Crime Reduction Efforts Research Articles

Spatial Patterns of Violence Against Women and Children using Geographic Information System and Density-Based Clustering Algorithm

This paper underscores the importance of the Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm in data mining. In this research, data mining clustering methods were applied to investigate consummated felonies related to the "Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004 - RA 9262" from 2018 to 2023. The criminal data processed from the Police Regional Office 6 of the Philippine National Police encompassed 248 attributes reflecting cases over the specified period. The significance of this study lies in its utilization of ArcGIS Pro software to process the provided data through clustering techniques, presenting a robust approach for detecting criminal activities and recognizing patterns to aid law enforcement in crime reduction efforts. Spatial data mining proves practical when dealing with geographic crime datasets, facilitating the analysis of large volumes of crime data. The DBSCAN algorithm was employed to cluster crime incidents centered on predefined events, with the resultant clusters used to identify hotspots. These clustering outcomes are then visualized using GIS, enabling real-time mapping of crime distribution for law enforcement agencies to comprehend and engage with effectively. The outcomes empower stakeholders to devise interventions tailored to specific locations, thereby contributing to a safer environment for women and children. The study illuminates the localized analysis of crime distribution, offering insights into the interconnected factors influencing criminal incidents and providing a framework for crafting targeted and efficient strategies for crime prevention, thereby enriching the broader dialogue on crime management and public safety.

'Policing Rural Communities in North America': An International Society for the Study of Rural Crime Roundtable

Rural crime and criminal justice practices and responses face different challenges from those experienced in urban contexts. A practitioner-focused roundtable, convened by The International Society for the Study of Rural Crime (www.issrc.net), investigated challenges and innovations in international contexts on issues surrounding rural policing with a specific focus on rural policing in Canada and the United States. The roundtable was held online on 15 September 2021 and was moderated by Dr. Jessica Peterson, formerly of the University of Nebraska at Kearney (now an Assistant Professor at Southern Oregon University). Panellists were asked to respond to three key questions: What is the key element to successful community policing in your community? What is one initiative in which you have successfully engaged the community in crime-reduction efforts? What is the most significant challenge to successfully reducing crime in your community? The following are transcripts of the four presentations from the panelists on this Roundtable.

Economics and Public Health: Two Perspectives on Firearm Injury Prevention

Firearm injury is a major cause of death, disability, and other harms to community well-being across the U.S. Economics and public health offer two complementary perspectives to conceptualize gun violence and formulate strategies to mitigate related harms. Economics offers methods and procedures for tabulating costs of firearm injury and offers an explicit, albeit imperfect normative framework to evaluate proposed interventions. Economics’ focus on incentives, trade-offs, and resources constraints provides useful mechanisms for understanding illegal firearm markets and firearm use that can inform crime reduction efforts. Public health methods and interventions help to measure patterns of illness and disease, identify risks and protective factors, and inform prevention efforts for the most vulnerable individuals and communities. Public health also focuses attention on social determinants and structural factors in designing and evaluating interventions to prevent, address, and mitigate the consequences of gun violence.

Advancing Interorganizational Crime and Violence Reduction Goals Through a Relational Change Intervention

Effective interorganizational collaboration is deemed essential to comprehensive crime and violence initiatives but rarely is it empirically assessed. An 18-month intervention to improve collaboration Comprehensive Gang Model (CGM) locations was used in this study to examine the impact on increasing community capacity to address gangs and violence and reducing gang and violence in the community. Relational coordination theory grounded the collaboration intervention. Results from the quasi-experimental design showed significant, increased collaboration and reduction in violent crime in one intervention site. Other crime reduction efforts were explored as counterfactuals. Matched comparison sites saw no change in the ability to work together or violence reduction. Study implications are that relational coordination interventions may facilitate the goal of working better together, but parallel evaluations for each of the five core CGM strategies are needed to understand the independent effects of each strategy on gang and violence reduction goals.

An Analysis of Offender Based Reentry Programs Impact on Crime Rates

This case study was based upon the crime reduction efforts of an offender-based treatment coalition in St. Johns County, Florida. The study used a multi-tool qualitative data gathering method to understand if the coalition contributed to crime reductions locally. The research findings concluded that the St. Johns County Re-entry Coalition did positively contribute to crime reductions in the county.

