Hot Spots Policing Research Articles

Identifying a spatial scale for the analysis of residential burglary: An empirical framework based on point pattern analysis.

A key issue in the spatial and temporal analysis of residential burglary is the choice of scale: spatial patterns might differ appreciably for different time periods and vary across geographic units of analysis. Based on point pattern analysis of burglary incidents in Columbus, Ohio during a 9-year period, this study develops an empirical framework to identify a useful spatial scale and its dependence on temporal aggregation. Our analysis reveals that residential burglary in Columbus clusters at a characteristic scale of 2.2 km. An ANOVA test shows no significant impact of temporal aggregation on spatial scale of clustering. This study demonstrates the value of point pattern analysis in identifying a scale for the analysis of crime patterns. Furthermore, the characteristic scale of clustering determined using our method has great potential applications: (1) it can reflect the spatial environment of criminogenic processes and thus be used to define the spatial boundary for place-based policing; (2) it can serve as a candidate for the bandwidth (search radius) for hot spot policing; (3) its independence of temporal aggregation implies that police officials need not be concerned about the shifting sizes of risk-areas depending on the time of the year.

Improving the Creation of Hot Spot Policing Patrol Routes: Comparing Cognitive Heuristic Performance to an Automated Spatial Computation Approach

Hot spot policing involves the deployment of police patrols to places where high levels of crime have previously concentrated. The creation of patrol routes in these hot spots is mainly a manual process that involves using the results from an analysis of spatial patterns of crime to identify the areas and draw the routes that police officers are required to patrol. In this article we introduce a computational approach for automating the creation of hot spot policing patrol routes. The computational techniques we introduce created patrol routes that covered areas of higher levels of crime than an equivalent manual approach for creating hot spot policing patrol routes, and were more efficient in how they covered crime hot spots. Although the evidence on hot spot policing interventions shows they are effective in decreasing crime, the findings from the current research suggest that the impact of these interventions can potentially be greater when using the computational approaches that we introduce for creating hot spot policing patrol routes.

An agent-based model for simulating urban crime with improved daily routines

We propose a scalable agent-based crime simulation model based on the routine activity theory. It uses census data and time geography to create a synthetic population with residences and job locations, commuting schedules, and daily routines constrained by disposable time that are more representative than existing models. The time and location of crime incidents in this model are determined by random encounters between vulnerable targets and motivated offenders when they travel or carry out scheduled activities on a road network. This model is applied to simulate robberies in January 2011 for Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Three scenarios are simulated to demonstrate its value for crime theory development and shed light on modeling issues in need of improvement before it can reliably assist policymaking or inform the public. Major findings from this study include the model's ability to replicate prominent robbery hotspots in the study area with various degrees of success and the consistent effects of target definition and offender strategy on model performance. The study also suggests missing model components to effectively constrain the displacement of crime opportunities under hotspot policing, which can be the key to resolving contradiction between our simulation results and other empirical researches and crime simulations.

PROTOCOL: Police stops to reduce crime: A systematic review.

PROTOCOL: Police stops to reduce crime: A systematic review.

The Long-Term and System-Level Impacts of Institutionalizing Hot Spot Policing in a Small City

AbstractNumerous studies have shown that hot spot policing (HSP) is effective in reducing crime in small high-risk locations. However, questions remain about the efficacy of HSP outside large cities, its long-term sustainability and effects, and its ability to produce aggregate reductions in crime across large areas. This study highlights a small city police agency that has sustained a systematic, citywide HSP patrol strategy since 2013. A quasi-experimental assessment using nearly 7 years of follow-up data shows the programme reduced crime in targeted hot spots without displacement. Citywide, citizen calls about crime and disorder fell by 14%, with reductions ranging from 12% for disorder calls to 41% for violence calls. This study shows the value of HSP in smaller jurisdictions and supports the theory that HSP can produce large-scale, long-term reductions in crime and disorder when practiced in a manner that has sufficient targeting, dosage, tracking, management, and commitment from leadership.

Measuring hot spots policing in non-research settings

Hot spots policing has become a robust evidence-based strategy to address the problem of crime in U.S. cities. Today, a growing number of police departments report that they use hot spots policing to some extent in their daily operations. However, to our knowledge, only one study has been conducted to determine whether police departments have implement the strategy effectively. In our study, we used crime and stop-question-and-frisk (SQF) data from the New York Police Department (NYPD) and an innovative analytical strategy to assess (1) whether the NYPD makes significant use of hot spots policing, and (2) if yes, how much hot spots policing the department performs. Our findings showed that the NYPD uses hot spots policing in about 40%–45% of its violent crime hot spots. The implications of the study are discussed.

