Award-winning international security business near Boston launches innovative partnership with university

Concept Smoke Screen, of Swineshead, is joining forces with criminologists at the university to assess the impact of its systems on retail loss prevention and on crime in surrounding communities.

The business specialises in security fogging – walls of smoke, emitted almost instantly, that act as a barrier between the offender and their target.

The partnership was born out of the business’ Connected campaign, which calls for the security industry to give greater attention to the causes of crime, to ‘help create an environment where crime is less likely to happen’.

A significant part of the Connected project focuses on collaboration between academia and industry to address such structural-level causes of crime and approaches to tackling them.

The study will also act as a pilot for further investigation into the way that security systems manufacturers and security users can work cooperatively with researchers to share data.

Concept managing director Matt Gilmartin said: “We’re hugely excited about this new partnership and the insights it will provide for ourselves and our clients.

“Data is absolutely critical to intelligent crime prevention planning and being able to assess that data in a wider, holistic context will allow us to make smarter choices about how and where our systems are deployed. “And we’ll also be better able to advise Smoke Screen users about the broader social impact of these sorts of loss prevention measures.”