Geographically focused policing initiatives increase the presence and visibility of police officers at specific high-crime locations to significantly reduce crime and disorder. This practice is rated Promising for reducing crime in treatment areas relative to control areas.
Practice Goals
Geographically focused policing initiatives increase the presence and visibility of police officers at specific high-crime locations to significantly reduce crime and disorder. The adoption of geographically focused policing interventions may be guided by a variety of different policing strategies, including:
Hot spots policing/directed patrol. Certain places are intensively policed with high-visibility foot patrols or other strategic tactics.
Police crackdown. This involves police cracking down on a particular crime problem (e.g., through drug enforcement) or on a particular set of people (e.g., a certain group of gang members).
Community policing interventions. The same officer is usually assigned to a specific geographical area on a permanent basis so that they can become familiar with local issues.
Broken windows/Compstat. Assertive enforcement of minor offenses and order maintenance approaches are used.
Police-led environmental improvement. Police are the driving force in encouraging changes to the environment to discourage crime (e.g., physical redesign of areas or security surveys resulting in recommendations).
Problem-oriented/Intelligence-led policing projects. Interventions adhere to the Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment (SARA) process (Weisburd et al. 2008). The SARA process involves the identification of a problem believed to be related to crime or disorder outcomes, the development and administration of a response specifically tailored to this problem, and an assessment of the effects of the response on a crime or disorder outcome.
Target Areas
When implementing geographically focused policing initiatives, the target areas may include small places (e.g., crime hot spots, problem buildings), smaller police-defined areas (e.g., beats), neighborhoods and selected stretches of roads or highways, or larger police-defined areas (e.g., precincts).
Practice Theory
Geographically focused policing initiatives are often based on rational choice theory, which suggests that criminal behavior is a product of choices and decisions made by the person after weighing the risks and rewards of committing a crime (Clarke and Cornish 1986). These choices are derived from their perceptions of the situational landscape; thus, geographically focused crime prevention efforts to block crime opportunities are expected to deter crime.
No meta-analysis outcomes available.
Meta-Analysis Snapshot
Literature Coverage Dates
Number of Studies
Number of Study Participants
Meta Analysis 1
1971-2010
16
178
Meta Analysis 1
Bowers and colleagues (2011) conducted a meta-analysis to 1) assess the effect of geographically focused policing initiatives on crime and disorder, and 2) evaluate displacement and diffusion (i.e., whether crime generally increased or decreased in catchment areas more than control areas) following the implementation of a geographically focused policing intervention. However, the focus of this CrimeSolutions review was solely on the overall effect of geographically focused policing initiatives on crime.
To be included in the meta-analysis, the study must have 1) evaluated a focused policing intervention that fell into the categories described above in the Practice Description, 2) used some quantitative measure of crime and/or disorder, 3) reported original research findings (i.e., systematic reviews or meta-analyses were not included), and 4) included an intervention that was geographically focused on an area smaller than a city or a region. The meta-analysis also included both published and unpublished studies that met the criteria, and which could have been conducted at any point in time or at any location.
The search strategy to retrieve relevant studies included a keyword search of electronic databases, a review of bibliographies of existing displacement reviews and those on the effectiveness of focused policing initiatives, forward searches for works that cited key publications, a review of research reports of professional research and policing organizations, and a hand search of pertinent journals. The original search was carried out between December 2009 and January 2010 and yielded more than 2,731 studies.
Following coding and screening, two reviewers determined that 44 studies were eligible for review. Of the 44 studies, five were randomized controlled trials, and 39 were quasi-experimental designs. Most of the 44 studies used simple pre- and posttest research designs (57 percent), 43 percent used more complex pre- and posttest assessments with at least one control area, and 14 percent used a separate catchment for the control area. Thirty of the interventions had taken place in the United States, 10 in the United Kingdom, three in Australia, and one in Sweden. Of the others, 23 took place in purely residential environments, nine in multiple types of environments, four in various environments, four in mixed areas containing both residential and retail, two in strictly retail locations, and one in an educational and recreational environment.
The most common type of outcome data used in the included studies was recorded crime (35 studies), seven studies used calls for service data, four used arrest data, and one used data generated through observation methods. The studies also varied in terms of the size of the physical area that received the intervention. Of the 44 studies, 24 covered a large area, nine covered a medium area, and 11 covered a small area. In terms of the type of intervention, 12 used problem-oriented policing programs, seven used directed patrol studies, four used hot spots policing, 10 looked at police crackdowns, two looked at intelligence-led policing, five used community-oriented policing, and two adopted a broken windows approach. Of the remaining studies, one used a civil abatement intervention, and one used a police-led initiative to alter the physical environment.
The authors used odds ratios to estimate the effect of geographically focused policing initiatives on the treatment areas. In addition to calculating individual estimates of relative effect size for each treatment area in each study, they also calculated mean effect sizes across studies.
Of the 44 studies, only 16 provided individual effect sizes for both treatment and control areas. Therefore, only those 16 studies were included in the meta-analysis.
There is no cost information available for this practice.
Geographically focused policing initiatives have also been associated with the displacement of crime or diffusion of benefits. Displacement occurs when individuals with criminal intent switch from crime targets in treatment areas to targets in nearby areas, thereby undermining the positive crime reduction effects of geographically focused policing initiatives. Alternatively, diffusion of benefits occurs when the crime control effects of policing strategies in treatment areas extend to nearby areas that did not receive the initial intervention, thereby amplifying the crime control effects. These nearby or catchment areas, to which crime potential displaces or crime control benefits diffuse after the implementation of geographically focused policing initiatives, may frequently take the form of a ring or donut-shaped region that directly surrounds the area of intervention (Weisburd and Green 1995). Bowers and colleagues (2011) found a statistically significant weighted mean catchment effect size of 1.14, which suggests significant, positive diffusion of crime benefit for catchment areas. This finding indicates that the geographically focused policing initiatives implemented in treatment areas contributed to significant crime reduction in nearby areas that did not directly receive the treatment.
These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:
Meta Analysis 1
Bowers, Kate J., Shane D. Johnson, Rob T. Guerette, Lucia Summers, and Suzanne Poynton. 2011. “Spatial Displacement and Diffusion of Benefits among Geographically Focused Policing Initiatives: A Meta-Analytical Review.” Journal of Experimental Criminology 7(4):347–74.
These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:
Clarke, Ronald Victor Germuseus, and Derek Blaikie Cornish. 1986. The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.
Weisburd, David, Laura A. Wyckoff, Justin Ready, John E. Eck, Joshua C. Hinkle, and Frank Gajewski. 2006. “Does Crime Just Move Around the Corner? A Controlled Study of Spatial Displacement and Diffusion of Crime Control Benefits.” Criminology 44(3):549–92.
Weisburd, David, and Lorraine Green. 1995. “Policing Drug Hot Spots: The Jersey City Drug Market Analysis Experiment.” Justice Quarterly 12(4):711–35.
Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:
Setting (Delivery): Other Community Setting, High Crime Neighborhoods/Hot Spots
Practice Type: Community-Oriented Policing, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design/Design Against Crime, General deterrence, Hot Spots Policing, Situational Crime Prevention, Specific deterrence, Violence Prevention
Unit of Analysis: Places
Researcher:
Kate Bowers
UCL Department of Security and Crime Science
35 Tavistock Square Second Floor, Brook House, 2 – 16 Torrington Place London United Kingdom
