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The Importance of Place in Crime: David Weisburd — Transcript

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0:05I'm very uh happy to be here to be able
0:07to tell you a little bit about my work
0:09on crime and place. And these three guys
0:13I think summarize it pretty well. Uh
0:16location, location, location. Uh I'm
0:19going to tell you about the importance
0:20of location or hotspots of crime in
0:24crime prevention. Now, right at the
0:26outset, I just want to uh note that the
0:29work I'm going to tell you about occurs
0:30over two decades and a lot of colleagues
0:33and students have participated in this
0:35work and I won't have time throughout
0:37the presentation to name those them. So,
0:39I've put them here to give them credit
0:41right at the outset.
0:44Okay. So, the question is how does this
0:46work differ from conventional ideas
0:49about criminology and crime prevention?
0:52Uh
0:54criminology has had two basic uh uh
0:56folky over the years. One has been what
0:59might be called person- centered
1:00criminology. Uh as this fellow says on
1:03the screen, apart from illiteracy, low
1:05self-esteem, homelessness, poverty, and
1:08a broken home. I can't find any reason
1:11for this delinquent offending behavior.
1:13And the other fellow says, "It's a
1:14mystery." Well, that's been that mystery
1:16has been the focus of much criminology
1:19for the last century. Indeed, that's
1:21been the predominant focus and also the
1:22predominant focus of crime prevention
1:24has been programs that seek to do
1:26something uh about offenders and to
1:28rehabilitate them or to deter them or
1:31change the way they behave in some way.
1:33Now, criminologists and people concerned
1:35with crime prevention have also put
1:38stress on community-based criminology.
1:41In this case, the interest is in large
1:43macro geographic units like
1:45neighborhoods and communities. Uh the in
1:47the slide uh we have a figure from
1:48Frederick Thrash's work, a very famous
1:51uh criminologist in the 1920s from the
1:53University of Chicago. He was very
1:55interested in gang problems and he
1:57listed the area that's shaded here as
1:59the slum or gang land. The place that
2:02sort of produces the community or
2:03neighbor large area that produces crime
2:06problems.
2:09Now, the criminology of place that I'm
2:10going to tell you about today and its
2:12emphasis on hotspots of crime takes a
2:15very different approach and looks at the
2:17idea of microgeographic units of
2:20analysis. So, in the left of your
2:22screen, you have an example from a study
2:24that Lawrence Sherman and I conducted
2:26called the Minneapolis Hotspots
2:28experiment. And I'll tell you a little
2:29bit about that uh later. And in that
2:32study, we brought uh uh police patrol,
2:34intensive police patrol to very specific
2:37hotspots of crime that were just a
2:39street block in length, often from
2:41intersection to intersection. On the
2:43right of the screen, you have an example
2:44of slightly larger microun of analysis,
2:47but still a small hot spot. This is uh
2:49from Jersey City, New Jersey uh from
2:51another study I'll tell you about later.
2:53The orange uh in your screen is a is a
2:56hot spot of prostitution activity in
2:58which prostitution sort of went around
3:01those blocks. Now, either of these types
3:02of hotspots are much smaller than the
3:05communities or neighborhoods that have
3:07focused attention of of crime prevention
3:10scholars and criminologists who've
3:12thought about doing something about
3:14crime problems. So my focus today is on
3:16this micro geographic unit on these very
3:19small places.
3:22And what I'm going to argue is that
3:24these hotspots of crime should be a
3:26central focus for crime prevention. And
3:29let me tell you why. I'm going to show
3:30you that crime is very strongly
3:32concentrated at these hotspots so we can
3:35focus on a very small group of places
3:38and deal with a fairly substantial
3:40proportion of the crime problem.
