Out and away: streets, travel and meeting people

Most safety advice you'll ever be given is about this lesson's ground: the walk home, the late train, the first night in a strange city, the coffee with someone you have only met through an app. It comes from charities, governments and friends, it is usually sensible, and almost none of it has been tested, so this lesson sorts it by what stands behind it and then asks where the street sits among the risks people actually face.

The responsibility sentence in that box carries a lot of weight here. Advice about where to walk and when is exactly the kind that turns, in the wrong mouth, into "she shouldn't have been out". Nothing in this lesson means that. A route changes the odds of meeting someone who has decided to hurt a person. It has nothing to do with who made that decision.

The advice, as it's written

Start with what the bodies say, in their own words, before asking what stands behind it.

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the UK personal safety charity lessons 4 and 5 met, puts its street advice under "Plan ahead". It opens: "Before you go out, consider how you are going to get home", and on foot, "Try to use well-lit, busy streets and use the route you know best."¹ For running it suggests "Consider just having one earphone in", and it tells you to let someone know where you are going and for how long.¹ Both of its advice pages this course read carry the same disclaimer, and it is the most honest sentence in any of the advice this lesson reads: the advice "is in no way intended to suggest that taking such actions will eliminate incidents of aggression and violence. The guidance merely helps readers better understand how to assess and mitigate risks to their personal safety."¹

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has a page on solo and independent travel. "Leave an itinerary with someone at home and agree how regularly you will be in contact". Consider "if walking alone, avoiding poorly lit areas, particularly at night". And "never leaving your key where someone can note your room number".² It says that travelling alone may bring an increased risk of being a victim of crime, and its checklist for your room puts fire exits and carbon monoxide beside locks and keys.²

In the US, the Washington DC police's brochure on robbery and assault, from January 2011, gives the same kinds of advice for city streets: "If possible, don't walk alone during late-night hours", and "Let a family member or friend know your destination and your estimated time of arrival or return. That way, the police can be notified as quickly as possible if there is a problem."³

The US State Department's page for women travelers says: "Consider using app-based transportation companies, which offer a record of your ride"; "Think ahead and come up with a safety plan to deal with unsafe situations, in the event you end up in one"; and "Consider bringing personal safety whistles or alarms. However, confirm legality before traveling with items like pepper spray."⁴ Its traveler's checklist adds two practical steps: enrol in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), which "also helps the U.S. embassy or consulate reach you or your emergency contact in an emergency", and copy your documents: "Give a set of copies to a trusted friend or family member."⁵

Be clear about what the US half rests on. The US street advice here is one city police force's brochure, Washington DC's from 2011; the State Department writes for Americans travelling abroad, not for someone walking home in their own city. The National Crime Prevention Council has street-safety material this course could not read. So the US half is thinner: one city's police, and the State Department's advice for abroad.

Read all of that together and a pattern shows. Most of the advice is one of three kinds: plan before you go, have someone who knows the plan, and stay where there are other people and light. Lesson 4 gave you the triangle those map onto. The question now is how strong the evidence under each one is.

What stands behind each piece

Lights

Welsh and Farrington's review, published by the Campbell Collaboration in 2008, pooled 13 studies from the UK and the US over four decades. In the words of the Collaboration's plain-language summary, crime "decreased by 21% in areas that experienced street lighting improvements compared to similar areas that did not". The UK studies found 38% and the US studies 7%.⁶ The summary adds that the American studies were older and several counted only night-time crime.⁶

The summary names two ways lighting is thought to work: by making people easier to see, which deters offenders, and by signalling that someone has invested in a place, which raises pride in it. Because night-time crime didn't fall more than daytime crime, the summary says, "community pride may play a crucial role".⁶ That is a suggestion from the pattern, not a tested mechanism, and this course read the summary, not the full review. So "attackers avoid light because they can be seen" is more than the evidence says. The honest version is that lit areas had less crime, and the summary leaves the reason open.

Notice too what was measured: crime across an area, before and after. That is not the risk to you, walking one street on one night. Choosing the lit road is sensible, untested, in this course's labels, with area-level evidence nearby.

