Criminology of Place
Hot spot policing is based on the idea that some criminal activities occur in particular areas of a city. According to researchers crime is not spread around the city instead is concentrated in small places where half of the criminal activities occur (Braga chapter 12). Also, many studies has demonstrated that hot spots do show significant positive results suggesting that when police officers put their attention on small high crime geographic areas they can reduce criminal activities ( Braga, papachristo & hureau I press). According to researchers 50% of calls that 911 center received are usually concentrated in less than 5% of places in a city (Sherman, Gartin, & Buerger, 1989; Weisburd, Bushway, Lum, &Yang, 2004). That is the action of crime is often at the street and not neighborhood level. Thus police can target sizable proportion of citywide crime by focusing in on small number of high crime places (see Weisburd & Telep, 2010). In a meta-analysis of experimental studies, authors found significant benefits of the hot spots approach in treatment compared to control areas. They concluded that fairly strong evidence shows hot spots policing is an effective crime prevention strategy (Braga (007) .Importantly, there was little evidence to suggest that spatial displacement was a major concern in hot spots interventions. Crime did not simply shift from hot spots to nearby areas (see also Weisburd et al., 2006).
What should police be doing at crime hot spots?
There are still concerns about the effectiveness of hot spot policing, and what police officers should do in order to effectively reduce crime. Because police officer should be spending some time in these places it is essential to know what they should d...
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...ar offenders and geographic areas. Even though Operation Ceasefire was done as a citywide intervention in Boston, the deterrence message was only directed to a small audience rather than a general audience. Also, the operation was conducted by making explicit cause-and-effect connections between the behavior of the target population and the behavior of the authorities (Braga et al., 2001, pp. 201-202). Authors stated that the program implemented was credible because it was realistic to believe that police officers could target gang members living and offending in hot spots. For that reason, despite evaluations that use the whole city as the unit of analysis, in reality the programs are more focused on specific offenders and geographic areas within these larger contexts. They also share much in common with the other effective geographically focused police strategies.
Because of budget constraints, the study only used one beat to collect data on the effects of increasing police patrol. Even though money was an issue, the experiment could have yielded better data by repeating the experiment multiple times to see if the data they collected would be reliable. The experiment also took place during the winter. The report of the study even noted that there was some evidence that crime activity levels declined, just as street activity does, because of colder weather. Although the design of the study contained weaknesses, some of the methods used by the researchers worked well for this type of study. One of the strengths of this experiment was the different methods used to acquire illegal guns in the beat. By using a variation of ways to seize illegal weapons in the “hot spot,” it allowed officers to increase their chances of finding more illegal guns. Using different methods of search also could have led to greater number of potential offenders to know that officers were looking for illegal weapons and refrained from offending. Another strength of the study includes the relatively inexpensive method to try to answer their hypothesis. Increasing police patrol is one of the more inexpensive methods and it did manage to decrease the number of gun crimes and homicide in the
Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.
Policing is a very difficult, complex and dynamic field of endeavor that is always evolves as hard lessons teach us what we need to know about what works and what don’t work. There are three different Era’s in America’s policing: The Political Era, The Reform Era, and The Community Problem Solving Era. A lot has changed in the way that policing works over the years in the United States.
According to Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown (1974), patrol is the “backbone” of police work. This belief is based around the premise that the mere presence of police officers on patrol prohibits criminal activity. Despite increasing budgets and the availability of more officers on the streets, crime rates still rose with the expanding metropolitan populations (Kelling et al., 1974). A one year experiment to determine the effectiveness of routine preventive patrol would be conducted, beginning on the first day of October 1972, and ending on the last day of September 1973.