3:43I'm going to show you the key geographic
3:45unit here is not the hot is not the
3:47community or the neighborhood these
3:49macro geographic areas but rather the
3:51hotspots. So it's not useful really many
3:54times to talk about bad communities that
3:57really stigmatize a whole community. I'm
3:58going to show you is the crime hotspots
4:00are often spread throughout the the city
4:02not only in so-called bad communities
4:05and within those communities most places
4:06are free of crime. We're really talking
4:08about a relatively small number of
4:10locations.
4:12I'm also going to show you that crime is
4:14coupled to place or tightly coupled to
4:16place. By that I mean there's a glue
4:18sticking crime to place. And that's an
4:20advantage for us because if there are
4:22specific reasons why crime is coupled to
4:25place, we can identify what those
4:26reasons are and try to do something
4:28about them. And it also means that the
4:31great boogeyman of this sort of
4:32approach, which is crime is just going
4:34to move around the corner. it's going to
4:36displace to areas nearby may not be true
4:39because the areas may nearby may not
4:41have those same characteristics that are
4:43coupling those crime to those places.
4:46Now because of that uh we have a number
4:49of studies that have been done on
4:51hotspots policing and this is an area
4:53with a lot of empirical evidence and I
4:55want to show you a little bit about a
4:57little of that evidence. I'm going to
4:58show you that police cr can prevent
5:00crime and crime hotspots. We have good
5:02experimental evidence for that. And they
5:04can do that without simply displacing
5:06crime.
5:08And finally, I want to talk about
5:09hotspots of crime as an opportunity for
5:12effective and efficient social
5:13prevention. And I won't have a lot of
5:16data to show you because this is really
5:17new area of thinking. But I hope to
5:20encourage you in this area. And I'm also
5:22going to talk a little bit about
5:23community justice and hotspots of crime
5:25or at least some ideas I have. And those
5:27ideas are coming from someone that knows
5:28really very little about the kind of
5:30work you do. So I hope after I give
5:31those ideas, you'll tell me how I was
5:33wrong and we ought to change it to make
5:35those ideas sort of work. Okay. So let
5:38me start out with the concentration of
5:40crime at hotspots. Now since the late
5:421980s, we've had a series of studies
5:45that show us that crime is not spread
5:48throughout urban areas. They're
5:49concentrated very specific places. Now
5:52this this is a slide from a study I did
5:53that was the first study to look
5:55longitudinally. What happens when we
5:57look over long periods of time? This is
5:59a 14 years in Seattle. We're looking at
6:01crime incidents and we're looking at
6:03crime incidents at street segments from
6:05intersection to intersection. There are
6:07about 25,000 street segments in Seattle.
6:10Now, what you can see here is that 50%
6:13of the crime each year, it's an amazing
6:16stability, occurs at just 5% of the
6:19street segments. That that's really
6:21provides a tremendous opportunity. If if
6:24crime is concentrated at a small number
6:26of places, why are we spreading crime
6:28resources all across the city? For
6:29example, as we commonly did with police
6:31in random preventive patrol, let's
6:33spread the police everywhere. They got a
6:35maximum deterrence. Well, you don't need
6:37maximum deter deterrence necessarily if
6:40crime is contrary to a very small number
6:41of places. And by the way, these same
6:43concentrations have been found, although
6:45not longitudinally, in Minneapolis, in
6:47Boston, in other cities throughout the
6:50US. And I've even even recently done a a
6:52a study recently and we found looking at
6:542010 that 5% of the street segments in
6:57Tel Aviv produced 50% of the crime.
7:00Which leads me to an idea which I call
7:01the law of crime concentrations.
