ICCP – Individual professional certification is called ICCP (ICA CPTED Certification Program). We provide it at both Practitioner and Professional levels. You must individually apply for consideration and satisfy the requirements to receive ICA certification. An ICCP review board vets your application and you will work with a mentor to complete the process.

CAP – Course accreditation in CPTED is called CAP (the Course Accreditation Program). To obtain this, CPTED course developers and instructors apply to have their CPTED courses approved as ICA accredited. If you are a course developer or instructor, you must apply and submit course materials, evaluations, curricula for review by a review board. You may apply for full course accreditation (Class A) or partial accreditation of specific competencies (Class B).

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All CPTED practitioners around the world can apply for ICCP or CAP. You first must become a member of the ICA because that is where the largest global group of CPTED practitioners gather and share ideas. Also, as a professional, non-profit organization, the ICA requires adherence to the ICA Code of Ethics.

The individual CPTED certification application – ICCP – costs $275 (Canadian funds). All applicants must be members of the ICA. ICCP Re-certification occurs every three (3) years and costs $85 (in Canadian funds).

The Course Accreditation Program – CAP – is broken into two levels: Class A and Class B. Costs apply only to the course designers and instructors who submit applications for accreditation, not for students within those classes. Class B accreditation is for courses that include one, or up to seven, CPTED competencies. It costs $300 per competency (Canadian funds). Class A accreditation is for courses that satisfy all 8 key CPTED competencies. It costs $1,000 (Canadian funds). Re-accreditation of courses occurs every three (3) years.

There are literally hundreds of talented CPTED instructors and practitioners around the world. Many of them are members of the ICA. If you’d like to work with any of them, you can search the Member Directory on the ICA website or just contact the ICA and we’ll find some qualified people where you live.

There are also hundreds of CPTED courses around the world from which you can learn. Unfortunately, many of those courses are of questionable quality. You should be aware of the training and instructor quality competency. As they say, caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). To help you choose wisely, the ICA created the ICCP program and the CAP program so you can locate qualified trainers and courses.

The ICA is the first organization to offer formal CPTED certification. For over 15 years the ICA has offered individual professional certification for CPTED practitioners. We created the ICCP after a year of research, planning discussions, and input from experienced CPTED practitioners around the world. That included over 20 leading experts including:

• Josh Brown - CPTED expert and former President of the Virginia Crime Prevention Association (USA);
• Macarena Rau, PhD - Architect, ICA President, Founder of Latin American ICA chapters (Chile);
• Timothy Crowe - CPTED practitioner and former director of the U.S. National Crime Prevention Institute (USA);
• Randall Atlas, PhD - Architect/Criminologist (USA);
• Gregory Saville - ICA co-founder, urban planner/criminologist (Canada/USA);
• Barry Davidson - ICA co-founder and CPTED expert (Canada);
• Tim Pascoe, PhD - CPTED consultant, Director of the UK Design Out Crime Association (UK);
• Paul van Soomeren, PhD - CPTED consultant and Director of European Design Out Crime Association (Netherlands).

Since 2019, the ICA has also offered CPTED course accreditation (CAP). The ICA developed this course accreditation in response to the need to provide some quality control over CPTED training. The CAP program took a year to develop with an international team of CPTED authorities during research meetings, planning discussions, and input from experienced CPTED practitioners, and the green light to launch the program was given at the 2017 ICA Conference.

No. The ICCP is a competency-based program where the ICCP Review Committee assesses the applicant's skills and experience as a CPTED practitioner. It is expected that the applicant has already acquired the necessary skills and experience needed to apply for certification with the ICA, which likely includes some kind of prior CPTED training as well (e.g. CPTED course or university training). This applicant demonstrates this by submitting a log book of their experience together with supporting documentation (reports, research outputs...) and completing a written take-home or oral exam.

Prospective ICCP applicants who have not yet had sufficient CPTED training and experience may wish to consider completing one of the CAP accredited CPTED courses, which will allow them to obtain their ICCP certification faster (assuming they satisfy all the ICCP requirements).

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No. The ICA is an inclusionary group and is not exclusionary of any CPTED practitioners. All are welcome. When you apply for ICCP you will be asked to submit your qualifications, the courses you have taken, CPTED curricula and evaluations, CPTED projects you have completed, and so forth. You will demonstrate your competency to the ICCP review board and your ICCP mentor will help you do that.

Completing ICA-approved CAP courses will simplify and significantly speed-up your ICCP application. However, the only official requirement for an ICCP applicant is that you must join the ICA and follow the ICA professional Code of Ethics.  

The formal definition of professional certification is: “A third-party attestation of an individual’s level of knowledge in a certain industry or profession. They are granted by authorities in the field, such as professional societies. Most certifications are time-limited and expire after a period of time, while others can be renewed”.

The ICCP and CAP programs satisfy this definition because they are developed and administered by the ICA, a professional, not-for-profit society, that operates as an independent, third party organization, not a private, for-profit company or an academic institution.

There are two levels of qualification you require to establish the legitimacy of certification.

