Testing the “Law of Crime Concentration at Place” in a Suburban Setting: Implications for Research and Practice

Objective

To assess whether the “law of crime concentration at place” applies in a non-urban context. We test whether longitudinal trends in crime concentration, stability, and variability apply in a suburban setting.

Methods

We use group-based trajectory analysis to examine trends in recorded crime incidents on street segments in Brooklyn Park, a suburban city outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, over a 15-year period from 2000 to 2014.

Results

Consistent with the law of crime concentration at place, crime in Brooklyn Park is highly concentrated at a small percentage of micro-places. Two percent of street segments produced 50 % of the crime over the study period and 0.4 % of segments produced 25 % of the crime. The patterns of concentration are highly stable over time. However, the concentration of crime is substantially higher and there is much less street-by-street variability in Brooklyn Park compared to urban areas.

Conclusions

We find strong support for the application of the law of crime concentration at place to a non-urban setting, suggesting that place-based policing approaches tested in cities can also be applied to suburbs. However, there are also important differences in the concentration and variability of crime hot spots in suburbs that require further examination. Our study is based on a single setting that may not be representative of other suburban and rural areas. Finally, the clustering of hot spots raises questions about the use of street segments to analyze crime at suburban micro-places.

     

“Soft” policing at hot spots—do police community support officers work? A randomized controlled trial

Objectives

To determine whether crime-reduction effects of increased police patrols in hot spots are dependent on the “hard” threat of immediate physical arrest, or whether “soft” patrols by civilian (but uniformed) police staff with few arrest powers and no weapons can also reduce crime. We also sought to assess whether the number of discrete patrol visits to a hot spot was more or less important than the total minutes of police presence across all visits, and whether effects based on counts of crime would be consistent with effects on a Crime Harm Index outcome.

Methods

We randomly assigned 72 hot spots into 34 treatment units and 38 controls. Treatment consisted of increases in foot patrol by uniformed, unarmed, Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who carry no weapons and hold few arrest powers beyond those of ordinary citizens. GPS-trackers on every PCSO and Constable in the city yielded precise measurements of all patrol time in all hot spots. Standardized mean differences (Cohen’s d), OLS regression model, and Weighted Displacement Quotient are used to assess main effects, to model the interaction effect of GPS data with treatment, and to measure the diffusion-of-benefits of the intervention, respectively. Outcomes included counts of incidents as well as the Cambridge Crime Harm Index.

Results

As intended, patrol visits and minutes by Police Constables were equal across the treatment and control groups. The sole difference in policing between the treatments groups was in visits to the hot spots by PCSOs, in both the mean daily frequency of discrete visits (T?=?4.65, C?=?2.66; p?≤?.001) and total minutes across all visits (T?=?37.41, C?=?15.92; p?≤?.001), approximately two more ten-minute visits per day in treatment than in control. Main effect estimates suggest 39 % less crime by difference-in-difference analysis of reported crimes compared to control conditions, and 20 % reductions in emergency calls-for-service compared to controls. Crime in surrounding areas showed a diffusion of benefits rather than displacement for treatment hot spots compared to controls. A “Reiss’s Reward” effect was observed, with more proactive patrols predicting less crime across treatment hot spots, while more reactive PCSO time predicted more crime across control hot spots. Crime Harm Index estimates of the seriousness value of crime prevented ranged from 85 to 360 potential days of imprisonment in each treatment group hot spot (relative to controls) by a mean difference of 21 more minutes of PCSO patrol per day, for a potential return on investment of up to 26 to 1.

Conclusions

A crime reduction effect of extra patrols in hot spots is not conditional on “hard” police power. Even small differences in foot patrols showing the “soft power” of unarmed paraprofessionals, holding constant vehicular patrols by Police Constables, were causally linked to both lower counts of crimes and a substantially lower crime harm index score. Correlational evidence within the treatment group suggests that greater frequency of discrete PCSO visits may yield more crime reduction benefit than greater duration of those visits, but RCTs are needed for better evidence on this crucial issue.

     

Assessing the Validity of the Law of Crime Concentration Across Different Temporal Scales

Objectives

The present study examined if Weisburd’s (Criminology 53(2):133–157, 2015) law of crime concentration held across different theoretically relevant temporal scales.

