It is assumed that crime can be reduced more efficiently by concentrating resources and activities on deviant places, discouraging offenders from taking advantage of crime opportunities concentrated in specific locations.
Several other theories also influence hot spots policing. Hot spots policing aims to disrupt offenders by ensuring that capable guardians people or technology that deter offending, such as police officers or CCTV are present in high crime areas, reducing opportunities and making the costs of committing crime outweigh the potential benefits.
However, none of these potential mechanisms are empirically tested in the Review. There is evidence that hot spots effectiveness varies considerably by context.
The Review analysed variation in effect by crime type, programme type and evaluation design. In terms of crime type, the Review reported that hot spots policing was most effective in reducing drug offences, followed by disorder offences, property crime and then violent crime. All reported reductions were statistically significant. When the authors compared the effect of taking a problem oriented policing POP approach in hotspots e.
When policing hotspots, taking a POP approach was also more likely to reduce crime in surrounding areas when compared to an increased use of traditional policing techniques. The Review contained limited information about how hot spots policing was implemented and the specific activities undertaken as part of a hot spots policing strategy varied between studies. Examples of some of the specific activities undertaken included: directed patrols, proactive arrests, heightened levels of traffic enforcement, CCTV, license plate readers and problem-oriented policing.
The majority of the eligible hot spots policing studies seemed to implement the desired treatment successfully. These included: disruption to the intervention due to staffing issues, resistance from officers, changes to computer systems and other technology failures, lack of commitment to the problem solving process, lack of strict adherence to the target areas and a lack of support from other criminal justice partner agencies.
The Review focuses on issues associated with study implementation, as opposed to the implementation of the interventions themselves. The Review did not include any formal economic analysis as only one of the 65 evaluations included had conducted any cost-benefit analysis.
This single study, based in England, found that 21 more minutes of patrol by police community support officers PCSOs was linked to 85 to fewer days of imprisonment in each targeted hot spot compared to control areas. Hot spots policing programmes that take a problem-oriented approach appear more effective than increased traditional policing e.
The evidence suggested that hot spots policing was more effective for drug offences, disorder, property crime and violent crime. Hot spots policing does not appear to displace crime into areas surrounding the target locations and can lead to a diffusion of benefits to the areas close to the hot spot.
Specific characteristics of places put them at greater risk for crime to occur. Weisburd and Eck suggests the reconsideration of traditional criminological theories such as social disorganization in understanding social and physical dynamics of hot spots.
Braga and Schnell suggests that police should address the latent conditions at crime hot spots that cause them to be attractive to potential offenders, and that one strategy of understanding these underlying conditions is to use place-based crime theories, like situational crime prevention applied with a problem-oriented policing approach.
Bowers shows that qualities of places may affect risk to specific facilities, but also nearby areas. Weisburd, et al.
Technological advances in policing, coupled with theoretical advances, have been important to promoting the capacity for and adoption of hot spots policing, as Eck, et al. These theories explain the crime-place association while they do not account for variation in police behavior. Recently, policing scholars have tended to use behavioral ecology models like optimal foraging theory to explain and predict police officer behavior when doing activities at hot spots; see, for example, Sorg, et al.
Andresen, M. Testing the stability of crime patterns: Implications for theory and policy. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency DOI: Considers the impact of the choice of spatial unit.
Empirical test of the stability of crime at street segments versus census tracks proxy for neighborhood. Results from the smaller scale show that using larger units may conceal variation in crime within them. Bowers, K. Risky facilities: Crime radiators or crime absorbers? A comparison of internal and external levels of theft. Journal of Quantitative Criminology — Discussion and empirical test for theft of risky facilities as crime radiators that promote crime within facilities as well as promote it in the nearby area.
Data is from a metropolitan area of the United Kingdom. Braga, A. In Unraveling the crime-place connection: New directions in theory and policy.
Edited by D. Weisburd and J. Eck, — Advances in Criminological Theory New York: Routledge. Discusses the important role of theory in improving police responses to crime places whose underlying conditions attract criminals and generate crime.
The use of problem-oriented policing and situational crime prevention helps identify these challenges and change them in a effective manner. Aggressive-enforcement policing interventions can undermine police-citizen relations and bring harm to residents.
Clarke, R. Understanding risky facilities. Provides a guide to applying problem-oriented policing at risky facilities. Eck, J. Gersh, and C. Finding crime hot spots through repeat address mapping.
In Analyzing crime patterns: Frontiers of practice. Edited by V. Goldsmith, P. McGuire, J. Mollenkopf, and T. Ross, 49— Outlines three hypotheses about how crime hot spots relate to the cloud of crime spaces around them and can create clusters of hot spots.
Demonstrates repeat address mapping. Crime places in crime theory. In Crime and place. Hope Case studies of problem-oriented policing and drug-market locations.
Forced closure or sale of property reduced drug dealing. Kennedy et al. Allocating police resources to high-risk areas, derived from risk terrain modeling RTM reduced crime in target areas.
Kochel et al. Lawton et al. Police officers on drug corners in Philadelphia led associated with significant localized intervention impacts for both violent and drug crimes. Mazerolle, Price et al.
The use of civil remedies and third party policing associated with reduced drug crime, especially in residential locations. Mohler et al. Ratcliffe et al. Foot patrol associated with a significant decrease in crime in hot spots that reach a threshold level of pre-intervention violence.
Substantial increases in police patrol associated with reduction in total crime calls and more significant reduction in disorder at high crime hot spots. Taylor et al. Telep et al. Spending approximately 15 minutes at treatment hot spots to reduce calls for service and crime incidents. Weisburd et al. Treatment patrol areas drawn from automatic vehicle location AVL systems experienced significant increases in unallocated patrol time and a decrease in crime.
Hegarty et al. Koper et al. Use of license plate readers has significant impact on drug crimes, other crimes including auto crimes had more mixed or nonsignificant results. The use of mobile computing technology in hot spots only impacted crime reports for locations receiving high dosage. Novak et al. Saturation foot patrol produced reductions in violent crime, with evidence of both temporal and spatial displacement.
Rosenfeld et al. Directed patrol plus enforcement activities reduced total firearm violence, but produced no change in firearm robberies. Buerger Problem-oriented policing in high crime addresses leads difference in calls for service in commercial treatment vs. Problem-oriented policing did not lead to a reduction in violent crime, however likely due to weak implementation.
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