In brief: Mehul Singh and Codee Ludbey reviewed 100 CPTED reports from NSW State Significant Development submissions. The study found a gap between professional presentation and documented risk analysis. It assesses reporting quality, not whether the developments reduced crime.
Why we did this research
Planning and design teams use CPTED reports to understand crime risks and the reasons for proposed controls. This study asks whether the documents make that reasoning visible and traceable.
What we did
The researchers reviewed 250 downloaded reports from the NSW Major Projects Portal and coded a sample of 100, with further purposive verification. The coding examined theory, risk methodology, context, engagement, recommendations and evaluation, using ISO 22341:2021 as a reference.
This was a purposive review of State Significant Development documentation, not a random sample of all NSW projects. Absence of evidence in a report does not establish that an activity never occurred. Three reports were associated with an author; the paper describes independent coding and a sensitivity analysis excluding those reports.
What we found
Threat identification was more common than structured risk analysis
Threat identification appeared in 77% of the coded reports. Risk matrices appeared in 15%, risk registers in 9%, prioritisation in 16%, and an explicit context–risk–recommendation chain in 16%.
Claims of engagement often lacked supporting evidence
Community engagement was claimed in 79% of reports and evidenced in 6%. That difference concerns what the reports document; it is not a finding that every unevidenced engagement claim was false.
Presentation and process were different strengths
Under its coding framework, the paper reports an average presentation score of 92% and an average process-rigour score of 17%. These are composite scores, not the proportions of reports classified as high quality.
What it means for planning and practice
Our practice recommendation is to commission a traceable account of the threat basis, risk reasoning, stakeholder input, design response and evaluation arrangements. A report should show how its recommendations follow from the analysis and identify what remains uncertain.
The findings support scrutiny of reporting quality. They do not establish a crime-reduction effect, determine compliance for an individual development, or assess the competence of every practitioner.
Publication
The full paper — findings, statistical results, and recommendations across all 100 reports — is available now as a Core42 industry research paper. A pre-print is also available on Research Square.
Related guide: What Good CPTED Looks Like — the commissioner's guide to ISO 22341-aligned CPTED assessment.