Methods

The cumulative percentages of Philadelphia, PA USA street blocks and intersections experiencing 25 and 50 % of street robberies by hour of the day, days of the week, and seasons of the year were compared to the bandwidth percentages established by Weisburd (2015). Different analyses were used to determine the stability of the micro-places’ street robbery levels within the three temporal scales.

Results

We found that the cumulative percentages of street blocks and intersections experiencing 25 and 50 % of street robberies at each of the three temporal scales closely matched the bandwidth percentages expected from Weisburd (2015) and some micro-places experienced street robberies across all temporal periods while others had more isolated temporal concentrations.

Conclusion

Weisburd’s (2015) law of crime concentration holds across different theoretically relevant temporal scales, and future criminology of place studies should not ignore temporal crime patterns. Further, it may be possible to refine hot spots policing approaches by incorporating spatial–temporal crime concentrations.

     

Offender-focused police intervention in residential burglary and theft from vehicle hot spots: a partially blocked randomized control trial

Objectives

To test an offender-focused police intervention in residential burglary and residential theft from vehicle hot spots and its effect on crime, arrests, and offender recidivism. The intervention was prevention-focused, in which detectives contacted offenders and their families at their homes to discourage criminal activity.

Methods

The study was a partially blocked, randomized controlled field experiment in 24 treatment and 24 control hot spots in one suburban city with average crime levels. Negative binomial and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression were used to test the effect of the presence of intervention and its dosage on crime and offender recidivism, and examination of average and standardized treatment effects were conducted.

Results

The analyses of the hot spot impact measures did not reveal significant results to indicate that the treatment had an effect on crime or arrest counts, or on repeat arrests of the targeted or non-targeted offenders living in the hot spots. However, the relationships, while not significant, were in a promising direction.

Conclusions

The collective findings from all four impact measures suggest that the intervention may have had some influence on the targeted offenders, as well as in the treatment hot spots. So, while the experimental results did not show an impact, they are promising. Limitations include large hot spots, the low case number, low base rates, and inadequate impact measures. Suggestions are provided for police agencies and researchers for implementing preventive offender-focused strategies and conducting studies in suburban cities.

     

Do Crime Hot Spots Exist in Developing Countries? Evidence from India

Objectives

To determine whether concentrations of crime documented in American cities such as Boston, Jacksonville, Minneapolis, Sacramento, and Seattle generalize to unique environments such as India.

Methods

Two years of motor vehicle theft (MVT) and burglary incidents from two police stations in Jaipur, India are analyzed. The degree to which crime clusters is documented using nearest neighborhood hierarchical clustering (NNHC). These results are compared to several widely cited studies documenting concentrations in the United States.

Results

The NNHC procedure identified five MVT hot spots, which accounted for just .09 % of the two station’s land, but over 13 % of these incidents, and four burglary hot spots, which accounted for less than 1 % of its land, but nearly 23 % of the incidents.

Conclusions

Given the stark differences in the built environment and sociological makeup of Jaipur, a better understanding of the forces that cause crime to concentrate to a high degree needs to be discerned before implementing law-enforcement driven policies derived from the scholarship of American cities. Additional research should also seek to replicate not just the degree to which crime clusters in these unique environments, but also its stability over time and micro place variation.

     

The Influence of Community Areas,Neighborhood Clusters,and Street Segments on the Spatial Variability of Violent Crime in Chicago

Objectives

The influence of three hierarchical units of analysis on the total spatial variability of violent crime incidents in Chicago is assessed. This analysis seeks to replicate a recent study that found street segments, rather than neighborhood units of analysis, accounted for the largest share of the total spatial variability of crime in The Hague, Netherlands (see Steenbeek and Weisburd J Quant Criminol. doi: 10.1007/s10940-015-9276-3, 2015).

Methods

We analyze violent crime incidents reported to the police between 2001 and 2014. 359,786 incidents were geocoded to 41,926 street segments nested within 342 neighborhood clusters, in turn nested within 76 community areas in Chicago. Linear mixed models with random slopes of time were estimated to observe the variance uniquely attributed to each unit of analysis.