Cameras

Piza and colleagues pooled forty years of evaluations of closed-circuit television in 2019. Their summary: "The findings show that CCTV is associated with a significant and modest decrease in crime. The largest and most consistent effects of CCTV were observed in car parks."⁷ They also found effects in residential areas, larger effects where someone was actively watching the screens, and they advise that cameras be aimed at vehicle and property crime and not used on their own.⁷

For your own safety a camera is at best a record. It is not someone who will step in, and in lesson 4's terms it is not a capable guardian unless a person is watching and able to act. The common advice to walk where there are cameras is sensible, untested for personal safety, and the evidence under it is about something else.

The rest

Everything else on the lists above, from planning the way home to telling someone your plans, follows from routine activity theory and the guardianship evidence lesson 4 gave you. It's also lesson 4's grid taken onto the street: the grid's "Take routine precautions: go out in group at night, leave signs of occupancy, carry phone" sits under "Extend guardianship".⁸ No study this course found has measured whether following any of it prevents harm to one person. That doesn't make it bad advice. It makes it sensible, untested, and it's worth knowing which is which, because a piece of advice you know to be untested is one you can weigh against its cost.

Ten common pieces of advice, most from the pages above, sorted:

Not one row is tested. On the street, the course's question, measured on whom and measured as what, keeps getting the same answer: the nearest measurements are of areas, or of noticing, not of whether a person who followed the advice was harmed less.

Why telling someone helps, when it does

If nothing here is tested, why does the course still pass it on? Because most of it rests on one mechanism with solid theory behind it.

Lesson 4 gave you Cohen and Felson's routine activity theory and its capable guardian, and counted two kinds of guardian: a person who is with you, and a person who is not there but knows your plan and will act if it breaks.⁹ Most of the advice above adds the second kind.

Think about what "tell someone where you're going" actually does. On its own, nothing. A friend who knows you have gone out cannot act on that. What turns knowledge into guardianship is a plan that can visibly break: you said you'd message by eleven, and at quarter past there is no message. Now someone knows something's wrong, knows where you were meant to be, and knows when. That is the course's reading of Cohen and Felson applied to a single evening, and the step from their theory to your walk home is the course's, not theirs.

So the rule this lesson builds everything on is this: a plan is only as useful as what happens when it breaks. A plan with no agreed check-in, and no agreement about what the other person does if it is missed, is mostly a comfort.

Owen's night out

Owen is twenty, a student, and he is going to a party across town on Saturday. He'll walk the twenty minutes home afterwards, probably around one in the morning. He isn't worried. The figures aren't on his side there: lesson 3 showed that in England and Wales, in the year to March 2024, violence from strangers fell on 1% of men against 0.4% of women, and on 2.2% of people aged 16 to 24.¹⁰ That is a reason for a plan, not for staying in.

Martin's walk in lesson 4 already dealt with the route and the phone. Owen's night adds what Martin's did not need: a decision made before he goes out, and a check-in that cannot go off by accident.

1. Decide how he is getting home before he goes out. The Lamplugh Trust's first line.¹ What it is for: the decision gets made while he's sober and fresh, not at one in the morning. If the walk home looks bad on reflection, a night bus or a shared taxi can be planned now. Sensible, untested.

2. A friend who knows. His flatmate knows the address of the party and that he expects to leave around one. If she has not heard from him by two, she rings him; if he does not answer, she rings the friend whose party it is. What it is for: a guardian who can act when the plan breaks, as above. Sensible, untested.

3 and 4. The high road, and the phone in his pocket. These are Martin's steps: the lit high road rather than the shorter cut through a park, for more people and the lit streets the lighting review found had less crime at area level;⁶ and his attention on the street, since in lesson 4's walking study people on a phone call noticed least, though people who choose to phone may differ, and it did not measure crime.¹¹ Both sensible, untested.

5. An agreed "home" message, and a message if plans change. What it is for: the check-in means something only if a missed message is rare and real. Sensible, untested.

Like Martin's, the plan leaves Owen's life the size it was: a few messages and a few minutes. If something happened to him on the high road anyway, the plan would not have failed him and he would not have failed the plan. Responsibility would sit with whoever chose to hurt him.