7:04Now if we look at even tighter
7:06concentrations, we get we can get a
7:08sense of even focusing our efforts even
7:10more. In Seattle over the 14-year period
7:13we studied, 247 chronic crime street
7:16segments produced about 22% of all the
7:20crime incidents. So about 1% of the
7:22street segments produce about 23% of the
7:27crime. That's an again an amazing
7:29opportunity for crime prevention. For
7:31certain specific types of crime, we
7:33found even greater concentrations. For
7:36example, in juvenile crime, we found
7:38that 86 street segments account for
7:41about a third of all official juvenile
7:43crime incidents. Of course, kids may be
7:46committing crimes in lots of other
7:47places that don't show up on the police
7:49records, but still to be able to
7:50approach a third of all the sort of
7:52police records on juvenile offending by
7:54going to 86 streets out of 25,000. Well,
7:57that's an amazing opportunity for crime
8:00prevention. Now, what about a
8:02comparison? Well, we really don't have a
8:04good comparison because we don't know
8:06every person that commits every crime.
8:08But if we look at arrests, for example,
8:10we found in Seattle that about 6,000
8:13offenders produce 50% of the arrest each
8:16year in Seattle. Now, about 1500 street
8:19segments produce 50% of the arrest. So
8:21certainly we have a a relatively smaller
8:23number of targets, though this is not a
8:26perfect comparison by any stretch. But
8:28it's a lot easier to find these street
8:30segments than it is to find these
8:31offenders. if you've ever gone, and I
8:33expect some of you have gone in the
8:35street trying to find people uh uh uh
8:37that are repeat offenders or problematic
8:39offenders.
8:42Okay, so my first point was that crime
8:44is incredibly concentrated and that
8:46provides an opportunity for crime
8:48prevention. But if those concentrations
8:51are all in one small area, this doesn't
8:54do us very much good. In other words, if
8:57it's really one bad community with all
8:59the 86 hotspots and it's in one part of
9:01that community, well then we haven't
9:03really gone very much further than the
9:05Chicago School of Criminology did in the
9:081920s. But here's those 86 street
9:11segments. I think you can see them here.
9:14The first observation is they're spread
9:16throughout the city. Now, that's really
9:17interesting because the bad part of the
9:19city in Seattle is generally conceived
9:22to be down here and up here and around
9:24these edges here. These are really nice
9:26areas the whole north. So, uh, in
9:28Seattle, what it turns out is that the
9:31hotspots for juvenile crime, not in one
9:33specific community. That's the bad
9:36community. I actually have to tell you
9:38that I find that idea of stigmatizing a
9:40whole neighborhood or a whole community
9:41is crimeridden, is just wrong because
9:43I'll show you another slide in a minute
9:45a minute that talks about the tremendous
9:46variability within such communities. But
9:49anyway, so you have a tremendous spread
9:51of these hotspots. Now, there is a focus
9:53of the hotspots. It's not in the worst
9:55part of town. It's actually in the
9:56central business district. And the
9:57reason for that, as I'll tell you
9:59perhaps a bit about later, is that these
10:01are places with movies, malls, shopping
10:04centers. These are the juvenile activity
10:06spaces where these kids hang out. But
10:08even within that area of the center of
10:11the city, there's a good deal, if you
10:12look at this inset, and even here we
10:14could blow it up more. There's a good
10:16deal of street by street variability.
10:20Now, often when we think about crime in
10:23a bad area, this is the southern part of
10:25Seattle. It's a little more, it's not
10:27considered the best area of town. Uh
10:29there are nice areas here as well, I
10:31should note. But if you look, the color
10:33here, the red on on your screen are the
10:36chronic crime hotspot, that 1% causing
10:38most of the problems. The green and
10:41yellow are places with no crime, with
10:43either no crime at all or very little
10:45crime. Now, first of all, on the right
10:47side, there is an area people often
10:48think of as a problematic area. Most of
10:50the places have little or no crime. Most
10:52of the streets have little or no crime.
10:53And these are residential streets quite
10:55often as well. And those hotspots are
10:58spread again all over the place. So,
11:00what we ought to be doing is sending our
11:02resources to those chronic crime
11:04hotspots that are producing a great deal
11:06of the crime problem and not spreading
11:08them, if you like, across whole areas.
