Defensible Space: TSA Failure, Security, and Community Protection

This essay provides an overview of Defensible Space, a socio-physical phenomenon where both societal and physical elements contribute to residential security. It explores the five key factors of defensible space, including the sanctity of the home, natural surveillance, physical design, safe adjoining areas, and proximity to law enforcement. The essay highlights the importance of territorialism among community members and its impact on creating a safe environment where intruders feel unwelcome. It emphasizes the role of environmental design and community involvement in ensuring security, including the division of communities into smaller entities. Furthermore, the essay examines the impact of defensible space on wildlife communities, focusing on risk management and wildfire protection. It also discusses the failure of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to detect weapons and explosives, suggesting the implementation of advanced technologies like Computed Tomography systems and improved operational efficiency to enhance security measures.

Running head: DEFENSIBLE SPACE
Defensible Space
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1
DEFENSIBLE SPACE
Discussion
Defensible Space is described as a socio-physical phenomenon where both society and
physical factors are parts of a defensible space. The defensible space is briefly defined as a
residential environment where inhabitants are allowed to function as key agents for ensuring
their physical security. The defensible space is made up of five factors and they are home is
sacred, and natural surveillance in and around the residential environment. The other factors are
physical design to sense security, safe adjoining areas and proximity to police station around the
residential environment.
The social behaviour that defensible space attempts to enhance majorly focuses on sense
of territorialism among community members. The impact is huge and valuable for people who
themselves feel a sense of responsibility for their concerned community. The defensible space
imparts an environmental design for a community to feel safe where intruders feel unsafe to
commit a crime. However, environmental design is a result of community members where they
ensure their own security by taking proper measures. The proper measure includes the most basic
element and that is the community should be divided into smaller entities in family members.
The success of defensible space is depended on successful environmental design. The impact of
defensible space on wildlife community is ensured through establishing interpersonal networks
within the community and with external officials (Stidham et al., 2014). The defensible space
contributes to multiple factors which impacts the wildlife community risks which include raising
awareness of fire hazards and involving central body. The wildlife community risks such as
wildfires contribute major havoc to the residential communities around the wildlife communities.
The role of defensible space for protecting residential communities is a major strategy which
includes evaluation of the particular area. The methods should include significant defensible

2
DEFENSIBLE SPACE
space needed to provide residential protection in case of wildfires and slope inclination should be
taken into account (Syphard, Brennan & Keeley, 2014).
The example of failure of physical security and possible changes that could have taken by
the organization to prevent the failure is discussed in the following paragraph.
The example is failure of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to detect 95
percent of explosives and weapons during airport security tests. According to Forbes,
Transportation Security Administration security checks have some vulnerability in their screener
performance and equipments (Goldstein, 2017). The Transportation Security Administration
agents failed in detecting 67 out of 70 weapons during security checks. The Department of
Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General launched an investigation to know the security
systems of the airport. The undercover investigator agents of Department of Homeland
Security’s Office of Inspector General were able to smuggle weapons and explosives through the
airport checkpoints (Berghel, 2015). This was done where agents posed as ordinary passengers at
the airport. The possible changes are using of Computed Tomography systems which includes
3D-imaging. This system will provide more enhanced platform for imaging of baggage at airport
security checks. The Transportation Security Administration officials should also improve their
working efficiency and effectiveness in its office inspection.

3
DEFENSIBLE SPACE
References
Berghel, H. (2015). TSA: Mission Creep Meets Waste. Computer, 48(8), 90-94.
Goldstein, M. (2017). Forbes Welcome. Forbes.com. Retrieved 6 March 2018, from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa-misses-70-of-fake-
weapons-but-thats-an-improvement/#240d713c2a38
Stidham, M., McCaffrey, S., Toman, E., & Shindler, B. (2014). Policy tools to encourage
community-level defensible space in the United States: A tale of six
communities. Journal of Rural Studies, 35, 59-69.
Syphard, A. D., Brennan, T. J., & Keeley, J. E. (2014). The role of defensible space for
residential structure protection during wildfires. International Journal of Wildland
Fire, 23(8), 1165-1175.