If you think you're being followed

The Lamplugh Trust's advice for this moment is a short sequence. If you think you're being followed, it says, trust your instincts and act: as confidently as you can, "cross the road, turning to see who is behind you. If you are still being followed, keep moving. Head to a busy area and tell people what is happening". If you need to, call the police.¹

Each step has a reason you can see. Crossing and turning tests the suspicion: someone who crosses with you is different from someone who carries on. Keeping moving keeps options open. A busy area brings other people in, and telling them turns bystanders into help. Those reasons are this course's, drawn after the fact; the charity gives none, and no theory predicts the order of the steps, so the sequence is practitioner opinion, from the UK's personal safety charity, and nobody has tested it. Lesson 4 said the same about "trust your instincts", and gave you the rule to go with it: the instinct worth acting on is set off by what someone is doing, here following you across a road and back, not by how they look.

On asking for help, the Trust says that if you can attract passers-by you are more likely to get help if you shout a specific instruction, such as "Call the police!"¹ First Aid and CPR lesson 1 reached the same place from a different direction: in an emergency, point at one person and give them a job. A named task gets done; a general cry for help leaves everyone waiting for someone else.

On personal alarms, the Trust's plainest line is the one this course keeps: "Don't wait to check that your alarm has had the desired effect; just go."¹ An alarm is for setting off and leaving, nothing more, and this course names no product.

This course read the UK sequence only. The one US police brochure it read says "Trust your instincts. If something or someone makes you uneasy, avoid the person or leave", and gives no sequence.³

Travel

Travel is guardianship applied far from home, with one extra problem: you don't know the place.

The FCDO's reason for its most specific piece of advice is worth reading slowly. It recommends booking accommodation before you go, "in particular your first night's accommodation. You are at your most vulnerable when you first arrive in a foreign country as you are likely to be tired and unsure of your surroundings".² That is lesson 4's triangle in one sentence. Tired means attention is low. Unsure means you do not know which street is the lit one. Arriving late with nowhere booked means walking around with luggage, looking at a phone, asking strangers for directions: a suitable target, with no plan anyone else knows. The same page adds a line worth keeping for any offer you would rather turn down: "remember that being safe is more important than being polite".²

The rest of the travel advice works the same way. An itinerary left at home, with an agreed rhythm of contact, is Owen's check-in stretched to a week.² Copies of your documents with someone you trust, and STEP for US citizens, let someone at home, or an embassy, act if the plan breaks.⁵ An app-based ride, which the State Department says offers "a record of your ride", puts a record where there wasn't one.⁴ Each is sensible, untested.

And the FCDO's lines on fire exits and carbon monoxide are a useful correction: its own checklist puts "poor ventilation can kill" beside the locks.² A plan that checks the smoke alarm is a better plan than one that only thinks about strangers.

One piece of travel advice carries a legal warning. The State Department says to "confirm legality before traveling with items like pepper spray".⁴ In Great Britain the answer is that a spray is a prohibited weapon under the Firearms Act 1968, which makes possessing one an offence, not only carrying it,¹² and lesson 15, "Carrying something for protection", gives the law. This is general information, not legal advice. The law differs by state, and between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Travel Skills, later on the Core, takes travel further than this course does.

Meeting someone from online

Meeting someone you have only talked to online is a special case of the same idea, and the Lamplugh Trust's Safety Online page has the clearest version. "Tell someone where you're going, who you're meeting (name, website arranged through etc) and check in with them before, during and after the date." "Agree that if you don't check in as agreed or respond then your friend would call the place where you've met or even go there to check on you." "Meet in a public space and plan an exit strategy if needed." And, while you are still chatting: "consider talking about where you've been rather than where you're going."¹³

Read that against Owen's plan and the parts line up: a named person, a place, times, and an action if the check-in is missed. It's guardianship, built for a first date. The last line is the target lever: where you are going is something a stranger can use; where you have been mostly is not. The page also advises keeping your home address and other personal details to yourself on a first date.¹³ All of it is sensible, untested.