11:11Okay. So, I I hope you've accepted my
11:14idea that crime is very concentrated at
11:17these micro places, that there is
11:19tremendous street by street variability,
11:21that they're often spread across an
11:23urban landscape, which means that
11:25they're not just proxies for
11:26communities. But another important fact
11:29of the research we've done is that crime
11:31is strongly coupled to place. What I
11:33mean by that again is that there's
11:35something binding crime to place. there
11:37are factors or characteristics of those
11:38places that draw crime there or that
11:41make crime a a good activity for
11:44criminals in those uh particular places
11:46and that has two implications. If crime
11:49is coupled to place then it means it
11:52just doesn't you know you can identify
11:54the problematic issues there and if you
11:56can identify the problematic issues
11:58behind that coupling then you can try to
12:00do something about it right the first
12:02element is diagnosis what are the
12:04problems leading to crime there and what
12:06can we do about it [snorts] the second
12:07element is very important because as
12:09crime is coupled to place then it
12:11doesn't just move easily to some other
12:13place because there are specific
12:15characteristics of those places that
12:17lead to crime and other places nearby
12:19may not have those characteristics.
12:22Well, this is a uh this is a statistical
12:25analysis. Please excuse me. It's called
12:27a trajectory analysis. What we did was
12:29we uh we took the 25,000 street segments
12:32over the 14-year period and we tried to
12:35group them into statistical patterns or
12:38groups called trajectories. But what I
12:40want you to notice is this trajectory
12:42right here. This is the chronic crime
12:45street segments. I've already told you
12:46about that. 1% of the streets producing
12:48between 22 and 23% of all crime in
12:52Seattle over the period. But look how
12:54stable this is across the time period.
12:56There's a declining element here. Not
12:58surprising in a way. This was during the
12:59great crime decline. Crime in Seattle
13:02declined about 22 or 23% during the
13:04period. But here this stability tells us
13:07that crime isn't just jumping from place
13:09to place. There's something there.
13:11There's something there holding that
13:12creating that stability of crime.
13:15And what can those things be? This is
13:18from the juvenile study I told you about
13:20a few minutes ago. And over here with
13:23six, seven, and eight, these are the
13:25locations of crime incidents for the
13:28hotspots for those 86 street segments
13:31producing a substantial proportion of
13:33the juvenile crime problem. And what you
13:36can see here is I've highlighted by
13:37blue. Where are they? Shops, malls,
13:39restaurants, schools, youth centers.
13:41It's not surprising to you, but of
13:42course, until you show something, I
13:44always say the best science is often
13:46obvious. Well, where are the kids
13:48committing crime? They're hanging out in
13:50places, right, in juvenile activity
13:52spots, where there's movies or other
13:54things to do. And then quite often, as
13:56sociologists would describe, they're not
13:58well supervised, and that's when they
14:00get themselves into trouble. So, we
14:02could say that one of the things that
14:03leaks juvenile crime to place are these
14:05juvenile activity spaces.