Race, Place, and Effective Policing

The police need public support and cooperation to be effective in controlling crime and holding offenders accountable. In many disadvantaged communities of color, poor relationships between the police and residents undermine effective policing. Weak police–minority community relationships are rooted in a long history of discriminatory practices and contemporary proactive policing strategies that are overly aggressive and associated with racial disparities. There are no simple solutions to address the complex rift between the police and the minority communities that they serve. The available evidence suggests that there are policies and practices that could improve police–minority community relations and enhance police effectiveness. Police departments should conduct more sophisticated analysis of crime problems to ensure that crime-control programs are not indiscriminate and unfocused, engage residents in their crime reduction efforts by revitalizing community policing, ensure procedurally just police contacts with citizens, and implement problem-solving strategies to prevent crimes beyond surveillance and enforcement actions.

Aggravating effects of alcohol outlet types on street robbery and aggravated assault in New York City

ABSTRACTThe present study uses Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) to analyze how nine different alcohol outlet types differentially influence the likelihood of aggravated assault and street robbery at micro-level places in New York City. Separate models were conducted for each of New York’s five boroughs to account for the differing environmental characteristics across the city. Results suggest that spatial influence of crime risk differed across alcohol outlet types, with off-premise grocery stores having the largest influence on the likelihood of both aggravated assault and street robbery and on-premise bars/taverns having a strong influence only on the likelihood of street robbery. In addition, although certain alcohol outlets affected crime in each borough, the spatial influence of others was more volatile. It is clear not all alcohol outlet types are equally criminogenic across boroughs. Thus, crime reduction efforts should be unique and localized according to the risk associated with outlet types and place.

Does the Police-Monitored CCTV Scheme Really Matter on Crime Reduction? A Quasi-Experimental Test in Taiwan's Taipei City.

Although numerous public closed-circuit television (CCTV) initiatives have been implemented at varying levels in Taiwan's cities and counties, systematic evaluations of these crime reduction efforts have been largely overlooked. To address this void, a quasi-experimental evaluation research project was designed to assess the effect of police-monitored CCTV on crime reduction in Taipei City for a period of 54 months, including data for both before and after camera installation dates. A total of 40 viewsheds within a 100-m (328 feet) radius were selected as research sites to observe variations in four types of crime incidents that became known to police during the January 2008 to June 2012 period. While crime incidents occurring in both the target and control sites were reduced in frequency after CCTV installation, results derived from time-series analysis indicated that the monitoring had no significant effect on the reduction of property crime incidents with the sole exception of robbery. With respect to the effects of comparing target and control sites, the average Crime Reduction Quotient (CRQ) was 0.36, suggesting that CCTV has an overall marginal yet noteworthy influence. Viewed broadly, however, the police-installed CCTV system in Taipei City did not appear to be as efficient as one would expect. Conversely, cameras installed in some observation sites proved to be significantly more effective than cameras in other sites. As a recommendation, future researchers should identify how particular micro-level attributes may lead to CCTV cameras working more effectively, thereby optimizing location choices where monitoring will prove to be most productive.

Mapping the Spatial Distribution of Crimes in Iraq

In the last years, Iraq has witnessed challenges in security have led to rice crime's rates. So there is need to map crimes concentrations in place and time from trusted sources and provide crime incidence reports for crime reduction efforts in the field of law enforcement. This study concerned with designing and implementing a web-based GIS system for crime mapping and decision support in Iraq. This system is being developed in Kerbala University with sample databases.The proposed system provides the general public with information of recent crime activity near to their places within a radius of any location (such as place of residence, school, or business). Display the distance from any crime to any address of interest. Filter by crime type as well as date recorded in order to focus on specific patterns. Plot only occurrences for the agency you need to view. Plot all crime incidents as heat map for a specified date.