Results

Similar to Steenbeek and Weisburd, we find 56–65 % of the total variability in violent crime incidents can be attributed to street segments in Chicago. City-wide reductions in violence over the observation period coincide with increases in the spatial variability attributed to street segments and decreases in the variability attributed to both neighborhood units.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that scholars interested in understanding the spatial variation of crime across urban landscapes should be focused on the small places that comprise larger geographic areas. The next wave of “neighborhood-effects” research should explore the role of hierarchical processes in understanding crime variation within larger areas.

     

The Police Officer Perception Project (POPP): An experimental evaluation of factors that impact perceptions of the police

Objectives

To experimentally evaluate the effects of attire and patrol strategy esthetics on participants’ perceptions of police officers.

Methods

Using a rigorously controlled experimental methodology, I present participants (N = 307) with images of police officers in different attire (i.e., uniform and civilian) and patrol strategies (i.e., on a bicycle, on foot, and in a vehicle) and measure their perceptions of these officers as aggressive, approachable, friendly, respectful, and accountable.

Results

Participants express relatively positive perceptions of the police; however, their perceptions vary as a function of sociodemographics, attire, and patrol strategy. Police officers are generally perceived more favorably when presented in police uniform than when presented in civilian clothing. Police officers are also generally perceived more favorably when presented on a bicycle and/or on foot than when presented in a vehicle.

Conclusions

Merely observing police officers in different attire and patrol capacities produces substantial variation in perceptions of those officers. Given that most ‘police interaction’ occurs in relatively unceremonious settings without any exchange of formal dialogue between the public and the police (e.g., observing a police officer in passing), these findings are particularly fruitful for informing both research and practice. This is the first known study to use an experimental methodology to examine how esthetic factors of different patrol strategies can impact perceptions of the police.

     

Violence in Urban Neighborhoods: A Longitudinal Study of Collective Efficacy and Violent Crime

Objectives

Cross-sectional studies consistently find that neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy experience fewer social problems. Particularly robust is the relationship between collective efficacy and violent crime, which holds regardless of the socio-structural conditions of neighborhoods. Yet due to the limited availability of neighborhood panel data, the temporal relationship between neighborhood structure, collective efficacy and crime is less well understood.

Methods

In this paper, we provide an empirical test of the collective efficacy-crime association over time by bringing together multiple waves of survey and census data and counts of violent crime incident data collected across 148 neighborhoods in Brisbane, Australia. Utilizing three different longitudinal models that make different assumptions about the temporal nature of these relationships, we examine the reciprocal relationships between neighborhood features and collective efficacy with violent crime. We also consider the spatial embeddedness of these neighborhood characteristics and their association with collective efficacy and the concentration of violence longitudinally.

Results

Notably, our findings reveal no direct relationship between collective efficacy and violent crime over time. However, we find a strong reciprocal relationship between collective efficacy and disadvantage and between disadvantage and violence, indicating an indirect relationship between collective efficacy and violence.

Conclusions

The null direct effects for collective efficacy on crime in a longitudinal design suggest that this relationship may not be as straightforward as presumed in the literature. More longitudinal research is needed to understand the dynamics of disadvantage, collective efficacy, and violence in neighborhoods.

     

Do Schools Cause Crime in Neighborhoods? Evidence from the Opening of Schools in Philadelphia

Objectives

To assess the impact of schools on crime in neighborhoods.

Methods

We utilize data of charter and public schools in Philadelphia to estimate the effect of school openings on neighborhood crime patterns between 1998 and 2010. We estimate the change in crime in areas surrounding schools before and after their opening compared to areas where schools were always open with Poisson regression models. We also estimate changes in crime in census tracts as schools are added compared to census tracts that never had schools. Finally, we compare estimates from Poisson regression models to those derived from permutation tests where schools are randomly assigned different opening dates.

Results

We find no evidence that school openings increase crime relative to locations where schools were always open or never had schools. The models generally produce null effects, though there is some evidence for a reduction in property crimes for public school openings and a reduction in violent crimes for charter school openings within certain distances. Estimates at the census tract level show that changes in the number of schools are not associated with any changes in crime relative to tracts with no schools.

