"Can't Play Though Everyone Does?" Nope, it's "Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design." CPTED is also known as "Design Out Crime" and "Defensible Spaces." There are ways to make your property less attractive to criminals by increasing the natural surveillance and probability that criminal acts will be detected. Bad things happening are deterred where good CPTED practices are observed. When hearing about it for the first time, most people recognize the value of this common sense approach to target hardening.