Oak Street, SLU Box 10686, Hammond, LA, 70402, USA

    William A. Chernoff

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Chernoff, W.A. Retrofit design for preventing theft on the university campus. Secur J 35, 1023–1046 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41284-021-00311-4

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