Designing out crime

The Financial Times reports today that Apple is expected to install near field communication (more popularly known as 'wave and pay') technology for the next version of its iPhone, enabling customers to pay for goods and services using their phone. It could potentially turn the iPhone into a credit card, key-ring, travel pass and movie ticket in one fell swoop.

Some of the world's biggest payment firms, mobile operators and retailers are already preparing for the roll-out of this new technology. For example, from this summer, McDonald’s in the UK will have the terminals required to “pay by wave” via properly equipped credit and debit cards in 1,200 restaurants.

Understandably, the main focus of the FT's story is on the potential for the roll-out of this technology to boost mobile commerce and simplify transactions. However, another less immediately obvious implication is its potential to push up street crime. Home Office mandarins have long worried about the potential for new types of consumer goods - often designed in low-crime countries, such as South Korea and Japan (where, by the way, paying through your phone is already widely popular) - to become 'criminogenic' once they reach British shops. Just as insulating a house is more efficient if done during the building phase (rather than retrospectively), so the same applies to the designing out of crime. I've just been reminded of this by an old Home Office evaluation of the 2002 Street Crime Initiative, which concluded that one of the main causes of the sudden rise in robbery had been the increasingly widespread use of mobile phones (particularly by students). I somehow doubt whether Apple are taking any of this account in thinking about how they roll out the new iPhone 5 later this year.

In 2007 the Home Office invited leading designers to sit on a panel called the 'design and technology alliance' who were tasked with helping the government work with industry in finding ways to design out crime from new technologies. I'm not sure whether this group still exists but this probably needs to be one someone's agenda...