Good luck getting an answer out of Harry. I tried that for two days.
But if I may be allowed to butt in as you did, I went ahead and looked it up, because no I
don't know what "we'ed" find (if we knew there would be no point asking the question, now would there?)
Here's what I got from the security officer site
IFPO:
Do they work?
The major question that is asked of gated communities is "Do they really keep crime rates down?" The answer seems to be yes, but only by very little. The city of Miami reports that "some forms of crime such as car theft are reduced, at least immediately after the streets are closed. However, data indicates that the long-term crime rate is at best only marginally altered" (Blakely, 1995, p. 1).
In gated communities, the trend is that crimes against the person go down and stay down in controlled access developments. This occurs because perpetrators do not want to go to an area that they are unfamiliar with and where it might be hard for them to make an escape. "According to preliminary research, crimes such as burglary drop in the first year or so of gating, but then rise back to the level of the areas outside"(Diamond 4).
Then there was this guy:
From 2007 to 2009, I traveled 27,000 miles, living in predominantly white gated communities across this country to research a book. I threw myself into these communities with gusto — no Howard Johnson or Motel 6 for me. I borrowed or rented residents’ homes. From the red-rock canyons of southern Utah to the Waffle-House-pocked exurbs of north Georgia, I lived in gated communities as a black man, with a youthful style and face, to interview and observe residents.
The perverse, pervasive real-estate speak I heard in these communities champions a bunker mentality. Residents often expressed a fear of crime that was exaggerated beyond the actual criminal threat, as documented by their police departmentÂ’s statistics.
...Residents’ palpable satisfaction with their communities’ virtue and their evident readiness to trumpet alarm at any given “threat” create a peculiar atmosphere — an unholy alliance of smugness and insecurity. In this us-versus-them mental landscape, them refers to new immigrants, blacks, young people, renters, non-property-owners and people perceived to be poor. --
The Gated Community Mentality
I've never lived in a gated community, although there are times when one of my clients sends me to Florida (strike 1) and puts me in a Disney property, which I consider a prison, and has much in common, in its cookie-cutter aesthetics, hypersecurity and obsession with control of all things. I can't think of anything more squelching of human spirit. Whether that's a true comparison or not, the whole idea of the Ted Kaczynski walled-in, bunkered-down mentality strikes me as stifling of the spirit of democracy, stifling of the spirit of community and just damned elitist, none of which appeals.
This analysis says much the same thing:
Today's cameras, fences, walls and gates do little to create an atmosphere of openness, which is an essential element in a diverse society. When segregation of our living spaces becomes the wallpaper we no longer see, communities become brittle, unable to prevent and shut down the most dangerous behavior.
... Our children deserve to grow up in a culture of responsibility that doesn't stop at the neighborhood gates. As the design of our communities becomes more divided, the "as paranoid as possible" citizens living in fear of those lurking outside of their walls too often overlook the more distressing attitudes within. --
Florida's Problematic Gated Communities
So the whole "security" idea looks like a real estate developer angle. In other words, somebody's fearmongering, and somebody else is buying.
Back to you, Harry...