One line on the same page this course doesn't pass on. It advises changing passwords regularly, and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre has advised against forcing regular changes since its 2015 guidance.¹⁴ Digital Literacy lesson 10 explains why, and it is where passwords belong.

Graham's first date

Graham is forty-six, divorced two years, and he is meeting a woman from a dating app for coffee on Saturday afternoon. He's read the Lamplugh steps and thinks they are for women. They aren't: the page is written for anyone, and nothing in its reasoning depends on who is meeting whom. A man meeting a stranger is still meeting a stranger, and Owen's figures above are a reminder that men are more often the victims of violence from strangers than women are.

So Graham's plan uses the steps as written. His brother knows her first name, the app, the café and the time. He'll message at the start, halfway and when he leaves, and if his brother hears nothing by five, he rings, then rings the café. Graham drives himself there, so he can leave when he likes.

The wrinkle comes after the coffee. Suppose it goes well, and they arrange to meet again, then again. Most people's plans stop after the first date, because the stranger has become someone they know. But the Lamplugh steps were built for a public place, and the first meetings somewhere private, her home or his, are where that protection stops. That is the course's reading of the steps, not a finding about dating, and it does not mean that anyone Graham meets is a risk.

Where the street sits

Almost all of the advice in this lesson so far is about the street. Lesson 3 has figures from the ONS on where rape happens.

Violence from strangers has a different shape: as Owen's figures showed, it falls more on men and on the young.¹⁰ So "don't walk alone at night" isn't wrong. It's the smaller part of the picture, and taken as the core of women's safety it points attention away from where most serious sexual violence happens: in homes, the victim's or the perpetrator's. Owen's figures raise a question the argument below doesn't take up: violence from strangers falls more on men, and the argument is about advice aimed at women.

That doesn't make the street safe, or the fear of it mistaken. What many people meet on the street is real, and it is harassment. In an ONS survey of adults in Great Britain in February and March 2022, 27% of women and 16% of men said they had experienced at least one form of harassment in the previous twelve months.²⁴ In the same survey, 82% of women said they felt very or fairly unsafe walking alone in a park or other open space after dark, against 42% of men.²⁴ Lesson 1 showed what that feeling costs: in the same survey, the share of people who felt unsafe who had stopped walking in parks after dark had risen for both men and women.²⁴ Harassment is information about a place, as lesson 1 said, and the cost of avoiding a place is real too.

The argument about advice aimed at women

This is a contested question, part empirical and part value, and the course describes it rather than settling it.

The critique

The strongest statement of the case against advice like this lesson's comes from UK research on violence against women. Vera-Gray and Kelly, writing in 2020, start from harassment in public space and ask what it costs women beyond their safety: their freedom. Their abstract describes the "safety work" mandated for women and girls in public, meaning the precautions women are expected to take there, and says it functions "to limit women's space for action and responsiblise them for preventing violence" (their spelling).²⁵ This course read the abstract only.

Put in its strongest form, in this course's words (the abstract gives the second and third points; the first is the course's reading of lesson 3's figures): the advice is misdirected, because most of the risk to women is from men they know, not strangers on the street; it's costly, because every "don't go there" and "don't go alone" is a piece of freedom given up, and shrinks the lives of people who have done nothing; and it shifts responsibility, because a list of precautions invites the question of which one a victim skipped. The figures in the last section are consistent with its first point. An example of the kind of advice it describes, this course's choice: the Washington DC police brochure quoted earlier, written for everyone rather than for women in particular, says "If possible, don't walk alone during late-night hours".³ Lesson 1 met feminist criminologists' related argument, as Scott summarises it, that street-crime framing hides violence behind closed doors.

The defence

The case for teaching precautions starts from the same evidence and draws a different conclusion. Precautions change the odds: lesson 5 showed the strongest evidence in the course, that locks and lights in combination went with far lower burglary risk. That evidence is about burglary at home; carrying it to the street is the defence's step, and nothing this course read has tested the street advice itself, as the table above showed. On blame, the reply lesson 4 met in Clarke, written with Felson, is that routine precautions let people take responsibility without accepting criminal blame or even civil liability, and do not exempt offenders from criminal responsibility.²⁶ And the Lamplugh Trust's own disclaimer, quoted at the top of this lesson, refuses to promise that any precaution will prevent violence.

