Can the police cool down quality-of-life hotspots? A double-blind national randomized control trial of policing low-harm hotspots

Abstract

Substantial evidence suggests that focussing police resources on hotspots of crime has a discernable crime-reduction effect. However, little is known about the efficacy of proactively policing areas with higher concentrations of more common low-harm problems in society. This study evaluates the first national double-blind randomized controlled trial in which clearly identifiable hotspots (n = 488) of low-harm ‘quality-of-life’ incidents nested in 31 participating police stations were randomized to be either actively policed by any available police officer or by ‘business-as-usual’ reactive policing over a 12-month period. A series of count-based regression models show a moderate and statistically significant reduction in the number of quality-of-life incidents in treatment versus control hotspots, with more than 2,000 quality-of-life incidents prevented, without evidence of spatial displacement to street segments nearby. However, we find no diffusion of benefits in terms of other crime types within the same hotspots, which may suggest that either low- and high-harm crime hotspots are not spatially aligned with each other, that focussing police officers on one type of crime does not produce a suppression effect on other types of crime, or both. We discuss the implications of these results for crime policy and future research.

Overcoming unreported violence using place‐based ambulance data: The case for mapping hotspots based on health data for crime prevention initiatives

“…Our simulations allow us to make inferences pertaining to the impact of directing police patrols towards areas of high activity as identified by ambulance data in the Thames Valley region. As shown in Table 3, directing police attention towards hotspots will result in the targeting of roughly 50% of all injuries related to violence (Lee et al, 2017;Sherman et al, 1989;Weisburd, 2015; for other crime categories, see Ariel, Sutherland, et al, 2023).…”

Crime on the mass transit system in Hong Kong: a hotspots and harmspots trajectory approach

“…Ariel, 2023). The police can use historical data on crime locations to then apply costeffective interventions to reduce crime (Braga et al, 2019; see more recently Ariel et al, 2023). Using spatiotemporal analysis, the police can therefore enhance the quality of decision-making about the allocation of resources, formulation of patrol strategies and implementation of community involvement initiatives (Weisburd et al, 2017).…”

“…Indeed, a sentencing index cannot account for the varying "harm" experienced by a victim or the wider community, as the index observes the level of harm committed against the state (Paoli et al, 2013;Linehan, 2016;Ashby, 2018;Simon and J ıchov a, 2020). Moreover, the crime harm index fails to account for non-crime incidents, antisocial behaviour and physical disorder, which are not always recordable (or recorded) crimes but are also known to have an effect on the community where they occur (Ariel et al, 2023). Despite these shortcomings, there is great value in a crime harm measure as a method of overcoming the crudeness of the count based model that is usually applied in the measure of crime.…”

“…The police can use historical data on crime locations to then apply cost-effective interventions to reduce crime (Braga et al. , 2019; see more recently Ariel et al. , 2023).…”