POLICIJSKE RACIJE U TEORIJI I PRAKSI – KRIMINALISTIČKI RELIKT ILI GOLA DEMONSTRACIJA SILE

The paper first discusses the normative regulation of the raid, as a type of restriction of movement in a certain area, which is carried out by the police, and then this action is viewed as a criminalistic institute and its evolution is followed through scientific interest in the mentioned phenomenon. Frequent application of raids in domestic police practice could, at first glance, give it the epithet of a useful tool in the fight against crime. The author tried to examine this thesis through empirical research of raids in catering facilities on the territory of Serbia, conducted during 2017 and 2019, in which the sample consisted of a total of 738 respondents, 442 citizens and 296 members of the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Serbia. Parameters related to the preparation, objectives, implementation, outcomes and analysis of the conducted raids were analyzed by descriptive statistics, correlation method and interview, as well as the subjective feeling of respondents regarding the frequency and justification of implementing such a measure. The obtained data were interpreted in the discussion through the prism of comparative practice and relevant studies on this type of police activity, within the strategies of enhanced police action (hot spot policing) and their effects on the situation of crime. In this way, author tried to popularize the issue of raids in the scientific framework and to improve the practical criminalistic and police activities, as scientific and social goals of this paper. The results of the research show that the raids are well received both among police officers and among citizens, although there is no clear evidence of their positive effects on crime prevention. In the absence of domestic ones, the author referred to the relevant foreign researches, which notice several main weaknesses of this kind of police action on criminal hotspots – short-term effects and the so-called. “spillovers” of crime. In the end, instead of spectacular large-scale actions, among which the majority of affected are ordinary citizens, the creators of police action strategies are suggested an individual approach in solving the problem of crime.

Investigating Crime Pattern Stability at Micro-Temporal Intervals: Implications for Crime Analysis and Hotspot Policing Strategies

Studies of crime hotspot forecasts use various metrics to describe different characteristics of prediction patterns. However, few investigations consider how the stability of crime hotspot, estimated at relatively short temporal intervals, can impact hotspot policing efforts. In response, using address-level incident location data that were collected from six law enforcement agencies in the United States, the current study examines the daily stability of crime hotspots that were estimated over a 1-year period. Results suggest that micro-temporal stability patterns in crime hotspot forecasts are dependent on crime type, jurisdiction, and the interaction between these two factors. Implications for crime analysis and future research are discussed.

Calibrating Police Activity Across Hot Spot and Non-Hot Spot Areas

Maximizing crime prevention through large-scale implementation of hot spot policing requires a more refined understanding of how to calibrate police activity across high and low-risk areas. This study investigates these issues based on the experience of a large urban police agency that substantially reduced proactive activities across a large area due to resource cutbacks while also shifting a larger share of its declining proactive work into prioritized micro hot spots. Time series models were used to estimate the effects of these changes on crime-related calls in hot spots and non-hot spot areas. Hot spots required higher levels of proactivity (expressed as rates per day or per crime) to control crime, and serious crime rose in these locations following modest reductions in proactivity. In areas outside hot spots, minor and property crimes rose, but only after reductions of one-half to two-thirds in proactive work. Violence was unaffected in these areas, and they did not experience accelerated growth in crime relative to prioritized hot spots. These results help to illuminate minimum levels of police activity that may be necessary to control crime in places of varying risk. They also suggest that police can reduce proactive work by substantial amounts in lower risk areas to place more emphasis on hot spots. Better understanding of these issues is central to widespread, systematic operationalization of hot spot policing as a means to reduce crime across large areas.

Categorisation and Relevance of Policing Models in the Literature

This article presents a review of keywords available in the literature focusing on policing models, with the aim of evaluating how authors and KeyWords Plus classify these models. The literature shows that even though several policing models have been published since the 1970s, there is no common categorisation of the different approaches. This, however, would help unifying the area. A strong relationship between third-party policing, problem-orientedpolicing, community policing, evidence-based policing,and hot spot policing models was also identified, meaning that usually two or more of these approaches were used in conjunction. The analysis of the keywords showed that three main policing models exist today: community policing, predictive policing and evidence-based policing.

The Helicopter Pilot-Swedish Hot-Area Policing From Above.

