Hot corridors, deterrence, and guardianship: An assessment of the Omaha metro safety initiative

Does What Police Do at Hot Spots Matter? The Philadelphia Policing Tactics Experiment*

“…Hot spots policing is a promising strategy (Braga, Papachristos, and Hureau, ; Lum, Koper, and Telep, ; Sherman, ). The National Research Council Committee to Review Research on Police Policy and Practices (: 250) concluded that, “studies that focused police resources on crime hot spots provide the strongest collective evidence of police effectiveness that is now available.” With regard to specific tactics, directed patrol (Caeti, ; Crank et al., ; Sherman and Rogan, ; Sherman and Weisburd, ), fixed patrol presence (Lawton, Taylor, and Luongo, ), FP (Ratcliffe et al., ), order maintenance (Braga and Bond, ; Caeti, ; Weisburd and Green, 1995b), gun enforcement (Sherman and Rogan, ), and POP (Braga and Bond, ; Braga et al., ; Caeti, ; Hinkle and Weisburd, ; Mazzerolle, Price, and Roehl, ; Sherman, Buerger, and Gartin, ) have all been found to be effective at addressing different types of crime hot spots…”

Back to Basics: Two Issue Areas for the Future Urban Politics Agenda

“…For example, one article evaluating the impact of racial diversification of the police force (Hur, ) considered only crime clearance rates and police employee turnover (but see discussion below of Wilkins & Williams, , and Hickman & Piquero, ). The evaluations of various targeted policing initiatives examine only narrow, crime deterrence (and sometimes crime displacement) variables (McCabe, ; Elliott, Golub, & Dunlap, ; Braga, Hureau, & Papachristos, ; Crank et al., ). Even though these policing programs involve substantial use of order maintenance enforcement, targeting of street gang activity, and other types of targeting that have sparked critiques of bias and community pushback, the analyses tend not to treat political phenomena as outcomes of interest or mediating factors in the impact of the program.…”

The criminal justice system works!

“…But nothing is. It will always be the case that well-designed, well-intentioned programs and policies will occasionally produce unintended consequences, negative effects, or null findings (e.g., Barnes, Kurlychek, Miller, Miller, & Kaminski, 2010;Bouffard, Bergeron, & Bouffard, 2007;Crank et al, 2010;Flexon & Guerette, 2009;Griffin, 2010;Spano, 2007;Stemen & Rengifo, 2009;Wells, Ren, & DeLeon-Granados, 2010;Worrall, Hiromoto, Merritt, Du, Jacobson, & Iguchi, 2009). Upon careful analysis, however, it is also sometimes the case that even putatively ineffective components of the justice system, such as boot camps, can nevertheless have positive effects on correctional clients and result in cost savings (Meade & Steiner, 2010).…”