Crime as Pollution

Abstract

T he point of departure of this provocative article by John and Emily Eck (2012, this issue) is a striking empirical regularity uncovered by Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger (1989). Sherman et al. found that only 3% of addresses and intersections (“places,” as they were called) in Minneapolis produced 50% of all calls to the police. Weisburd and Green (1995) found that 20% of all disorder crime and 14% of crimes against persons in Jersey City, NJ, originated from 56 drug crime hot spots. Twenty five years later in a study of Seattle, WA, Weisburd, Bushway, Lum, and Yang (2004) reported that between 4% and 5% of street segments in the city accounted for 50% of crime incidents for each year over a 14-year period. Other more recent studies finding comparable crime concentrations include Brantingham and Brantingham (1999), Eck, Gersh, and Taylor (2000), and Roncek (2000). The observation that crime is concentrated at a discrete location gave rise to what has come to be called “place-based” policing in which police are deployed and managed to prevent crime at specific locations. The quintessential example of placed-based policing is greatly increasing police presence at crime hot spots. Braga’s (2008) informative review of hot spots policing summarizes the findings from nine experimental or quasi-experimental evaluations. The studies were conducted in five large U.S. cities and one suburb of Australia. Crime-incident reports and citizen calls for service were used to evaluate impacts in and around the geographic area of the crime hot spot. The targets of the police actions varied. Some hot spots were generally high-crime locations, whereas others were characterized by specific crime problems like drug trafficking. All but two studies found evidence of significant reductions in crime. Furthermore, no evidence was found of material crime