14:07And the crime is not going to just move
14:09from the mall by the way to the street
14:11next door where there's private
14:13apartments because kids have nothing to
14:14do there of course. Now we've tried to
14:17identify in our work the specific risk
14:20and protective factors that are related
14:22to crime at place. And we've done
14:24actually a pretty good job. Uh this is
14:27work that's going to be coming out in a
14:29book at Oxford University Press called
14:30the criminology of place. And in that
14:32book, we tried to model to find those
14:35risk and protective factors that tell us
14:37something about why that coupling
14:39occurs. Now, those models explain about
14:4370% of the variability in crime across
14:46street segments. That's another way of
14:47saying how well you're doing. Well,
14:49you're doing pretty well because Alex
14:50Picero and I, we did a study in
14:52chronology of person-based explanations,
14:55how well they've done, and those have
14:57only done on average about 32%. This is
15:00not an exact comparison, but it does
15:01tell you that very early on we can
15:04identify a lot of the reasons why crime
15:07occurs in certain places or at least the
15:08risk and protective factors for crime in
15:11those places. Now, this is just a few of
15:14those characteristics. This is from a
15:16large multivaried analysis which uh uh
15:19each of these individual traits are
15:20controlled for others. And if you look
15:21at the bottom, I've listed out all the
15:23traits that were uh controlled in this
15:25analysis. And what we're doing here is
15:28predicting what makes you a chronic
15:29crime hot spot as opposed to a cool
15:32spot. Well, there are two sorts of
15:35groups of explanations you might think
15:36about that have different implications
15:38for crime control. So, let me just tell
15:40you a bit about that. One is we might
15:42call opportunity characteristics in this
15:44area of work. The people that have been
15:46predominant theoretical theoretically
15:48are people like Ron Clark, situational
15:50crime prevention, ru routine activities
15:52theory, uh crime pattern theory. I don't
15:55know if you're familiar with these, but
15:56these are all theories that emphasize
15:58that at very specific locations, there
16:00are specific opportunities for crime.
16:02For example, if you have a victim at a
16:05place, potential victims, lots of people
16:07with money, and you have motivated
16:09offenders who are hanging out around
16:10there, and there's an absence of capable
16:13guardians, there are no police around,
16:14well, you're going to have a crime
16:16event. So, they this approach focuses on
16:18opportunities. There's another approach.
16:20It goes back to the 1920s at the Chicago
16:22school mostly about communities and this
16:25approach focuses on social interventions
16:28on social disorganization. In other
16:30words, this approach says that you know
16:32the social nature of a place whether
16:34there's poverty or social
16:36disorganization whether the people can
16:38act together in a collaborative way that
16:40will impact on whether crime can occur
16:43at that place. Because if people can
16:45exercise informal social controls, they
16:48can stop crime before it gets started.
16:50So those are the two predominant ways of
16:52thinking about these sorts of problems.
16:54In this area, almost all the thinking
16:57has been on opportunity. And in fact,
16:58opportunity is really important. This is
17:01an order of the strength of these
17:03variables is risk and protect protective
17:05factors. And it turns out the most
17:07important the three most important risk
17:09and protective factors are uh how many
17:12employees are on that block. Well,
17:13that's a measure of potential victims.
17:14People come to work, they drive their
17:16cars, they leave them on the street,
17:17they may leave on Fridays with checks,
17:19etc. [snorts] More people around,
17:22they've become, if you like, potential
17:24victims. Well, the number of residents,
17:26well, that's just a a way of saying that
17:27you have more people in the street,
17:29there are more potential victims. Again,
17:30an aspect of opportunity. It's also the
17:33case that high-risisk juveniles are very
17:35strongly connected to whether you're
17:37going to be a crime hotspot or not. Uh
17:39in this case, we define uh high-risisk
17:42juveniles as juveniles who have uh
17:44problems with uh um truency and bad
17:47records at school. We think of them as
17:49potentially uh uh potential people who
17:51could be motivated offenders. There's
17:53one other thing to notice here. It's
17:55arterial roads. Uh you saw that if you
17:57noticed on the map I showed you before,
17:59all those red lines going down like this
18:01along arterial roads. Well, it's very
18:04important. Well, it's another
18:05opportunity characteristic. If people
18:07can get there, it means people are
18:09getting there and more people around.
18:10It's easier for offenders to get around.
18:12So, opportunities are clearly important
18:14for chronic crime hotspots. And at least
18:16theoretically, that suggests that if we
18:19can increase guardianship at those
18:20places, we can do something about crime.
18:22And indeed, I'm going to show you
18:24there's a very strong literature now on
18:26bringing police to hotspots of crime.
18:27So, opport reducing opportunities
18:29through guardianship can be effective.
