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

Groff, Elizabeth R.; Ratcliffe, Jerry H.; Haberman, Cory P.; Sorg, Evan T.; Joyce, Nola M.; Taylor, Ralph B.

doi:10.1111/1745-9125.12055

Cited by 149 publications

(137 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Other firearm violence prevention programs have either been unsuccessful or require more costly human resources to be active and ever-present for them to work. [8][9][10][11][12] Blight remediation may outperform many of these other programs in terms of value and sustainability.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The few interventions that have been shown to reduce firearm violence are often costly to sustain, politically impractical, or potentially infringe on Constitutional protections. [8][9][10][11][12] Only a modicum of attention has been paid to intervening upon the context within which firearm violence occurs and the urban environments in which it thrives. It is now commonly accepted that changing the context within which health problems occur is a leading opportunity for high-impact change, often better than focusing on individuals and lifestyles.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Urban Blight Remediation as a Cost-Beneficial Solution to Firearm Violence

et al. 2016

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Objectives. To determine if blight remediation of abandoned buildings and vacant lots can be a cost-beneficial solution to firearm violence in US cities.Methods. We performed quasi-experimental analyses of the impacts and economic returns on investment of urban blight remediation programs involving 5112 abandoned buildings and vacant lots on the occurrence of firearm and nonfirearm violence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1999 to 2013. We adjusted before-after percent changes and returns on investment in treated versus control groups for sociodemographic factors.Results. Abandoned building remediation significantly reduced firearm violence -39% (95% confidence interval [CI] = -28%, -50%; P < .05) as did vacant lot remediation (-4.6%; 95% CI = -4.2%, -5.0%; P < .001). Neither program significantly affected nonfirearm violence. Respectively, taxpayer and societal returns on investment for the prevention of firearm violence were $5 and $79 for every dollar spent on abandoned building remediation and $26 and $333 for every dollar spent on vacant lot remediation.Conclusions. Only a modicum of attention has been paid to intervening upon the context within which firearm violence occurs and the urban environments in which it thrives. It is now commonly accepted that changing the context within which health problems occur is a leading opportunity for high-impact change, often better than focusing on individuals and lifestyles. [13][14][15][16][17] This may also apply to firearm violence-individuals who are simply instructed to adhere to safety practices are unlikely to be successful if the unsafe context within which they find themselves day after day does not permit it. Directly changing the contexts and environments that promote firearm violence is a potentially potent solution to explore in reducing the persistent problem of firearm violence in the United States. Such contextual changes may take the form of actual, in-situ changes to the environments themselves, an approach that may be more politically feasible, economically viable, and have a greater probability of widespread implementation. 13,18 Cities in the United States experience a heavily disproportionate burden of the nation's interpersonal firearm violence. 19Urban shootings are concentrated in neighborhoods stricken by poverty and neglect, and a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that blighted neighborhood environments are strongly tied to firearm violence in US cities. 9,[20][21][22][23][24][25] It is very possible that directly treating aspects of these blighted environments in inexpensive ways could produce lasting reductions in urban firearm violence. However, to our knowledge, no research has yet investigated the cost benefits, Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6021 (e-mail: cbranas@upenn.edu). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the "Reprints" link.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Urban Blight Remediation as a Cost-Beneficial Solution to Firearm Violence

et al. 2016

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“…A recent movement in policing has been a resurgence of hot spot policing, 'targeted on foot patrols' , fuelled by the willingness of a number of police forces to implement randomised control trials (RCTs) of hot spot policing effectiveness (Ratcliffe, Taniguchi, Groff, & Wood, 2011;Braga, Papachristos, & Hureau, 2012;Groff et al, 2015). Successes are evident for hot spot policing targeting burglary, repeat calls for service, nuisance bars, drugs, and violent crime, in particular when focussed on hot spots defined tightly in both place and time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crime and the NTE: multi-classification crime (MCC) hot spots in time and space

Newton

2015

Crime Sci

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This paper examines crime hot spots near licensed premises in the night-time economy (NTE) to investigate whether hot spots of four different classification of crime and disorder co-occur in time and place, namely violence, disorder, drugs and criminal damage. It introduces the concept of multi-classification crime (MCC) hot spots; the presence of hot spots of more than one crime classification at the same place. Furthermore, it explores the temporal patterns of identified MCC hot spots, to determine if they exhibit distinct spatio-temporal patterns. Getis Ord (GI*) hot spot analysis was used to identify locations of statistically significant hot spots of each of the four crime and disorder classifications. Strong spatial correlations were found between licensed premises and each of the four crime and disorder classifications analysed. MCC hot spots were also identified near licensed premises. Temporal profiling of the MCC hot spots revealed all four crime types were simultaneously present in time and place, near licensed premises, on Friday through Sunday in the early hours of the morning around premise closing times. At other times, criminal damage and drugs hot spots were found to occur earlier in the evening, and disorder and violence at later time periods. Criminal damage and drug hot spots flared for shorter time periods, 2-3 h, whereas disorder and violence hot spots were present for several hours. There was a small spatial lag between Friday and Saturday, with offences occurring approximately 1 h later on Saturdays. The implications of these findings for hot spot policing are discussed.

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“…Issues of race in policing are not exclusively contemporary, as seen in differential crime/arrest rates across race in Chicago School research (Shaw and McKay, 1942) or the findings of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967). In many instances, it may be currently impossible to disentangle the true impact of race on crime (Massey and Sampson, 2009), though a recent study by the Center for Policing Equity at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggests that racial disparities in police use of force remain robust after controlling for other potential explanations, such as violent crime and racial distribution of local arrest rates" (Groff et al, 2015).…”

Section: The Challenge Of Race and Perceptions Of Policementioning

confidence: 99%