Karrysafe Bags and Accessories Collection: Performance Design to Combat Crime

Karrysafe was the first range of anti theft bags and accessories to apply Design Against Crime (DAC) research to create product exemplars available in the high street that communicated crime prevention principles and provided insight into how DAC theory is applied practically. Funded initially by the Design Council and Home Office, the range was catalysed by Gamman’s research into how bag theft takes place.

The six products designed (with Hunter 50/50) were realised by systematically applying research into the techniques of bag thieves, the use of role-playing of user/abuser conflict scenarios, analysis of quantitative police crime data and qualitative testimonies of victims and perpetrators, user/abuser/consumer profiling, materials and product research.

The range was developed using the iterative design methodology that Adam Thorpe evolved (with Gamman 50/50) within the Centre for DAC which introduces expert advisors into the design process to validate the efficacy and propriety of the applied research outcomes, here via benchmark product exemplars. This both tested and helped to evolve the DAC methodology.

The Karrysafe project enabled Thorpe (with Gamman 50/50) to; (i) pioneer a DAC market interventionist methodology in which packaging design/marketing of the product linked to communication of crime prevention principles is understood to be as important as the product in dissemination of research to a wide audience, particularly industry (ii) to co-curate a series of exhibitions to disseminate design research to diverse public and industrial stakeholders (iii) to give presentations at international design seminars and (iv) co-author journal articles in which Karrysafe is used as an exemplar of applied DAC research.

Karrysafe has featured on the front cover of a leading international crime prevention research collection (Clarke and Newman); it was selected as a “Top Category Nomination” by Index Awards in 2005; and was curated for international exhibition/catalogue at MoMA New York in 2005.