Facilitators and Impediments to Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Risk-Based Policing Strategies Using Risk Terrain Modeling: Insights from a Multi-City Evaluation in the United States

Abstract

The contemporary policing literature contains numerous examples of partnerships between academic researchers and police agencies. Such efforts have greatly contributed to evidence-based policing by increasing the knowledge base on effective strategies. However, research has demonstrated that successful collaboration between researchers and practitioners can be a challenge, with various organizational and inter-agency factors presenting difficulties at various stages of the process. Additionally, applied research can oftentimes face implementation challenges when the time comes to convert research into practice. The current study contributes to the literature by discussing researcher/practitioner partnerships and program implementation in the context of a multi-city risk-based policing project in the United States. We conceptualize police interventions as contingent on four distinct phases: 1) problem analysis, 2) project design, 3) project implementation, and 4) project evaluation. In this project, the research partners were able to successfully complete each phase in certain cities while the project experienced difficulty at one or more phases in other cities. We discuss these disparate experiences, identifying factors that facilitate or impede successful completion of each step. Policy implications and recommendations for future risk-based policing interventions are discussed.

Crime control effects of a police substation within a business improvement district: A quasi‐experimental synthetic control evaluation

“…Even though we took the increase of police officers as a given, measuring the dosage of police officer presence (rather than just police officer activity) would have allowed us to more precisely measure this potential causal mechanism. Recent research has advocated for modern GPS tracking technologies, such as automated vehicle locators (which are not deployed by NPD), as an innovative method to generate measures of police officer outputs in evaluations of place‐based policing programs (see Piza, Kennedy, & Caplan, 2018, pp. 495–496).…”

Predicting Dynamical Crime Distribution From Environmental and Social Influences

“…At a short timescale, our model predictions can inform practitioners when allocating police resources to places forecasted to be soon in greatest need of mitigation, based on the accumulation of recent crime occurrences. This would (1) help prevent the formation of hotspots by better directing police action and (2) help identify locations to where crime might be displaced after police intervention at an emerging hotspot [29]. On a longer timescale, our ability to identify the environmental drivers of crime may help policy makers better plan the urban and economic development of neighborhoods, either avoiding environmental features that are known to increase risk, or mitigating their effect with those decreasing risk [4,30].…”

Practitioner perspectives of multi-agency safeguarding hubs (MASH)

“…Too much formalisation can conflict with an individual's professional identity or judgement, potentially reducing the willingness of an agency or practitioner to engage (Sullivan & Skelcher, 2017). Consequently, the formation of a multi-agency partnership does not occur instantly but requires planning and implementation in stages (Van Eyk & Baum, 2002), with the development of trusting relationships enabling the dynamics of a partnership to change overtime (Piza et al, 2018).…”