Sex, drugs and broken bowls: Dealing with problems of crime reduction in public conveniences

Public conveniences are well known as being problematic in terms of crime‐generation. The design of these buildings in respect of both access and internal layout can encourage misuse, including incidents of damage and criminal or anti‐social activity. Traditional policing methods have failed to control or deter such behaviour at problem locations and in spite of frequent prosecutions for a wide range of offences problems tend to persist. This paper discusses the types of problems encountered in public conveniences and makes suggestions as to how these might be overcome.