The defence has one more piece, and it comes from a randomised trial. A programme for first-year university women that teaches them to "assess risk from acquaintances, overcome emotional barriers in acknowledging danger, and engage in effective verbal and physical self-defense" lowered the one-year risk of completed rape, compared with a group given brochures instead.[27] Lesson 12, "Resistance training, and choosing a class", teaches the trial and its limits.

Critics of resistance education have a reply, which the trial's authors report themselves in their two-year follow-up: some feminist scholars argue that it is misguided, because perpetrators "may simply move on to another woman". The authors suspect instead that perpetrators "may learn important lessons" from being thwarted, and grant that which explanation is right is an empirical question.[28]

How they fit

On one point the two sides are closer than they look, and on another they are as far apart as ever. The critique's target is advice that tells women to restrict where they go and when. The trial tested something else: training that helps people recognise and resist the risks they actually face, and it was aimed at acquaintances, not strangers. Vera-Gray and Kelly's own abstract ends by exploring feminist self-defence as a way of making safety work visible and measurable.²⁵ On the empirical part, then, restriction and skills are different things, and the evidence speaks to them differently.

What's left is a value question: who should carry the burden of prevention? One answer holds that people can reasonably take cheap precautions for themselves while the larger work goes on, and that refusing them useful information has costs too. Another puts the burden on the people who commit violence and on the institutions around them, and sees advice to individuals, training included, as a burden that falls on potential victims. The course does not choose. It holds one commitment that every position here shares: responsibility for a crime lies with the person who commits it.

Talking to children

This course is for adults, and child protection is not its subject. But many adults have children in the house, and the rule many children are taught, "never talk to strangers", is worth checking against the figures the same way.

The US Justice Department's third national study of missing children defines a stereotypical kidnapping narrowly: "abductions in which a slight acquaintance or stranger moves a child at least 20 feet or holds the child at least 1 hour, and in which the child is detained overnight, transported at least 50 miles, held for ransom, abducted with the intent to keep permanently, or killed".[29] It found how most of these kidnappings began: the kidnappers "lured almost 70 percent of victims through deception or nonthreatening pretexts".[29] Those victims were most commonly aged 12 to 17, so the figures are mostly about teenagers.[29]

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the US charity that handles missing child reports, puts it this way: "only one percent of missing child cases reported to NCMEC are the classic nonfamily abduction, or stereotypical kidnapping, that many parents fear."[30] Its blog pairs each old rule with a script to use instead, for younger children: its safety programme, KidSmartz, is for kindergarten to fifth grade in US schools.[30]

• Instead of "Never talk to strangers": "You should not approach just anyone. If you need help, look for a uniformed police officer, store clerk with a nametag or a parent with children."[30]
• Instead of warning a child to stay away from people they don't know: "It's important for you to get my permission before going anywhere with anyone."[30]
• Instead of warnings about "bad guys", or telling a child they can spot a bad person by looking: "Let me know right away if anyone asks you to keep a secret, makes you feel uncomfortable or tries to get you to go somewhere with them."[30]

Look at what each script does. The first admits that a lost child will have to talk to a stranger, and says which one, chosen by role. The second covers people the child knows as well as strangers, and NCMEC's own reason for moving away from "stranger danger" is that "most child abductions involve a relative or someone the child knows, like a neighbor or online acquaintance";[30] in this course's reading it is also aimed at the lure, which is how the kidnapping study says most stereotypical kidnappings began. The third teaches the child to watch what someone does, which is lesson 4's rule for adults: behaviour, not looks. All three are sensible, untested: NCMEC recommends them, and no study this course read measured what they prevent.

Joanna rewrites her rules

Joanna's son is seven. She's told him "never talk to strangers" since he could walk, and she is starting to see the problems: he will not answer the shop assistant, and he'd happily go off with the neighbour who gives him sweets. She rewrites her three rules into NCMEC's three scripts.

