Public transport graffiti: Understanding and prevention

Graffiti is an indicator of social disorder and negatively affects public transport patronage. Trends in graffiti offences have changed, requiring an update on the issue which will be gathered from experts nationally.

This project will explore the current state of graffiti and graffiti prevention in Australia and overseas, with a particular focus on public transport. The aim is to understand how graffiti perpetrators operate, including their motivations and methods, and to identify the range of interventions that work and the contexts that they work in.

Participants

• Transport for NSW
• Swinburne University of Technology

Project background

To better understand both graffiti and graffiti prevention and how best to intervene, there is a need to explore the social purpose of graffiti, including: why and how individuals do it; what are the implications of graffiti interventions; and what is the impact of new cultural and communication practices (i.e hip-hop subculture and social media).

There is also a need to understand the impact of the range of interventions and the contexts that they work within, which has not been done at a national level due to the federated nature of Australia and the jurisdictional boundaries across police, public transport and governance generally.

Due to legal protocols, interviewing graffiti vandals firsthand is an incredibly complex endeavour, requiring simultaneous approvals from state police, university and research ethics boards. Instead, this project will use industry experts as proxies; using their coalface knowledge to better understand both the culture and the interventions. This will include public transport specialists (Australian and international), state police experts, members and affiliates of the Federal Graffiti Forum, local government representatives, and companies with large landholdings (e.g. infrastructural groups, supermarkets).

Using a range of workshops conducted around Australia, interviews and surveys, the project will create a national perspective of how graffiti has changed in recent years in Australia, which interventions have been applied in which contexts, and how they have been implemented to successfully reduce the incidence of graffiti.

The project is intended to update existing knowledge concerning graffiti vandalism, incorporating changes in both the subculture and interventions, which have dramatically changed with the pervasiveness of social media and digital technologies. The work will also assist in operationalising the Federal Graffiti Forum, by involving all affiliates into one piece of research, creating a snapshot of the field as it stands now.

The final report will provide a best practice across the field, incorporating factors identified to support the reduction of graffiti crime.

Project objectives

The main project objectives are as follows:

1. Understand the public perception of graffiti on public transport and how it differs by location and context;
2. Determine what is the current state of graffiti and how it has changed in recent times; and
3. Determine the best practices of graffiti management and the appropriate contexts for their implementation

Please note …

This page will be a living record of this project. As it matures, hits milestones, etc., we’ll continue to add information, links, images, interviews and more. Watch this space!