Policing Crime Hot Spots

Abstract

In recent years, crime scholars and practitioners have pointed to the potential benefits of focusing crime prevention efforts on crime places. A number of studies suggest that crime is not spread evenly across city landscapes. Rather, there is significant clustering of a crime in small places, or ‘‘hot spots,’’ that generate half of all criminal events (Pierce et al., 1988; Sherman et al., 1989a; Weisburd et al., 1992). Even within the most crime-ridden neighborhoods, crime clusters at a few discrete locations and other areas are relatively crime free (Sherman et al., 1989a). A number of researchers have argued that many crime problems can be reduced more efficiently if police officers focused their attention to these deviant places (Sherman and Weisburd, 1995; Weisburd and Green, 1995). The appeal of focusing limited resources on a small number of high-activity crime places is straightforward. If we can prevent crime at these hot spots, then we might be able to reduce total crime. Hot spots policing has become a very popular way for police departments to prevent crime. A recent Police Foundation report found that 7 in 10 departments with more than 100 sworn officers reported using crime mapping to identify crime hot spots (Weisburd et al., 2001). A growing body of research evidence suggests that focused police interventions, such as directed patrols, proactive arrests, and problem-oriented policing, can produce significant crime prevention gains at high-crime ‘hot spots’ (see e.g. Eck, 1997; 2002). Given the growing popularity of hot spots policing, a systematic review of the empirical evidence on the effects of focused police interventions on crime hot spots is necessary to assess the value of this approach to crime prevention.