Addressing Juvenile Crime

AbstractAt‐risk and offending juveniles remain the most promising target group for crime reduction efforts. Many of the problems these youths faced in the 1960s remain or have intensified, and policies to address them have shifted. Yet, research on the causes, consequences, and best responses to juvenile crime has advanced considerably and provides important lessons for policy makers and practitioners moving forward. These include (a) help don't hurt; (b) provide better procedural protections; (c) continue to build, implement, and refine evidence‐based programming; (d) tailor services; (e) tackle community‐level problems; (f) really listen and work together; (g) build better data systems; and (h) invest resources in children and teens. Providing a retrospective on the 1967 U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice report, I briefly summarize and update the Commission's findings on factors related to juvenile delinquency, outline the Commission's policy recommendations, review the research on policy and practice changes since the report, and consider current implications for policy and practice.

An Exploratory Assessment of Community-Oriented Policing Implementation, Social Disorganization and Crime in America

Prior research has examined the impact of community-oriented policing (COP) on crime extensively. While the implementation of community policing has been considered mainly within the context of large police agencies, there is a paucity of research on how COP impacts crime reduction efforts in smaller locales. This study explores the effects of the degree of community policing implementation within smaller agencies and cities on crime. As part of the discussion on the impact of COP implementation, this paper also considers the impact of social disorganization on crime in the United States. The aim is to gain further insight into what variables may be influencing crime rates in contexts that garner less attention from researchers. The findings indicate that COP implementation does not significantly explain the variation of crime rates. Still, the statistically significant results on several social disorganization factors reflect the need to incorporate social disorganization theory with practice in order to maximize community-policing success. The implications of these results for police practice as well as directions for future research are discussed.

Punitive Restoration and Restorative Justice

Criminal justice policy faces the twin challenges of improving our crime reduction efforts while increasing public confidence. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that at least some measures popular with the public are counterproductive to greater crime reduction. How to achieve greater crime reduction without sacrificing public confidence? While restorative justice approaches offer a promising alternative to traditional sentencing with the potential to achieve these goals, they suffer from several serious obstacles, not least their relatively limited applicability, flexibility, and public support. Punitive restoration is a new and distinctive idea about restorative justice modeled on an important principle of stakeholding, which states that those who have a stake in penal outcomes should have a say about them. Punitive restoration is restorative insofar as it aims to achieve the restoration of rights infringed or threatened by criminal offences. Punitive restoration is punitive insofar as the available options for this agreement are more punitive than found in most restorative justice approaches, such as the option of some form of hard treatment. Punitive restoration sheds new light on how we may meet the twin challenges of improving our efforts to reduce reoffending without sacrificing public confidence, demonstrating how restorative practices can be embedded deeper within the criminal justice system.

Why Don't More Black Americans Offend? Testing a Theory of African American Offending's Ethnic-Racial Socialization Hypothesis.

Criminology is replete with research on the correlates of African American offending, yet theorizing efforts have lagged. Unnever and Gabbidon recently proposed a Theory of African American Offending, an integrated explanation of African Americans' risks for and resilience to offending. Many of the theory's hypotheses remain untested, especially its major claim that positive ethnic-racial socialization is the main reason more Black Americans do not offend. The theory argues that positive ethnic-racial socialization inhibits African American offending by attenuating the criminogenic effect of weak social bonds. Using data from a prospective, longitudinal cohort of African Americans from the Woodlawn Project, we test whether these postulations hold for adolescent delinquency and adult offending and find general support: Positive ethnic-racial socialization buffers the effect of weak school bonds on adolescent substance use and adult offending for males, but not females, across most crime types. Advancing criminological discourse on race, offending, and resilience, this study has implications for broader criminological theorizing and crime-reduction efforts.

A paradigm shift in policing: Crime reduction through problem oriented policing

The opportunity theories of crime regards opportunity as a root cause and focus attention on the crime rather than the criminal. In the practical crime prevention efforts, this theoretical framework paved the way for innovative policing strategies like problem oriented policing and situational crime prevention. Policy makers and practitioners accept the motivated offender as given and gather the efforts to prevent offenders accessing sufficient means and opportunities for a crime to occur. This paper describes the link between opportunity theories of crime and successful crime reduction efforts stemmed from them. It entails problem oriented policing and situational crime prevention techniques. Crime is not evenly distributed. It concentrates differently on places, offenders and persons. This paper then describes the fundamental discussion of crime distribution on hot places, targets, products, offenders and victims. Major works and findings in the field of environmental criminology is presented by describing hot spots and crime distribution, and crime patterns. The paper finally presents an evaluation of these approaches.