"Never talk to strangers" becomes: "You don't go up to just anyone. But if you need help, find a police officer, someone at a till with a name badge, or a mum or dad with children." Next time they are in a shop, she points out the woman at the till with a name badge.

"Stay away from people you don't know" becomes: "Always ask me before you go anywhere with anyone, even people you know." The second script, with the part about people he knows said out loud, because that's where the old rule failed.

"You can tell a bad person by looking" becomes: "If anyone tells you to keep a secret from me, or makes you feel funny, or wants you to go somewhere with them, you tell me straight away. You won't be in trouble." The third, with a promise added so that telling does not feel risky to him.

What people get wrong

"Stranger danger" is the core of child safety. Stereotypical kidnappings were an estimated 105 in the US in 2011, most began with a lure, and NCMEC recommends teaching permission and behaviour instead.[29][30]

"Don't walk alone at night" is the core of women's safety. The figures in "Where the street sits" put a small share of serious sexual violence on the street and most of it in homes. The advice is not wrong; it's the smaller part of the picture.

"CCTV means someone will come." Cameras went with a modest fall in area crime, mostly in car parks.⁷ A camera is a record, not a guardian, unless someone is watching and can act.

"Streetlights work because attackers can be seen." Night-time crime did not fall more than daytime crime where lighting improved, and the review's summary suggests community pride.⁶ The mechanism is not settled.

"Earphones make you a target." In lesson 4's walking study, people with music players noticed no less than people walking alone; people on a phone call noticed least.¹¹ The Lamplugh Trust's one earphone for running is practitioner opinion.

"Pepper spray is fine to carry anywhere." The State Department itself says to check the law first;⁴ lesson 15, "Carrying something for protection", has the law.

"Telling someone where you are is enough." Only if they know when to expect you and what to do when you don't turn up.

Practice

Connections

Back. Lesson 4's triangle and its grid are the frame for every plan here, and its rule that a warning sign is behaviour, not appearance, is the rule behind the followed sequence and NCMEC's third script. Martin's walk in lesson 4 is where Owen's plan starts. Lesson 3's figures on who is harmed by whom, and where, are why the street is the smaller part of the picture. First Aid and CPR lesson 1's "give people jobs" is the reason a specific shout works better than a general one. Digital Literacy lesson 10 is where the password advice this lesson set aside is handled properly.

Forward. The lesson "Domestic abuse and stalking" is about harm from partners, ex-partners and family, and the help and safety planning the services offer. Lesson 12, "Resistance training, and choosing a class", teaches the trial that the critique and the defence both have to meet. Lesson 15, "Carrying something for protection", has the law on sprays. Travel Skills, later on the Core, takes travel further.

Go deeper

• Suzy Lamplugh Trust, "Personal safety out and about" and "Safety Online". Both read in full. The UK's personal safety charity's advice, with its honest disclaimer; set aside the password line.
• FCDO, "Solo and independent travel". Read in full. Short and practical, with fire exits and carbon monoxide on the same list as locks.
• The Campbell Collaboration's summary of the street lighting review. This course read the summary, not the review. One page, and a clear example of a finding that surprised the people who expected the obvious mechanism.
• NCMEC, "Straying Away from 'Stranger Danger'". Read in full. Three scripts, each paired with the rule it replaces, in a few hundred words.

