Dealing with physical and social disorder to prevent serious crime has become a central strategy for policing. This study evaluates the effects of policing disorder, within a problem‐oriented policing framework, at crime and disorder hot spots in Lowell, Massachusetts. Thirty‐four hot spots were matched into 17 pairs, and one member of each pair was allocated to treatment conditions in a randomized block field experiment. The officers engaged “shallow” problem solving and implemented a strategy that more closely resembled a general policing disorder strategy rather than carefully designed problem‐oriented policing responses. Nevertheless, the impact evaluation revealed significant reductions in crime and disorder calls for service, and systematic observations of social and physical disorder at the treatment places relative to the control places uncovered no evidence of significant crime displacement. A mediation analysis of the isolated and exhaustive causal mechanisms that comprised the strategy revealed that the strongest crime‐prevention gains were generated by situational prevention strategies rather than by misdemeanor arrests or social service strategies.

Problem-oriented policing has been suggested as a promising way to understand and prevent complex gang violence problems. A number of jurisdictions have been experimenting with new problem-oriented frameworks to understand and respond to gun violence among gang-involved offenders. These interventions are based on the "pulling levers" deterrence strategy that focuses criminal justice and social service attention on a small number of chronically offending gang members responsible for the bulk of urban gun violence problems. As part of the US Department of Justice-sponsored Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative, an interagency task force implemented a pulling levers strategy to prevent gang-related gun violence in Lowell, Massachusetts. Our impact evaluation suggests that the pulling levers strategy was associated with a statistically significant decrease in the monthly number of gun homicide and gun-aggravated assault incidents. A comparative analysis of gun homicide and gun-aggravated assault trends in Lowell relative to other major Massachusetts cities also supports a unique program effect associated with the pulling levers intervention.

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Property crime in Lowell, Massachusetts is fueled primarily by burglaries, motor vehicle crimes, and larcenies. The Lowell Police Department utilized the Smart Policing Initiative (SPI) to focus problem-solving efforts on property crime hot spots. Problem-solving is an effective crime reduction tool but deficiencies remain in implementing the problem-solving process. This article discusses how Lowell operationalized problem-solving in crime hot spots, focusing on the alignment between property crime problems and response strategies selected to achieve results. We apply the congruence model of organizational behavior, analyzing quantitative and qualitative data to measure the fit between problems and responses. We found a high degree of congruence between the SPI problem-solving components, which likely produced the positive crime reductions observed in the outcome data. By applying the concept of congruence, we offer a framework for strengthening problem solving at the outset through alignment of response strategies to crime problems.

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