An Ex Post Facto Evaluation of Tactical Police Response in Residential Theft from Vehicle Micro-time Hot Spots

To evaluate with an ex post facto quasi-experimental design the impact of tactical police response on residential theft from vehicle crime in micro-time hot spots as well as whether spatial displacement occurs. The evaluation uses 5 years of data from one police agency that responded to micro-time hot spots as part of its normal crime reduction efforts. To determine the experimental comparison group, propensity scores were computed using logistic regression. Cases were matched using greedy 1–1 matching with a caliper of 0.10 of the standard deviation of the logit of the propensity score and resulted in 86 pairs. t Tests were used to examine the effect of the treatment and whether spatial displacement of crime occurred as a result. Results showed that when police responded with about seven responses per day and for between 2 and 3 weeks, there was nearly a 20 % reduction in residential theft from vehicle crimes, and the micro-time hot spots with response did not last as long as those that did not. Results also showed no spatial displacement of crime as a result of the response. This evaluation is first to examine tactical police strategies for property crimes occurring at micro-places in micro-time. Findings support the hypothesis that micro-time hot spots are less severe and “cool off” more quickly after a response. Thus, police should consider responding to property crime occurring in micro-places at a smaller temporal unit. Future research should further explore this unit of police response to corroborate these results.

The Effectiveness of Crime Analysis for Crime Reduction

Many researchers and police chiefs have asked the question, “Does crime analysis reduce crime?” This question is a difficult one is because the link between crime analysis and crime reduction is not direct. Just like the use of MRI results does not cure an illness, crime analysis is the process of using examining data and making conclusions; it is not a crime reduction strategy (cure) by itself. The connection between crime analysis and crime reduction is only through an effective police strategy that uses crime analysis. So, instead of evaluating whether crime analysis reduces crime, this article examines the role of crime analysis as a component in specific police crime reduction strategies. The evidence presented is not based on research of effectiveness of crime analysis, since there is none, but on the effectiveness research of police approaches, such as the standard model of policing, community policing, disorder policing, problem-oriented policing, hot spots policing, and the “pulling levers” focused deterrence approach, as well as popular and new approaches, such as Compstat, intelligence-led policing (ILP), and predictive policing, and the level at which crime analysis plays a role in each. Through a qualitative assessment, the author concludes that there is a clear pattern that crime analysis plays a significant role in police approaches that are effective, and just as apparent, crime analysis plays a very limited role in policing approaches that are ineffective. In addition, assessment of the policing approaches that have not been systematically evaluated, but have been widely adopted (i.e., Compstat) or are relatively new (i.e., ILP and predictive policing), reveals that crime analysis plays a central and visible role. This article shows that crime analysis is a key component in successful crime reduction efforts. Because this is a qualitative assessment from a fairly broad perspective, several recommendations are made for future research that will more fully understand the relationship between crime analysis and police effectiveness.

Testing a Crime Control Model: Does Strategic and Directed Deployment of Police Officers Lead to Lower Crime?

The purpose of the paper was to investigate whether implementation of a crime control model (based, in part, on the concepts of COMPSTAT) in one southern California city was effective in reducing crime. Time series regression models were fitted to data collected from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, city of Perris, for the years 2000 through 2010. Additional data were collected from three other cities that served as controls. Results showed that the program was effective in reducing crime rates in Perris. The effect remained significant even after taking into account time trends and control cities. Analysis also found that while the program was more effective in lessening total and property crime rates, it was less so for violent crime rates. It was concluded that strategic and directed policing models (e.g., COMPSTAT, hot spot policing, etc.) may be more effective in crime reduction efforts than reactive policing methods.

A Response to Farrell

AbstractThis article responds directly to an article published in this journal in February 2010 by Graham Farrell entitled ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents: rational choice and harm reduction versus “cultural criminology” ’. (Farrell's article, in turn, was a rejoinder to my original 2007 article ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents: rational choice theory versus the “culture of now” ’). In his article, Farrell sets out a case for the role of ‘harm reduction’ and rational choice theory as tools to reduce the contemporary crime problem, concluding that ‘Cultural criminology seems to offer little, if anything, useful to inform crime reduction efforts’. This article rejects this statement and offers a counter critique of the instrumental approach promoted by Farrell. Importantly, this response article is not intended as an outright critique of situational crime prevention per se, rather it is an assessment of Farrell's specific critical logic and the various shortcomings associated with his argument.