Conclusions

Contrary to a large theoretical and empirical literature, the results suggest that school locations play a minimal role in neighborhood crime production in Philadelphia. Future research should investigate specific contexts and mechanisms, such as land-use characteristics and travel patterns to schools, which may interact with specific school settings in ways that are related to crime production.

     

The Gains of Greater Granularity: The Presence and Persistence of Problem Properties in Urban Neighborhoods

Objectives

This study applies the growing emphasis on micro-places to the analysis of addresses, assessing the presence and persistence of “problem properties” with elevated levels of crime and disorder. It evaluates what insights this additional detail offers beyond the analysis of neighborhoods and street segments.

Methods

We used over 2,000,000 geocoded emergency and non-emergency requests received by the City of Boston’s 911 and 311 systems from 2011–2013 to calculate six indices of violent crime, physical disorder, and social disorder for all addresses (n = 123,265). We linked addresses to their street segment (n = 13,767) and census tract (n = 178), creating a three-level hierarchy that enabled a series of multilevel Poisson hierarchical models.

Results

Less than 1% of addresses generated 25% of reports of crime and disorder. Across indices, 95–99% of variance was at the address level, though there was significant clustering at the street segment and neighborhood levels. Models with lag predictors found that levels of crime and disorder persisted across years for all outcomes at all three geographic levels, with stronger effects at higher geographic levels. Distinctively, ~15% of addresses generated crime or disorder in one year and not in the other.

Conclusions

The analysis suggests new opportunities for both the criminology of place and the management of public safety in considering addresses in conjunction with higher-order geographies. We explore directions for empirical work including the further experimentation with and evaluation of law enforcement policies targeting problem properties.

     

Measuring the Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Police Proactivity

Objectives

To measure where officers engage in proactive, self-initiated activities, how much time they spend being proactive, and whether their proactive activities coincide with crime patterns.

Methods

This study uses Andresen’s Spatial Point Pattern Test to compare the spatial similarity between police proactivity and crime, as well as regression modeling to explore the relationship between proactivity and crime and the time spent on proactivity and crime.

Results

In the jurisdiction examined, high levels of proactivity are noted. This proactive activity is more likely to occur in places where crime is most concentrated. Additionally, the number of proactive calls and the proactive time spent per crime-and-disorder call remain high and stable across spatial scales. For each crime call received at a street block, police initiated 0.7 proactive activities and spent approximately 28 min carrying out proactive works.

Conclusions

This study develops a way of measuring proactive activity by patrol officers using calls for service data. We find that not only do officers in this jurisdiction exhibit higher levels of proactivity to prevent crime (compared to reacting to crime), but they also do so in targeted, micro-place ways. Agencies may consider using similar techniques to gauge the levels of proactivity in their agencies if proactive activity is a goal.

     

Does Eligibility for Tertiary Education Affect Crime Rates? Quasi-Experimental Evidence

Objectives

This paper estimates the effect of tertiary education eligibility on crime in Sweden. The hypothesis tested is that continuing to higher education decreases crime rates since it allows young people to escape inactivity and idleness, which are known to trigger crime. However, to qualify for tertiary education, individuals have to meet the eligibility requirements in upper-secondary school. Tertiary education eligibility may therefore affect crime rates.

Methods

This paper uses a panel data set of 287 Swedish municipalities over the period 1998–2010 to estimate the tertiary education eligibility effect on crime. However, estimating educational effects on crime is challenging, because investment in education is an endogenous decision. In Sweden, substantial grade inflation, increased tertiary education eligibility by more than 6% points between 1998 and 2003. Thus, since the eligibility increase is exogenous to the educational achievements of a student cohort, i.e. not accompanied by a corresponding knowledge increase, we can use the increase to identify the effect of tertiary education eligibility on crime.

Results

It is found that increasing the tertiary education eligibility rate decreases both property and violent crime substantially.

Conclusions

The results show that when young people have the opportunity to attend tertiary education, and thus escape unemployment or inactivity, their propensity to commit crime decreases.

     

The Trajectories of Crime at Places: Understanding the Patterns of Disaggregated Crime Types

Objectives

Investigate the spatial concentrations and the stability of trajectories for disaggregated crime types on street segments and intersections in Vancouver, Canada.