Hot spot policing is an established concept that is proven to reduce crime. It is mostly done through foot patrol or car patrols. In the present study it is tested whether helicopters can produce a deterrent policing effect to reduce the amount of vehicle arsons in Sweden on larger hot areas. Sweden tends to have elevated levels of vehicle arsons in August, with about 20% of police districts responsible for 50% of the cases. The risk narrative revolves around youth congregating in public places in deprived neighborhoods to generate disturbances, and the disruption of the risk narrative tested here is based on providing deterrence through helicopter police presence. During 6 weeks in August and September of 2019 police helicopters patrolled four police districts in Sweden to attempt to prevent vehicle arsons. Our data comprise police reports of vehicle arson, and time stamped satellite data over the location for police helicopters. The evaluation considers whether there is an intention to treat effect from this project, in addition to whether there is an effect of actual helicopter presence. The study finds no significant effect of intention to treat, nor of actual dosage.

Operational research applied in the field of public security

PurposeBecause that the crime in a wide way impacts the life of the people in the big metropolis, researchers have treated the question from several angles. The purpose of the paper, under the umbrella of operational research, is to develop a model of the ordering of police strategies, in the fight against crime in general, according to a certain criminal demand.Design/methodology/approachFor the construction of the impact matrix of the strategies under the reduction of crime rates, considering a portfolio of crimes, a questionnaire applied to specialists was used. In a second moment, defined the criteria and strategies to be ordered, the multicriteria ELECTRE IV method was used, which with the help of the J-Electre software emulated the systematized data in the impact matrix and produced the final ordering of the most efficient strategies, in the fight against crime, in the perception of decision-makers.FindingsAs a result, the research revealed that policing strategies directed at solving specific crimes are the most effective in the perception of decision-makers after the emulation of data with the ELECTRE IV method.Research limitations/implicationsAs research implications, it can be inferred that the use of multicriteria methods in the modeling of problems in the area of public security can contribute to rationalization of the use of the means available in the fight against crime in large cities. The research showed that it is possible to use customized policing strategies to a certain reality.Practical implicationsThe method presented in this research is directly related to the major strategies: problem-oriented policing and hot spot policing. This method allows public safety managers to consider the possibility of combining different law enforcement strategies in each context. In this sense, the use of the multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) (ELECTRE IV) method allows the evaluation of a large set of alternatives according to a set of established criteria, speeding up the process and reducing subjectivity, allowing the manager to analyze several scenarios with greater clarity and impartiality and choosing an alternative that best solves the proposed problem. The expected result is the rationalization of the available means applied in the search for the reduction of crime rates.Social implicationsThe customization of policing strategies, according to criminal demands, implies the efficient way to reduce criminal charges. Reducing criminal rates enables the development of the local economy, tourism and the quality of life of people by exercising their freedom to the full.Originality/valueThe originality lies in filling a gap in the literature with the elaboration of the impact matrix of policing strategies in reducing criminal indices, and in their associated use in ordering strategies through a multicriteria method.

The impact of a hot spot policing program in Montevideo, Uruguay: an evaluation using a quasi-experimental difference-in-difference negative binomial approach

ABSTRACT Hot spot policing has proven to be effective in reducing crime in cities in North America, Europe and Australasia, but to date, its application and evaluation in Latin American settings has been limited. PADO (Programa de Alta Dedicación Operativa) is a large-scale hot spot policing program implemented by the Uruguay Police in April 2016 in the city of Montevideo. Using an evaluation technique that compares the differential effect between areas where PADO was deployed and control areas, a 23 percent reduction in the rate at which robberies occurred was experienced in the PADO areas, with no significant displacement to neighboring areas, or other areas of the city during the study period. The study indicates that hot spot policing programs can be effective in reducing crime in Latin American urban environments and illustrates how targeted police interventions can be robustly evaluated when control areas are not established at the outset of an intervention.