18:31But there are also social
18:33characteristics who show up and this is
18:34really new and I think surprising to
18:36many people who work in this area. It
18:39turns out that property value is also an
18:41important predictor of whether you're in
18:43a crime a chronic crime hotspot. It's
18:44not only that increasing crime uh
18:46increasing property values are also
18:48related to increases in the likelihood
18:50of crime over the period. So it turns
18:53out that the sort of uh social feature
18:55at least one element of socioeconomic
18:57status has an impact on whether a place
19:01uh produces crime. Even more interesting
19:04to me is the idea of collective
19:05efficacy. In recent years in community
19:08research, there's been a strong emphasis
19:10that when people can work together for
19:12the common good, which is what
19:13collective efficacy is, that they can do
19:17something about preventing crime. they
19:19it leads to an ability to exercise
19:21informal social controls and there have
19:22been many programs that have developed
19:24with the idea of increasing collective
19:26efficacy in communities. Well, we found
19:29that collective efficacy and the way we
19:31measured it was the percent of resident
19:33active voters. In other words, were
19:35people here uh uh uh were they active?
19:38If they were active voters, we thought
19:39maybe they'd be active in other aspects
19:41of community affairs. But what we found
19:44was that collective efficacy is
19:45incredibly strongly predictive of crime
19:48at the street segment level. And by the
19:50way, there's tremendous variability
19:52streetto street. One street there's a
19:54lot of collective efficacy. Another
19:55street there's very little. And I think
19:57you guys probably all know that if
19:58you're working a bit in the community.
20:00In any event, that suggests that maybe
20:02we ought also to think about social
20:04interventions in doing something about
20:06crime and place.
20:09Okay, let me tell you a little bit about
20:11uh what we know about preventing crime
20:14of plays from the perspective of the
20:15police.
20:17The first major study in this area was
20:19conducted by Lauren Sherman and I showed
20:21you the unit of analysis at the very
20:23beginning. It's called the Minneapolis
20:24hotspots uh experiment. What we did is
20:27we identified 110 uh hotspots of crime
20:31uh streets with a lot a lot of crime and
20:33then we randomly allocated them to a
20:35treatment group and a control group and
20:37the treatment group received two to
20:39three times as much crime as much patrol
20:41as a control group. And at this time by
20:43the way was during the nothing works
20:45period. So everyone was saying you know
20:47nothing works the police can't do
20:48anything about crime. And if you look at
20:49to the right of your slide, you can see
20:51at least for most of the period we
20:53looked at, the experimental group had a
20:55lower crime rates consistently than the
20:58uh control group. Now, you'll also
21:01notice that that didn't happen here. Uh
21:03you notice this is the summer. In fact,
21:05it didn't happen here because the
21:06experiment broke down because the cops
21:08couldn't get more police patrol to the
21:10treatment sites. Everybody was going on
21:12vacation and the kids were out of school
21:13and things were getting a little crazy.
21:15But during the period they could, they
21:17were able to reduce crime. So it's not
21:19only theoretically true we should be
21:20able to reduce opportunity, it's also
21:22works. The police could do something
21:24about crime.
21:26Now the Minneapolis hotspot experiment
21:28led to a number of experimental and
21:30quasi experimental studies of hotspots
21:32policing and these have consistently
21:34showed the same results. Anthony Bragg
21:36did a Campbell collaboration review in
21:382001. He found nine good studies to look
21:42at hotspots of crime. in seven of them
21:44placing hotspots uh had strong
21:47crimerevention benefits. He had five
21:49randomized experiments. Four of those
21:52five randomized experiments showed uh
21:54significant effects for crime
21:56prevention. Now a new Campbell review by
21:58Anthony Bragg and colleagues finds 25
22:01studies now many of them experimental
22:03studies and they find overall 20 of the
22:0625 significant crimerevention benefits
22:08to hotspots policing and uh in a meta
22:11analysis significant uh uh effect sizes.