Methods

A longitudinal analysis of 16 years of crime data using street segments and intersections as the units of analysis. We use the k-means non-parametric cluster analysis technique considering eight crime types: assault, burglary, robbery, theft, theft of vehicle, theft from vehicle, other, and total crime.

Results

The overall results for the individual crime types versus overall crime are similar: crime is highly concentrated regardless of crime type, most street segment and intersection trajectories are stable over time with the others decreasing, and most decreasing trajectories are in the same general areas. However, there are notable differences across crime types that need to be considered when attempting to understand spatial pattern changes and implement crime prevention initiatives.

Conclusions

The law of crime concentration at places holds in Vancouver, Canada for disaggregated crime types in the context of spatial concentrations and their stability over time. However, notable differences exist across crime types that should be accounted for when developing theory or policy.

     

Policing a Negotiated World: A Partial Test of Klinger’s Ecological Theory of Policing

Objectives

Klinger’s (Criminology 35(2): 277–306, 1997) ecological theory of policing addresses the intersection of environment and police organizational structure on police patrol practices. The current study addresses the following question: ‘Is police response to calls for service influenced by the level of serious violent crime or the level of officer staffing?’

Methods

This question was addressed using crime, incident, and staffing data supplied by the Philadelphia Police Department. The dependent variable was the number of unfounded events per month, per police district, from 2004 to 2008. Analysis controlled for linear and non-linear trends, average monthly temperature, month length, and spatial effects. Data were analyzed using repeated measures multilevel modeling.

Results

Findings suggested that the quantity of unfounded events was associated with both workload and officer staffing levels. Consistent with theoretical predictions, higher workload was associated with more unfounded incidents while higher levels of officer staffing was associated with fewer unfounded incidents, net of ongoing trends and spatial effects.

Conclusions

These findings are consistent with the Ecological Theory of Policing and suggest that officers may shed workload in response to higher demands for service or lower levels of officer availability.

     

Replicating Group-Based Trajectory Models of Crime at Micro-Places in Albany,NY

Objectives

Replicate two previous studies of temporal crime trends at the street block level. We replicate the general approach of group-based trajectory modelling of crimes at micro-places originally taken by Weisburd et al. (Criminology 42(2):283–322, 2004) and replicated by Curman et al. (J Quant Criminol 31(1):127–147, 2014). We examine patterns in a city of a different character (Albany, NY) than those previously examined (Seattle and Vancouver) and so contribute to the generalizability of previous findings.

Methods

Crimes between 2000 and 2013 were used to identify different trajectory groups at street segments and intersections. Zero-inflated Poisson regression models are used to identify the trajectories. Pin maps, Ripley’s K and neighbor transition matrices are used to show the spatial patterning of the trajectory groups.

Results

The trajectory solution with eight classes is selected based on several model selection criteria. The trajectory of each those groups follow the overall citywide decline, and are only separated by the mean level of crime. Spatial analysis shows that higher crime trajectory groups are more likely to be nearby one another, potentially suggesting a diffusion process.

Conclusions

Our work adds additional support to that of others who have found tight coupling of crime at micro-places. We find that the clustering of trajectories identified a set of street units that disproportionately contributed to the total level of crime citywide in Albany, consistent with previous research. However, the temporal trends over time in Albany differed from those exhibited in previous work in Seattle but were consistent with patterns in Vancouver.

     

Declines in Crime and Teen Childbearing: Identifying Potential Explanations for Contemporaneous Trends

Objectives

The previous 25 years have witnessed remarkable upheavals in the social landscape of the United States. Two of the most notable trends have been dramatic declines in levels of crime as well as teen childbearing. Much remains unknown about the underlying conditions that might be driving these changes. More importantly, we do not know if the same distal factors that are responsible for the drop in crime rates are similarly implicated in falling rates of teen births. We examine four overarching potential explanations: fluctuations in economic opportunity, shifting population demographics, differences in state-level public policies, and changes in expectations regarding health and mortality.

Methods

We combine state and year-specific data from existing secondary sources to model trajectories of violent crime and teen fertility over a 20-year period from 1990 to 2010 using simultaneous fixed-effects regression models.