Learning to rank spatio-temporal event hotspots

BackgroundCrime, traffic accidents, terrorist attacks, and other space-time random events are unevenly distributed in space and time. In the case of crime, hotspot and other proactive policing programs aim to focus limited resources at the highest risk crime and social harm hotspots in a city. A crucial step in the implementation of these strategies is the construction of scoring models used to rank spatial hotspots. While these methods are evaluated by area normalized Recall@k (called the predictive accuracy index), models are typically trained via maximum likelihood or rules of thumb that may not prioritize model accuracy in the top k hotspots. Furthermore, current algorithms are defined on fixed grids that fail to capture risk patterns occurring in neighborhoods and on road networks with complex geometries.ResultsWe introduce CrimeRank, a learning to rank boosting algorithm for determining a crime hotspot map that directly optimizes the percentage of crime captured by the top ranked hotspots. The method employs a floating grid combined with a greedy hotspot selection algorithm for accurately capturing spatial risk in complex geometries. We illustrate the performance using crime and traffic incident data provided by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, IED attacks in Iraq, and data from the 2017 NIJ Real-time crime forecasting challenge.ConclusionOur learning to rank strategy was the top performing solution (PAI metric) in the 2017 challenge. We show that CrimeRank achieves even greater gains when the competition rules are relaxed by removing the constraint that grid cells be a regular tessellation.

Hot spots policing in a high-crime environment: an experimental evaluation in Medellín

Test direct, spillover, and aggregate effects of hot spots policing on crime in a high-crime environment. We identified 967 hot spot street segments and randomly assigned 384 to a six-month increase in police patrols. To account for the complications resulting from a large experimental sample in a dense network of streets, we use randomization inference for hypothesis testing. We also use non-experimental streets to test for spillovers onto non-hot spots and examine aggregate effects citywide. Our results show an improvement in short-term security perceptions and a reduction in car thefts, but no direct effects on other crimes or satisfaction with policing services. We see larger effects in the least secure places, especially for short-term security perceptions, car thefts, and assaults. We find no evidence of crime displacement but rather a decrease in car thefts in nearby hot spots and a decrease in assaults in nearby non-hot spots. We estimate that car thefts decreased citywide by about 11%. Our study highlights the importance of context when implementing hot spots policing. What seems to work in the USA or even in Bogotá is not as responsive in Medellín (and vice versa). Further research—especially outside the USA—is needed to understand the role of local crime patterns and police capacity on the effectiveness of hot spots policing.

Crime as a cascade phenomenon

ABSTRACT The Peacebuilding Compared project deployed South Asian data to conclude that war tends to cascade across space and time to further war, crime to further crime, war to crime, and crime to war. This article is an analytic sketch of crime as a cascade phenomenon. Examining crime through a cascade lens helps us to imagine how to more effectively cascade crime prevention. Like crime, crime prevention often cascades. Braithwaite and D’Costa (2018) show how peacemaking can cascade non-violence, how it cascades non-violent social movement politics, and vice versa. Seeing crime through the cascade lens opens up fertile ways of imagining macrocriminology. Self-efficacy and collective efficacy are hypothesised as catalysts of crime prevention cascades in such a macrocriminology. Australian successes with gun control and drunk driving point to the importance of explicitly connecting evidence-based microcriminology to a macrocriminology of cultural transformation. More structurally, building collective efficacy in families, schools and primary work groups may cascade collective efficacy into neighbourhoods and vice versa. The microcriminology of hot-spot policing might be elaborated into a macrocriminology of inkspots of collective efficacy that cascade and connect up.

Hot spots policing of small geographic areas effects on crime.

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 there is significant clustering of crime in small places, or "hot spots," that generate half of all criminal events. Researchers have argued that many crime problems can be reduced more efficiently if police officers focused their attention to these deviant places. The appeal of focusing limited resources on a small number of high-activity crime places is straightforward. If crime can be prevented at these hot spots, then citywide crime totals could be reduced. To assess the effects of focused police crime prevention interventions at crime hot spots. The review also examined whether focused police actions at specific locations result in crime displacement (i.e., crime moving around the corner) or diffusion (i.e., crime reduction in surrounding areas) of crime control benefits. A keyword search was performed on 15 abstract databases. Bibliographies of past narrative and empirical reviews of literature that examined the effectiveness of police crime control programs were reviewed and forward searches for works that cited seminal hot spots policing studies were performed. Bibliographies of past completed Campbell systematic reviews of police crime prevention efforts were reviewed and hand searches of leading journals in the field were completed. Experts in the field were consulted and relevant citations were obtained. To be eligible for this review, interventions used to control crime hot spots were limited to police-led prevention efforts. Suitable police-led crime prevention efforts included traditional tactics such as directed patrol and heightened levels of traffic enforcement as well as alternative strategies such as aggressive disorder enforcement and problem-oriented policing. Studies that used randomized controlled experimental or quasiexperimental designs were selected. The units of analysis were limited to crime hot spots or high-activity crime "places" rather than larger areas such as neighborhoods. The control group in each study received routine levels of traditional police crime prevention tactics. Sixty-five studies containing 78 tests of hot spots policing interventions were identified and full narratives of these studies were reported. Twenty-seven of the selected studies used randomized experimental designs and 38 used quasiexperimental designs. A formal meta-analysis was conducted to determine the crime prevention effects in the eligible studies. Random effects models were used to calculate mean effect sizes. Sixty-two of 78 tests of hot spots policing interventions reported noteworthy crime and disorder reductions. The meta-analysis of key reported outcome measures revealed a small statistically significant mean effect size favoring the effects of hot spots policing in reducing crime outcomes at treatment places relative to control places. The effect was smaller for randomized designs but still statistically significant and positive. When displacement and diffusion effects were measured, a diffusion of crime prevention benefits was associated with hot spots policing. The extant evaluation research suggests that hot spots policing is an effective crime prevention strategy. The research also suggests that focusing police efforts on high-activity crime places does not inevitably lead to crime displacement; rather, crime control benefits may diffuse into the areas immediately surrounding the targeted locations.

