Rob Pincus

Home Self Defense Techniques - Establish Boundaries

Rob Pincus
Duration:   4  mins

Description

One of the fundamental principles of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design and great home self-defense techniques is establishing boundaries, which get people to go where we want them to and keep them out of areas we don’t want them in. Boundaries include everything from a row of statues to a waist-high hedgerow, chest-high hedgerow, fences, and walls.

Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.

Make a comment:
characters remaining

No Responses to “Home Self Defense Techniques - Establish Boundaries”

No Comments
The next fundamental principle I want to talk about when it comes to crime prevention through environmental design is establishing boundaries. Now, for keeping our line of sight open, we might think that that means everything's gonna be open and it's gonna be very easy for people to come onto our property or that people won't even really know where our property begins and ends. But the reality is we can establish boundaries through a number of means that don't block line of sight and help to deter crime. If you think about it, establishing boundaries means that we're going to get people to go where we want them to go and stay out of areas that we don't want them to be. And that first half is often overlooked. People think about putting up a fence to keep people out but the reality is people have to come and go from our property, we have to come and go from our property, delivery people need to come and go from our property, our friends, other family members, maybe strangers coming by innocently asking for help, they all need a way to get to our door, to get our attention and we need a way to come and go freely when we need to and when we want to. So if we don't establish those boundaries well, all of a sudden it becomes a free for all. Now, anyone can cut through our yard, moving from one house to another, from a commercial area into a residential area, from private property on to public property. So controlling access means encouraging people to go to appropriate areas and discouraging people that aren't wanted in certain areas from ever being able to get there. This doesn't have to be done with barbed wire fence and 10-foot tall brick walls. We can do this very, very easily because most people will take the path of least resistance. The people that aren't looking for an opportunity to commit crime, the people that are simply trying to get from the convenience store back to their house, they might cut through a yard. They might cut through that yard pretty freely if there's already a well-worn path where 40 other people have done it in the last week and it's been going that way for several weeks and now all of a sudden, there's no grass from point A to point B in our own backyard. Maintained curbing, maintained landscaping, maybe even signage. Security signs, for example, that warn people from coming onto an area where they're not wanted. Now, putting up a no trespassing sign in your front yard might seem like stating the obvious and obviously be an eyesore in certain communities. In other communities, it may be absolutely necessary to mark your territory and make sure that people understand that you will prosecute if they come onto your property and you've already told them not to be there or they have no business being there. So you have to decide what's appropriate in your area. Maybe simply a row of statues or some bricks that stick up from the front yard to make sure that your edge of your property is marked off from the public sidewalk will be enough or maybe you need to put that hedgerow in that only comes up to waist height, maybe you need to put a hedgerow in that comes up to chest height. The more imposing the boundary, the more likely it is to control people but also the more opportunity it's likely to give people to hide or to send a non-inviting message to people that you actually do want to approach your home. So you're gonna have to gauge very carefully what's appropriate for your home and your community. The more active a community you have, then the more obvious your barriers need to be. If your home or property is in a more secluded area, then you might be able to be more subtle with your boundaries. Simply letting people know that this is now changing from a public space to a private space. Just a change in the type of grass, a change in the type of shrubberies, or maybe a row of trees that are trimmed appropriately so that you still have a line of sight will let people know that they are not welcome in a certain area unless they have have permission. These little behavioral cues are really easy to identify if you go around the average community. You'll be able to tell who is really marking out their property without putting up a large fence simply by looking at little things like landscaping and the choices of how people maintain that landscaping. The next thing we're gonna look for is signs and then after that, we're gonna look for other man-made objects that we can put in an area such as curbing, decorative statues, maybe benches. Something like a bench or a gazebo tells people exactly where they're supposed to go. If you have an active community with public space and benches or gazebos that give people a place to sit down and rest, they're obviously not gonna be very likely to come into your front yard and camp out for their picnic. Now, while what happens in public spaces may not be up to you solely, you certainly can get together with other members of your community and encourage your city or town to put very inviting structures in the public spaces. Gazebos, picnic tables, benches, maybe even grills or other public use items that will encourage people to congregate there and not take advantage of open private property that hasn't been fenced off like Fort Knox. This will allow you to do your crime prevention in a much more subtle way because it will be very clear what is public space and what is private space because you've established good boundaries.
Get exclusive premium content! Sign up for a membership now!