Results

We find that 4 of the 20 predictors examined—growth in the service sector of the labor market, increasing racial diversity especially among Hispanics, escalating levels of migration, and the expansion of family planning services to low-income women—offer the most convincing explanations for why rates of violent crime and teen births have been steadily decreasing over time. Moreover, we are able to account for almost a quarter of the joint declines in violent crime and teen births.

Conclusions

Our conclusions underscore the far reaching effects that aggregate level demographic conditions and policies are likely to have on important social trends that might, at first glance, seem unrelated. Furthermore, the effects of policy efforts designed to target outcomes in one area are likely to spill over into other domains.

     

Acquisitive Crime and Inflation in the United States: 1960–2012

Objectives

Inflation is conspicuous by its absence from recent research on crime and the economy. We argue that price inflation increases the rate of crimes committed for monetary gain by fueling demand for cheap stolen goods.

Methods

The study includes inflation along with indicators of unemployment, GDP, income, consumer sentiment, and controls in error correction models of acquisitive crime covering the period from 1960 to 2012. Both short- and long-run effects of the predictors are estimated.

Results

Among the economic indicators, only inflation has consistent and robust short- and long-run effects on year-over-year change in the offense types under consideration. Low inflation helps to explain why acquisitive crime did not increase during the 2008–2009 recession. Imprisonment rates also have robust long-run effects on change in acquisitive crime rates.

Conclusions

Incorporating inflation into studies of crime and the economy can help to reduce the theoretical and empirical uncertainty that has long characterized this important research area in criminology.

     

The financial implications of merging proactive CCTV monitoring and directed police patrol: a cost–benefit analysis

Objectives

This study presents a cost–benefit analysis of an intervention pairing proactive CCTV monitoring with directed police patrol in Newark, NJ. A recent randomized control trial found that the strategy generated significant crime reductions in treatment areas relative to control areas. The current study focuses on the financial implications of the experimental strategy through a cost–benefit analysis.

Methods

The study begins by measuring the costs and benefits associated with the experimental strategy, the findings of which can inform agencies with existing CCTV infrastructure. Follow-up analyses measure the costs and benefits of the intervention for agencies absent existing CCTV infrastructure, meaning a CCTV system would have to be funded in addition to the intervention outputs. Alongside overall benefits, this study presents the tangible cost savings afforded to the Criminal Justice system as well as to each of the separate criminal justice (CJ) system components: Policing, Courts, and Corrections.

Results

We found the experimental strategy to be highly cost effective for agencies with existing CCTV infrastructure. However, when the cost of the CCTV system is considered, the strategy is largely cost prohibitive. While the cumulative societal and criminal justice findings suggest some evidence of a modest cost savings, the strategy is highly cost prohibitive for each of the individual CJ system components when CCTV system costs are included.

Conclusions

Results suggest that the experimental strategy is a worthwhile investment for agencies with existing CCTV infrastructure. Agencies absent CCTV may want to consider whether funds would be better allocated towards alternate strategies.

     

Evaluation of operation swordfish: a near-repeat target-hardening strategy

Objectives

This paper reports an evaluation of a police-led target-hardening crime prevention strategy inspired by research concerned with space–time patterns of burglary.

Methods

A total of 46 neighbourhoods in the West Midlands (UK) were randomly allocated to treatment and control conditions. Within treatment areas, resources were delivered to recent burglary victims and their close neighbours. Resources included inexpensive target-hardening measures as well as the delivery of dedicated police advice. The evaluation consisted of both a resident survey and a statistical outcome analysis.

Results

Results suggested that residents in treatment groups were slightly more satisfied with the police and more likely to have been contacted by the police concerning burglaries. Although they had more awareness of burglary, their fear of crime was not heightened. Statistical analysis suggested a very modest positive effect of intervention on crime and rates of re-victimisation. In particular, a survival analysis revealed that homes in low-crime treatment areas were less likely to be re-victimised than were those in similar control areas. Effects were more evident in low- than high-crime areas.

Conclusions

Results suggest that a low-intensity target-hardening intervention which adopted a near-repeat victimisation targeting strategy had a modest positive effect on residential burglary without increasing residents’ fear of crime.