1. Objective, third-party status: The ICA is a third-party, professional organization. It is not a private, for-profit consulting firm. It is a not-for-profit, professional society of hundreds of active members around the world. This is the first level of qualification that establishes the legitimacy of certification.
2. Professional status in the “CPTED Industry”. CPTED is not simply a small group of police officers or an association of professional urban designers. That is not how CPTED works in the real world. CPTED is multi-disciplinary and it involves dozens of professions who commit themselves to the CPTED methodology.

The ICA is a multi-disciplinary association of academics, urban designers, police and security experts, researchers, community development specialists, private property owners and developers, consultants, and government officials. They commit themselves to the CPTED methodology as defined on the landing page of the ICA website. It is the only existing, international organization to provide professional CPTED status.

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Not as yet. Both the ICCP and CAP programs provide the highest standards of CPTED competency. The ICA is committed to ensure excellence in the ICCP and CAP programs. Other existing programs do not achieve this professional, third-party independent  status.

Please be careful when you take CPTED courses. Ensure they are taught by qualified instructors from many fields of expertise who teach the central elements of the CPTED methodology. You’ll find samples of CPTED competencies in the ICCP page of the ICA website.

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Yes. There are currently a growing number of ICA chapters around the world that are affiliated with the ICA. You’ll find links to them on the ICA website. The ICA aims to be inclusive and often partners with other non-profit, professional CPTED organizations. The ICA is currently working to develop formal agreements with other CPTED groups around the world in order to safeguard the quality of CPTED competencies. Follow the ICA for future developments.

No. Not if you mean 'professional certification’. 

A course 'certificate' indicates you have completed a course of study and the trainer(s) or training organization attests that you were successful in their course. That is all it does. 

There is nothing wrong with a course certificate if you wish to add this new skill to your resume or indicate to a new employer or a client that you have some training in this area. However, that certificate alone does not independently verify to the employer or client exactly what skills you are approved for and what your level of accomplishment is compared to another person with that same certificate (or a certificate from another group). That course certificate also does not prove to others whether your course instructors were themselves qualified to issue the certificate in the first place. The ICA created the CPTED Course Accreditation Program (CAP) to resolve this problem. 

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That depends on the legal system of your government. In most cases around the world, the answer is no.

You can currently practice CPTED as a professional with no certification. This has been one of the main downfalls in the CPTED world for many years. This is why the ICA was the first, and only, global non-profit, professional organization, to develop and administer a professional CPTED certification - the ICCP.

However, things are changing. More and more governments, and other development authorities, have realized that professionally delivered, inclusive, and properly researched CPTED strategies make a major impact on crime and quality of life. They are therefore requesting professional CPTED certification from a third-party independent, non-government organization. The ICA is currently the only global organization to offer this level of certification.

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Some governments may have a specific requirement that you must obtain some more general government-approved certification to conduct certain professional tasks in their jurisdiction. 

However, that has nothing to do with a professional certification offered by an international and non-governmental group such as the ICA. Obtaining an ICA certification would not disqualify you from obtaining such a government certification, in fact, it would more likely be the opposite. Government certifiers presently have few professional standards for CPTED certification. That is what the ICA certification - ICCP provides.   

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There are three general categories of certification. Only the third version applies to CPTED:

1. The first is corporate or organizational certifications in which employees or other select persons will be qualified to do a specific task within that organization. The corporate certification is not usually transferable to other companies or organizations. It is organization-specific and narrowly focused on one specific duty, task, or activity.

2. The second is product-specific certification in which someone is qualified to operate a specific type of device or program across different professions. For example, a certification to operate a specific type of computer software will qualify the person to use that software in any company.

3. The third is a professional certification. This is the category that applies to the ICCP. It is not tied to a product, a company, or an organization. It is also not specifically focused on one task or activity, but rather on an entire field of practice. For example, an accountant certification is connected directly to that individual accountant, and not to the organization for whom they work. That person, once certified, can work as an accountant in any related organization and in any location in the jurisdiction of the certifying body.

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Professional certification is defined as a third-party attestation by an independent, non-profit board verifying that someone has achieved a professionally-approved level of proficiency in a subject or field of study.

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Key elements:

1. It must be a third party. It cannot be issued from a single consultant, a single consulting group, a college or university, or even a government department. Those groups work as singular organizations with a vested interest that benefits them directly. Third-party status means the certifying body does not specifically benefit, or depend, on the certification as part of a business plan or financial benefit.

2. The independent and non-profit status is an important ethical wall that assures the certifying body does not depend on the financial benefits of certification for operation. In such cases, there is an inherent conflict of interest. Non-profit and independent status provides an ethical firewall protecting the veracity of the certification.

3. A professionally-approved level of proficiency means that the certification applicant must satisfy standards established by professionals with the necessary experience and mastery of the field to determine what comprises a level of proficiency. Those professionals will include a wide variety of individuals with many different levels of expertise. For example, the professionals in the certifying board will not be limited to consultants or police officers but will include all the various professions conducting CPTED, such as architects, planners, engineers, social scientists, community development specialists, and others. 

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