Red Teaming CPTED: a conceptual framework for identifying environmental vulnerabilities

Abstract This paper proposes integrating Red Teaming into Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) to strengthen situational assessment. Conventional CPTED audits can overlook dynamic vulnerabilities arising from offenders’ ingenuity, shifts in guardianship over time, and the adaptive use of space. Drawing on rational choice, routine activities, crime scripts, and Ekblom’s mechanism-based thinking, the paper develops a Red-Team CPTED (RT-CPTED) framework centred on offender-perspective walkthroughs, attack-path mapping, adversarial scenario analysis, and temporal vulnerability testing. A notional case study illustrates how RT-CPTED may foreground risks such as escape-route logic, surveillance gaps, and micro-territorial concealment that checklist-oriented audits may not prioritise. The case is illustrative rather than empirical; no claim is made that RT-CPTED improves accuracy or reduces crime. The paper clarifies ethical boundaries, practitioner requirements, and the need for empirical validation through comparative audits, inter-rater reliability testing, and outcome-focused research.