Measuring Crime Reduction: Geographical Effects

The preponderance of evidence is that the effect of policing upon volume crime rates is marginal, compared with the influence of socio-economic conditions. However, several focused policing styles have been brought into use since the early 1990s with the explicit aim of reducing crime levels, usually by the concentration of efforts upon repeat offenders or repeat victimisation. Moreover, further studies suggest that policing and wider crime reduction efforts may be effective when designed to tackle local problems. This study aims to go some way towards the reconciliation of these viewpoints. It examines the notion that local effectiveness is dissipated, as the geographical unit of measurement of crime levels is widened. Crime levels in an ‘intelligence-led’ police force are considered in relation to the imprisonment of prolific burglary offenders. The conclusion is reached that volume crime reduction is an essentially local activity which should be reflected in performance indicator.

Science, Social Work, Prevention: Finding the Intersections

Over the past 25 years the science of prevention of adolescent health and behavior problems has matured as a result of longitudinal studies of predictors of these problems and controlled studies of preventive interventions focused on those predictors that have revealed efficacious prevention strategies. This article builds on three Aaron Rosen lectures: Aaron Rosen's call for the use of evidence-based practice in the first lecture in this series, Mark Fraser's call for more intervention research in social work, and Claudia Coulton's explorations of Place of Community in SocialWork Practice Research. It documents key developments in prevention science over the past 25 years and explores what these developments could mean for social work education and research over the next few years. KEY WORDS: evidence-based practice; prevention science; research; social work ********** In my early working days, I lived in a rural fishing community off the coast of Washington. I , was the county's juvenile probation officer. I had a position subsidized by the state through the intensive probation subsidy program. That program provided money for probation officers in Washington counties to do intensive counseling with reduced caseloads in hopes of sending fewer young people to state institutions. I mention this here because it was as a probation officer that I first became convinced of the importance of preventing adolescent behavior problems before young people encounter the juvenile justice system. I worked with young people ages 12 to 17 referred for delinquent behavior and drug possession. Over time, I came to see my job as akin to operating an ambulance service at the bottom of a cliff. We were the emergency workers patching up those who fell over the edge. That experience convinced me that we must broaden crime reduction efforts beyond the justice system to include prevention. I will return to the intensive probation program later in this article. Before 1980 there was little evidence that delinquency or adolescent drug abuse could be prevented. School-based drug prevention programs that were evaluated were found to be largely ineffective (Elmquist, 1995; Hansen, 1992; Moskowitz, 1989). Some studies found that school-based drug information programs were associated with increased drug use among teenagers (Tobler, 1986). In 1980 a review of the delinquency experiments conducted in the United States to that year identified nine well-controlled trials (Berleman, 1980). None of them was effective in preventing delinquency. Perhaps the most notable was the Cambridge Somerville Study, a program of wrap-around services for high-risk boys. Dr. Richard Cabot of Harvard believed that the intervention of a friendly, socialized adult with a vulnerable when the child was still young might lead the child to a normal nondelinquent life. In 1935 he funded a nonprofit foundation that sustained the delinquency prevention study for 10 years. Cabot employed community-based counselors who worked predominantly in the field in this economically disadvantaged community. Services were individualized for each and his parents. The model was casework with the individual boy (Berleman, p. 130). Counselors used their practice wisdom to address needs they encountered. The randomized controlled trial of this intervention showed that the program had no effects on police contacts for delinquency or commitments to state institutions. A long-term follow-up of the program conducted by McCord (1992) found that youths exposed to the program were more likely than the control group to develop serious behavior problems, alcoholism, and mental health problems over their lives. The Hippocratic oath requires that physicians never do harm to anyone. This is our responsibility as social workers as well. Our best conceived interventions could do harm. We must evaluate our ideas to know what outcomes they produce. …