Crime prevention in the design of an urban setting displays unambiguous links with behavioural geography, the urban setting and development of sustainable communities, being a strategy that has been extant for over 40 years. This article examines how such strategies have been able to develop (or not) within the design of our environments and undertakes ground breaking analysis of academic input jointly with the response of professional practice. The research exposes the risk to the sustainability and integrity of the crime prevention response by design to the human use of space. There is lack of a universally accepted framework and terminology set throughout. Source: Derek Johnson, Victoria Gibson and Megan McCabe: Designing in crime prevention, designing out ambiguity: Practice issues with the CPTED knowledge framework available to professionals in the field and its potentially ambiguous nature. In: Crime Prevention & Community Safety 16, 147-168.