Hot spots policing and crime reduction: an update of an ongoing systematic review and meta-analysis

This updated systematic review assesses the effects of focused police crime prevention interventions at crime hot spots. The review also examined whether focused police actions at specific locations result in crime displacement or diffusion of crime control benefits. Systematic review protocols and conventions of the Campbell Collaboration were followed to identify eligible hot spots policing studies, and meta-analytic techniques were used to assess the impact of hot spots policing on crime and investigate the influence of moderating variables. The search strategies identified 65 studies containing 78 tests of hot spots policing interventions. Meta-analyses revealed a small statistically significant mean effect size favoring the effects of hot spots policing in reducing crime outcomes at treatment places relative to control places. Crime displacement and diffusion effects were measured in 40 tests. Meta-analyses favored a small statistically significant diffusion of crime control benefits over displacement. The extant evaluation research provides fairly robust evidence that hot spots policing is an effective crime prevention strategy. Focused police intervention at hot spot locations does not seem to result in the spatial displacement of crime into areas immediately surrounding targeted locations. Rather, crime control benefits seem to diffuse into proximate areas.

When Stop and Frisk Comes Home: Policing Public and Patrolled Housing

In response to programmatic stop-and-frisk, police killings, and other recent controversies in American policing, many have called for “smart policing” — the evidence-based deployment of police resources. An often-heralded example of smart policing is hot spots policing, which involves directing police attention to locations where crime and disorder fester. It is difficult to argue with the logic of hot spots policing, and this Article does not do so. Instead, it critically examines how the Fourth Amendment operates when hot spots policing and similar targeted strategies are used in a common setting: public housing developments and their private counterparts. Largely because of mass criminalization, Fourth Amendment law allows police to lay siege to public housing and the people who live in it. Public housing developments and their private counterparts have historical reputations as problem places, and law enforcement has subjected these locations to specialized policing programs for decades. Given the low Fourth Amendment standards for stops, arrests, and searches in connection with minor misconduct, that outsized attention combines with the astounding array of conduct regulated in public and patrolled housing to permit police nearly unfettered authority. Fourth Amendment protections usually associated with the home are virtually unrecognizable in these places. Instead, the Fourth Amendment fuels the use of law enforcement as a tool of social control in public and patrolled housing. As such, the harms of programmatic stop-and-frisk are not remedied, but simply concentrated and localized. Policing in public and patrolled housing thus offers a cautionary tale of the limits of “smart policing” as an answer to abusive police practices.

Hot Spots Across the Metropolis: Evaluating Hot Spots Directed Patrol at City and Suburban Locations

The effectiveness of hot spots policing is widely supported but past research focuses primarily in high-crime areas within large metropolitan areas. What is unknown is whether the tactic works in less populated or lower crime locations such as suburbs. This study fills this gap by conducting a department-wide hot spots patrol experiment in Louisville, Kentucky. The study used block randomization to identify 47 hot spot pairs, 24 pairs located in the city and 23 pairs in the suburbs. The intervention examined the impact of directed patrol across three difference-in-difference outcomes: crime-related calls for service (CFS), part 1 crimes, and soft crimes. Ordinary least squares regression results indicate the intervention did not have significant effect on the three outcomes; however, hot spot location impacted crime-related CFS. The study concludes by discussing the importance and limitations of hot spots policing in suburban locations and the challenges of department-wide interventions.