22:15Now you could say but doesn't crime just
22:17move around the corner? Well having
22:19heard me a bit you should say well no no
22:21that doesn't happen. Why? Because it may
22:23not be around the corner is a good a
22:25place to commit crime. may not be a good
22:26place to commit crime at all. It may not
22:28have those characteristics coupling
22:30crime to place. But I wanted to do a
22:32study that focused specifically on that
22:34issue. And at the police foundation, we
22:36did something called the police
22:37foundation displacement and diffusion
22:38study. In this case, we identified two
22:41uh crime hotspots. One for prostitution,
22:44one for drugs and violent crime. We ex
22:47we brought tremendous police resources
22:49to the hotspot area. You saw one of the
22:51hotspot areas at the beginning. We
22:53watched this very carefully. We did 3,20
22:56minute social observations. We sent
22:58ethnographic researchers out to the
23:01sites. We did interviews with offenders.
23:03Well, you can see the results and all
23:05the figures pretty much follow this that
23:07when this is the treatment line. When we
23:09brought treatment, the behavior went way
23:11down at the prostitution site. So, we
23:14knew that already, right? Hotspots
23:15policing reduces crime at the specific
23:17hotspots. But here are the areas around
23:19the hotspot. One street around, this is
23:21two streets around. And what you find in
23:24catchment area one and catchment area
23:25two is not displacement. Displacement
23:28would be that these guys, this goes
23:29down, these guys go up because crime's
23:31just moving around the corner. We find
23:33they follow basically the same pattern.
23:35And they follow what a colleague of
23:37mine, Ron Clark, and I call a diffusion
23:39of crime control benefits.
23:42Now, why is that? Well, it's because
23:44there weren't opportunities for crime
23:45nearby of the same type. For example,
23:48prostitutes don't like to operate in
23:50areas where there are a lot of people
23:51around who going to call the police. And
23:52nearby this prostitution site there were
23:54large apartment buildings and they were
23:56concerned about that. It's also the case
23:58by the way that offenders resist spatial
24:00displacement. But that I mean that they
24:02become familiar quite often where they
24:03are. Do you like moving? They don't like
24:05moving. It's also beyond familiarity. It
24:08can be dangerous to move. There might be
24:10other people there don't want you there.
24:11If it's a good place for dealing drugs,
24:12for example, or it may be that you don't
24:15know the people. You don't know who
24:16calls the police and who doesn't. You
24:17don't know who's problematic and who's
24:19not. And finally, it takes effort to
24:21move where you commit crimes just as it
24:23takes effort to move where you live or
24:25where you work.
24:27Now, again, these findings have been
24:28confir confirmed in systematic reviews.
24:30There are two Campbell reviews on this
24:31subject. Anthony Braggen colleagues, as
24:34I mentioned before, their new review
24:36looks at this. They find little evidence
24:38of displacement. They find significant
24:40evidence of diffusion of crime control
24:41benefits. And that's really important
24:44because that means that you can focus in
24:45on hotspots and places nearby those
24:48hotspots get better as well. It's not
24:50just that you move things around the
24:51corner. Bowers at Al and another review
24:53looking not only of policing but of more
24:55general interventions finds that
24:57diffusion of crime control benefits is a
25:00more likely outcome of place-based
25:01initiatives than spatial crime
25:03displacement.
25:06Okay. The National Research Council to
25:08sum up says studies that focus police
25:10resources on crime hotspots provide the
25:12strongest collective evidence of police
25:14effectiveness that's now available.
