Obstruct Offenders with Physical Barriers

Preventing Robberies at Postal Counters

Many stores in England have small postal counters in a corner of the store. These handle a lot of money and are attractive targets for robbers. In the early 1980s, the postal counters in London had a bigger problem than usual with robberies, even though most of them had "anti-bandit" screens.

Most of the robberies involved people trying to break down the screens with sledgehammers or their bare hands, pointing guns at the staff behind the screens, or attacking other staff or customers outside the secure area and forcing the staff behind the screen to let the robbers in.

After upgrading the screens to be more resistant to attack, robberies dropped by 40%. Why did the screens make a difference? Because it was harder for robbers to get to their target -- the money.

How would you use this idea of "target hardening" in your business?

For more information about this case study, click here.

For some examples from New Jersey, click here.