A Study on the Perception of the Crime Prevention Officer(CPO) in CPTED Projects: Focusing on the CPOs of Seoul Metropolitan Police

Abstract

There has been growing anxiety that anyone can be a victim of crime in various places, and related administrative agencies are proposing new policy in line with the civil society’s demand for crime prevention. On June 1, 2016, the National Police Agency organized a Crime Prevention Officer (CPO) at 140 nationwide priority(1급지) police stations and disclosed its active will to perform full-scale crime prevention tasks. The definition of the CPO is police officer who performs functions such as diagnosing, analyzing the crime environment and crime occurrence factors in Si/Gun/Gu or Eup/Myeon/Dong level, strengthening cooperation with other institutions and residents, and strengthening the promotion of commission activities and crime prevention activities for victims of crime. At present, CPO works in the field by applying the CPTED strategy, such as analyzing crime hot spots, diagnosing risk factors, and installing necessary crime prevention facilities which can be said to mean CPTED personnel. In this study, in order to research the perception of CPO’s that have an important role in the CPTED project, a survey was conducted on CPO’s in Seoul Metropolitan Police Safety Division. As a result of the study analysis, the question of the need for systematic education of CPO was most positive, and the most important parts of CPO professional education were sharing the actual case and crime prevention/CPTED theory education by an expert. In addition, it was confirmed that the more people think that the CPTED project affects the trust of the police, the more positive they are aware of the core elements of the CPTED project, the effectiveness of target hardening, and the need for education of CPO. Based on these findings, the above study presented and emphasized the future development plan of CPO and the importance of CPTED projects by confirming the effectiveness and key elements of CPTED projects and the importance of CPO. This is meaningful as basic data for CPO's perception survey, and additional research and support should be continued so that CPO can do its role as an expert responsible for the people's safety of life.