Was the pope to blame? Statistical powerlessness and the predictive policing of micro‐scale randomized control trials

Abstract

Hinkle et al. (2013) highlighted a statistical powerlessness problem in hot-spots policing experiments in midsized cities with moderate property crime rates. The current work demonstrates that this problem is less readily resolved than previously suspected. It reviews results from a predictive policing randomized control trial in a large city with property crime rates higher than Chicago or Los Angeles. It reports, for the first time, a graphical analysis indicating the marked car patrol intervention, practically effective at the 500′ by 500′ (mission) grid level, three grids per shift, likely had a district-wide impact on reducing reported property crime. In addition, it reviews results of a series of thought experiments exploring statistical power impacts of four modified experimental designs. Only one alternative design, with spatially up-scaled predictive policing mission areas and concomitantly higher property crime prevalence rates, produced acceptable statistical power levels. Implications follow for current theoretical confusion in community criminology about concentration effects and units of analysis, and how models organize impacts across those different units. Implications follow for practice amid ongoing concerns about whether predictive policing works and, if it did, how to gauge its impacts and social justice costs. Policy Implications: The current work brings to the fore important questions beyond "does predictive

The Indianapolis harmspot policing experiment

“…They attribute the spurious violent crime findings to the scarcity of violent offenses that occur in micro-places within small eight-hour temporal windows. Taylor and Ratcliffe [69] pro-vide an excellent discussion of this precise data issue and its implications for evaluations of spatiotemporal policing interventions; that such low event counts hamper statistical modeling procedures to detect deterrence outcomes. Though the effectiveness of foot patrols within crime hot spots has mixed results [5], a higher dosage of foot patrols as opposed to vehicles patrols in control hot spots may have generated more observable deterrent effects.…”

“…With respect to identification of high crime micro-places, the effectiveness of dynamic hot spot policing and crime forecasting to generate similar crime prevention benefits lacks robust evidence. Rather than mapping historical crime occurrence, dynamic and forecasting approaches employ spatiotemporal event data to identify high-risk micro-places (typically grid cells of approximately 500 square feet) for police intervention [69]. Most common dynamic hot spotting methods include risk terrain modeling [35] kernel density estimation and smoothing [27,22], selfexciting point processes [48], near-repeat events [34], and combinations of these methods [7].…”

‘Led by Intelligence': A Scoping Review on the Experimental Evaluation of Intelligence-Led Policing

“…Statistical powerlessness. The challenge of achieving sufficient statistical power to detect significant effects, particularly in terms of crime reduction, was frequently discussed, chiefly in the context of place-based policing studies (Ariel et al, , 2020Gerell, 2016;Hunt et al, 2014;Lum et al, 2011;Piza et al, 2015;Piza & O'Hara, 2014;Ratcliffe et al, 2020;Rosenfeld, 2014;Santos & Santos, 2016Telep et al, 2014;Weisburd et al, 2015).…”

Relasi Kekuasaan antar Pemerintah, Masyarakat & LSM pada Revitalisasi Teluk Jakarta

“…Dimensi power cube memebentuk suatu kekuasaan dalam bentuk yang berbeda, bentuk tersebut berupa visible, hidden, dan invisible (Taylor et al,2020). Pemerintah Provinsi Jakarta sebagai pemangku kebijakan melaksanakan kewenangannya terhadap aktor lain seperti masyarakat dan NGO untuk membentuk suatu kekuasaan yang bersifat visible dalam ruang publik melalui kebijakan dan berbagai agenda formal yang diadakan untu perencanaan.…”