Crime Prevention in Public Transportation: The Route Zwolle- Emmen by Annelies Umans S2326922 [
[email protected]] Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, program Public Administration, University of Twente 2020 Supervisors: Marianne Junger, Prof. Dr. Guus Meershoek, Dr. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank both my supervisors, Marianne Junger and Guus Meershoek for taking the time to read this thesis and their valuable feedback. Additionally, I would like to thank Ton Valkenet and Pascal Aalberts for providing me with the necessary tools to write this thesis, and anyone else who contributed to this research. 1 Abstract: This research explores the locations, times and type of offenses that take place in and around the train route Zwolle-Emmen, operated by Arriva, focusing specifically on pickpocketing, assault of public transport employees and vandalism/destruction of public transport property. For each of these offenses, Crime Scripts are constructed to provide insight into the modus operandi of offenders. Additionally, this research also proposes a number of Situational Crime Prevention measures to help prevent these crimes from recurring. Examples of these measures include, increasing CCTV awareness, installing electronic ticket gates at station Emmen, floodlighting at rail yards, offering incident-oriented trainings to public transport employees and encouraging employees to work in pairs, also known as “Buddying”. The majority of the data used in this research derives from police reports from the Basisvoorziening Handhaving (BVH) and BlueSpot Monitor (BSM) systems. The main findings show that, overall, crime levels on this route are lower than generally perceived by Arriva employees, but that the majority of crime occurs at station Zwolle, followed by station Emmen, and that little crime occurs at intermediate stations.