Sources

1. Suzy Lamplugh Trust, "Personal safety out and about", updated 29 May 2025. Read: full page, re-read 25 September 2026. The following sequence, the "Update someone on your plans" and running lines, the specific-instruction line and the alarm line re-read that day.
2. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, "Solo and independent travel", published 22 December 2023, last updated 12 June 2025. Read: full, re-read 25 September 2026.
3. Metropolitan Police Department, Washington DC, "Guarding Against Robbery and Assault", brochure, January 2011. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
4. US Department of State, "Women Travelers", travel.state.gov. Read: in full, from Internet Archive capture 20251226183516 (the archive served capture 20251226103732, with the same text), re-read 25 September 2026.
5. US Department of State, "International Travel Checklist", travel.state.gov. Read: from Internet Archive capture 20260103122443, the five steps re-read 25 September 2026.
6. Welsh and Farrington, "Effects of improved street lighting on crime", Campbell Systematic Review 2008:13. Read: the Campbell Collaboration's plain-language summary only, from Internet Archive capture 20260920211306 of its page. The full review was not read.
7. Piza, Welsh, Farrington and Thomas, "CCTV surveillance for crime prevention: a 40-year systematic review with meta-analysis", Criminology & Public Policy 18(1), 2019, pp. 135 to 159. Read: research summary and methods, from a copy hosted by a third party (prohic.nl); the quoted sentences and the residential, monitoring and targeting findings checked against the publisher's abstract, via Crossref, on 25 September 2026.
8. Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, "Twenty Five Techniques of Situational Prevention", grid after Cornish and Clarke, 2003. Read: in full (one page).
9. Lawrence E. Cohen and Marcus Felson, "Social change and crime rate trends: a routine activity approach", American Sociological Review 44(4), 1979, pp. 588 to 608. Read: full text, from a copy of the published article on a University of Washington course page.
10. Office for National Statistics, The nature of violent crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2024, 26 September 2024. Read: in full. Crime Survey for England and Wales, adults 16 and over; not designated as accredited official statistics for that year.
11. I. E. Hyman and colleagues, "Did you see the unicycling clown? Inattentional blindness while walking and talking on a cell phone", Applied Cognitive Psychology 24, 2010, pp. 597 to 607. Read: full text, from a copy of the published article on a third-party site. The walkers were observed, not assigned, and the authors note that people who choose to phone may differ.
12. Firearms Act 1968, section 5, legislation.gov.uk, current revised text; extent England, Wales and Scotland. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
13. Suzy Lamplugh Trust, "Safety Online", updated 7 September 2026. Read: full, re-read 25 September 2026.
14. UK National Cyber Security Centre, "The problems with forcing regular password expiry". Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
15. Rape Crisis England & Wales, 24/7 Support Line. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
16. Victim Support, Get help and About us. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026. Covers England and Wales.
17. Rape Crisis Scotland, helpline. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
18. Victim Support Scotland, victimsupport.scot. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
19. Victim Support NI, victimsupportni.com, home and contact pages. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
20. Rape Crisis Northern Ireland, rapecrisisni.org.uk. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
21. RAINN, rainn.org. Read: in full, in a browser, re-read 25 September 2026.
22. VictimConnect Resource Center, victimconnect.org. Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
23. Office for National Statistics, Nature of sexual assault by rape or penetration, England and Wales: year ending March 2025, 4 November 2025. Read: main points and the perpetrator and location sections. Victims of rape or assault by penetration since age 16; the location figures pool the survey years ending March 2020 and March 2025.
24. Office for National Statistics, Perceptions of personal safety and experiences of harassment, Great Britain: 16 February to 13 March 2022, 25 May 2022. Read: main points and sections 2 to 4; the harassment and park-after-dark figures re-read 25 September 2026. Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, adults in Great Britain.
25. Vera-Gray and Kelly, "Contested gendered space: public sexual harassment and women's safety work", International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice 44(4), 2020, pp. 265 to
    275. Read: abstract only, re-read on the London Met repository record 25 September 2026.
26. R. V. Clarke (ed.), Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies, 2nd edition, 1997, Introduction. Read: the Introduction, including the passage on victim blaming that quotes Felson and Clarke (1997).
27. Senn and colleagues, "Efficacy of a sexual assault resistance program for university women", New England Journal of Medicine 372, 2015, pp. 2326 to 2335. Read: abstract (PubMed).
28. Senn and colleagues, "Secondary and 2-year outcomes of a sexual assault resistance program for university women", Psychology of Women Quarterly, 2017. Read: in full, the passage on the critics re-read 25 September 2026.
29. Wolak, Finkelhor and Sedlak, Child Victims of Stereotypical Kidnappings Known to Law Enforcement in 2011, OJJDP Bulletin, June 2016 (NISMART-3). Read: highlights and definition, re-read 25 September
30. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, "Straying Away from 'Stranger Danger'", 16 November 2023. Read: full, re-read 25 September 2026.