• Korean Security Journal
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• no.56
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• pp.9-30
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• 2018

Crime prevention strategies are introduced to reduce the loss caused by crimes, and Target hardening against domestic burglary attacks is broadly accepted as one of such physical security strategies. In terms of business and home security, target hardening is one of the suite of protective measures that are included in crime prevention through environmental design(CPTED). This can include ensuring all doors and windows are sourced and fitted in such a way that they can resist forcible and surreptitious from the attack of intruder. Target hardening with certified security doors, security windows and secure locks are revealed to be much more effective to deter burglary attacks than other security devices, such as CCTV, lightings and alarms which have largely psychological and indirect impact. A pilot program of target hardening utilizing certified security window and locks was carried out in Ansan city, South Korea in 2016. This study is based on the quasi-experimental design of this program for a residential area. The researchers tried to verify the crime displacement effect of the target hardening program and the diffusion effects of crime prevention benefits by analysing the crime statistics. The evaluation utilized WDQ(Weighted Displacement Quotient) technique to analyze whether the crime displacement occurred, compared the crime statistics of the experimental area with that of buffer zone and controlled areas. The result showed that the target hardening program was significantly effective in crime prevention. The number of burglary in the experimental site with target hardening intervention reduced by 100%, although the areas without the intervention showed reduction in the burglary. The crime displacement was not found at all, and the number of burlary at the buffer zone also reduced significantly.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.60
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• pp.33-61
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• 2019

It is quite difficult to actually prove the effectiveness of so-called target-hardening, one of the various strategies used to reduce crime, one of the serious problems in society recently. In particular, three to five minutes is often used as golden time for intruders to give up or stop, which is based on foreign and some indirect research cases in Korea, but there were no studies that more directly identified the average break-in operation time or the abandonment time based on the elapsed time when the shield hardware resists intruders. This study was the first of its kind in Korea to investigate and verify samples of 90 inmates of break-in burglars who were imprisoned in August 2018 by profiling the average criminal experience, education level, age, height and weight of typical Korean professional break-in thieves, and specific criminal methods, average break-in operation time, and the criteria for giving up if not breached. According to the analysis results, in the survey on the number of pre-invasion theft crimes by intruders, many of the respondents who participated in the survey were criminals of professional invasions, and by their physical characteristics, there was not much difference from ordinary adult men. Residential facilities were the highest in the world, followed by commercial and educational facilities. According to the survey on the types of facilities that committed intrusion into residential facilities, it was not safe to say that single-family housing accounted for the largest portion of single-family housing, multi-family housing, apartment high-rise (more than three stories), and apartment low-rise (more than one to three stories) among residential facilities, and that the ratio of apartment high-rise was higher than expected. Based on the average time required to break into a place for an intrusion crime, it is assumed that the psychological time worked in a place where the break-in was difficult, since the break-in was not performed while measuring the time of the break-in operation. In the case of time to give up a crime, more than half of the respondents said they would give up the crime even in less than four minutes, suggesting that a significant number of intrusive crimes can be prevented even if the facility has four minutes of intrusion resistance. This proves that most intruders will give up the break-in if the break-in resistance performance of the security facility is exercised for more than five minutes.