25:17Hotspots and social prevention. Well,
25:19it's good I don't have a lot of evidence
25:20because I don't have much time left. So,
25:22let me just tell you a little bit about
25:23that and ideas for you. So, I think
25:26there's a great opportunity here, a
25:28great opportunity to change the scale of
25:29social interventions for crime
25:31prevention because one of the criticisms
25:34that many crime prevention people I talk
25:36to is I can't change poverty in
25:38neighborhoods. I can't change collective
25:40efficacy in neighborhoods. First of all,
25:42the way the government's going now, I
25:43don't have any money to do stuff like
25:45that. The money is getting smaller and
25:46smaller. It's just too big. And beyond
25:48that, it's just a scale beyond what
25:51crimerevention practitioners uh can do
25:53something about. But what if the only
25:55thing we have to do is focus on 247
25:58street segments in the city together at
26:00a quarter of all crime problems. Well,
26:02then we've lowered the scale and
26:04crimerevention practitioners can now
26:06focus their resources very efficiently.
26:08In this present government and Congress,
26:10this should resonate. they can focus
26:11very efficiently on a small number of
26:13places and they can think about doing
26:15something about those places and being
26:17successful. It's one thing to attempt
26:20change in social conditions of an entire
26:23neighborhood or city. It's another to
26:25try to emilate problems on specific
26:27blocks on 1% of that city. And so my
26:30view is perhaps it's time to consider
26:32providing for example economic aid to
26:34problematic street blocks and not to
26:36neighborhoods overall. And that's not
26:38crazy. In in Redlands, California, a
26:40police chief, uh, working with a housing
26:43authority, brought housing money to
26:46neighborhoods, small areas, not full
26:48neighborhoods, where there was problems
26:50to try to improve housing. Weed and Seed
26:53has done the same thing. Why not instead
26:55of applying it to those large
26:56neighborhoods, go after these very, very
26:58specific places? You'll be able to use
27:00your money in effect more efficiently. I
27:02think it's also maybe time to think of
27:04increasing collective efficacy on street
27:06segments and not in whole neighborhoods
27:09because it's just a hell of a lot easier
27:10to deal with smaller problems and that
27:12are manageable. So what about you guys?
27:15Community justice and hotspots of crime.
27:17And here I there's not only no evidence,
27:18I'm completely ignorant. So I say
27:20something embarrassing, be nice about it
27:22when you ask the questions, please. So
27:24here's the let's say the following.
27:27Maybe we can marshall community courts
27:28to increase supervision. What do I mean?
27:31Are the police the only actors that can
27:33increase surveillance in deterrence of
27:34places? For sure not. Indeed, the police
27:38can be noxious. Let's take those
27:40juvenile hotspots. Sending police there
27:42is the worst thing you can do. There's
27:44plenty of evidence. There's a Campbell
27:45review that says any type of police
27:48processing through the system is bad. So
27:50why would you send people whose major
27:53resource is arresting people, right? So
27:55sending police to juvenile crime
27:57hotspots may not be a good thing. So
27:59maybe we should be sending other people.
28:01I thought in Seattle they're thinking of
28:03sending social workers and teachers to
28:05these malls and other places to hang out
28:06there and talk to the kids and do stuff
28:08like that. But maybe, and that's an
28:11aspect of increasing supervision,
28:13preventing that unsupervised
28:14socializing, maybe community sanctions
28:17can involve increasing adult supervision
28:19at juvenile crime hotspots. I think it's
28:21a nice opportunity. And what about
28:24marshalling community justice for
28:26increasing collective efficacy? You
28:28know, uh maybe community courts can be
28:30used to increase collective efficacy at
28:33street segments. Maybe you can get uh
28:34people to work at those segments with
28:36people to increase their commitment,
28:38their willingness to involve themselves
28:39in public affairs. Maybe to increase
28:41their connection to the police because
28:42one way to use the police effectively is
28:44to have the community connect to them to
28:46get a sense of safety so they can bring
28:48their own informal social controls which
28:51in the long run are less costly and may
28:53also be more effective.
28:57Well, uh, I appreciate the time. I know
28:58it's the end of the day and everybody's
29:00tired and you've been through a lot, but
29:02I hope you'll agree with these guys
29:03that, uh, location, location, location,
29:05not only in real estate, it's also an
29:07important idea in crime prevention.
29:09Thank you very much. [applause]

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