In order for the police to successfully prevent crimes, public cooperation is needed. Various community policing programs have been implemented and it is important to discuss the benefits and limitations of these programs. Community policing allows the community to be actively involved and become a partner in promoting safety. This partnership increases trust of police officers and helps citizens understand that the police are on their side and want to improve their quality of life (Ferreira, 1996). The role of the police officers goes beyond that of a “crime fighter” and expands to multiple roles including that of a victim-centered
Several California cities recently moved forward with gang injunctions to reduce violent crime rates. Gang injunctions have become a distinct Californian approach to fight crimes since they were first introduced in the 1980s in Los Angeles. The injunctions that have been granted primarily affect impoverished, minority neighborhoods and may actually serve to further stigmatize and oppress innocent minority youth who also live in these communities. Cities have issued them to fight local gangs, and promise that gang injunctions will cut down violent crime rate, and make the neighborhoods more safer; ho...
For decades, researchers have tried to determine why crime rates are stronger and why different crimes occur more often in different locations. Certain crimes are more prevalent in urban areas for several reasons (Steven D. Levitt, 1998, 61). Population, ethnicity, and inequality all contribute to the more popular urban. Determining why certain crimes occur more often than others is important in Criminal Justice so researchers can find a trend and the police can find a solution (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). The Uniform Crime Reports are a method in which the government collects data, and monitors criminal activity in the United States (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). They have both positive and negative attributes that have influenced
What should police be doing at crime hot spots? There are still concern about the effectiveness of hot spot policing, and what police officers should do in order to effectively reduce crime. Because police officer should be spending some time in these places it is essential to know what they should d...
Unfocused and indiscriminate enforcement actions will produce poor relationships between the police and community members residing in areas. Law enforcement should adopt alternative approaches to controlling problem areas, tracking hot persons, and preventing crime in problem regions. Arresting criminal offenders is the main police function and one of the most valuable tools in an array of responses to crime plagued areas, however hot spots policing programs infused with community and problem oriented policing procedures hold great promise in improving police and community relations in areas suffering from crime and disorder problems and developing a law enforcement service prepared to protect its nation from an act of
The first chapter of Policing Gangs in America is entitled, “Studying the Police Response to Gangs.” The primary purpose of the chapter is to establish how police agencies; Inglewood, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Phoenix in specific, respond to gang problems in their respective areas. This chapter served as an introduction, giving a brief history of gang-related policing, how the public and media see the gang problem, research studies done regarding gangs and the recent declaration to shift away from suppression-oriented strategies as a result of overly aggressive actions toward citizens. Examples of this misconduct are given in the forms of gang units from Las Vegas, Chicago and Houston.
However, how a community goes about dealing with this issue is controversial. According to the Office of Justice Programs, Operation Ceasefire “seeks to reduce gang violence, illegal gun possession, and gun violence in communities.” Officials for Operation Ceasefire advocate for local law enforcement to vamp up patrols in areas where violent crime is common. However, this could be an unintended consequence for those who live in these areas that don’t engage in violence. Essentially, maybe individuals in the community will not like the increased police patrols and will retaliate in a deviant manner. Also, it is important to understand that not all individuals get “chosen” to be part of Operation Ceasefire. Maybe those who don’t pass the screening process to partake will act out. In other words, when they see their friends partaking in the intervention and doing well, those who don’t get chosen may respond in a deviant manner. These are just a few unintended consequences that may be expected when communities implement this
Third, problem-oriented policing entails a greater and closer involvement by the public in police work. Communities must be consulted to ensure that police are addressing the...
Sampson, R., Raudenbush, S., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277, 918-924.
The key characteristics of community policing are as follows: Police officers are usually called upon to be particularly thoughtful, creative problem solvers. They are asked to listen to the concerns of community members, to logically reason out the roots of problems, to identify and research potential answers, to implement solutions, and to assess results. Police officers work in partnership with concerned citizens. The second characteristic is that police officers are visible and accessible component of the community and work with youths and other community members top address delinquency problems. On the third characteristic, police officers patrol a limited number of jurisdictions on foot. The so-called foot patrol officers are believed to be more approachable and offer a comforting presence to citizens. The fourth and last characteristic that will be mentioned on this paper is that the community policing have decentralized operations, which allows officers to develop greater familiarity with the needs of various constituencies in the community and to adapt procedures to accommodate those needs.
Otero, Juan. “Curbing street gang violence,” National League of Cities. 21 Dec 1998. General Reference Center Gold. Jan 2007