Program Profile: Operation Rowan (United Kingdom)

This program involves 15 minutes of police patrol in high-crime hot spots to reduce crime. The program is rated Promising. There were statistically significant reductions in reports of violent crimes and robbery and other crimes against personal victims in hot spots on treatment days, compared with control days.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Goals

Operation Rowan was established in 2020 after the United Kingdom Home Office encouraged high-visibility policing against serious violent crime in hot spots and invested funding for localities in this effort (Home Office 2019). Operation Rowan involves uniformed Bedfordshire Police officers conducting targeted foot patrols once a day in large hot spots. The goal of the program is to reduce serious violent crime.

Program Components

The Operation Rowan intervention is run by the Bedfordshire Police Department and involves two-person police foot patrols. Officers are assigned to conduct a minimum of 15 minutes of patrol in each hot-spot area, referred to as Lower-layer Super Output Areas, which are geographical hierarchical units in England and Wales used by the Office for National Statistics to report on local statistics. Officers are not told what specific types of activities to conduct in the hot spot or how many activities to conduct, but they are directed to engage with the public during this patrol. Officer patrol is monitored by use of a handheld Global-Positioning System (GPS) device. Each day, officers assigned to Operation Rowan duty collect a GPS device, turn it on, and keep it about their person during their shift. The GPS devices enable tracking of patrol dosage in real time.

Program Theory

The law of crime concentration (Weisburd 2015) is based on evidence that shows that crimes tend to occur repeatedly in a small proportion of places (Andresen and Malleson 2011; Farrell 2015; Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger 1989). This is the fundamental premise of hot spot policing, that targeting these hot spot locations with additional interventions can reduce crime.

Another criminological foundation underlying police patrol in hot spots is general deterrence theory, which asserts that the threat or application of sanctions for criminal behavior influences the rate of crime in any given population (Zimring and Hawkins 1973). Based on these theories, the once-a-day, 15-minute foot patrols of Operation Rowan were intended to reduce serious violent crime in large hot spots.

Study

Bland and colleagues (2021) conducted a crossover randomized controlled trial to examine the impact of Operation Rowan foot patrols on the prevalence and volume of serious violent crime in hot spots in Bedfordshire during a 90-day period from Nov. 9, 2020, to Feb. 6, 2021.

To define and select the hot spots for targeted patrol, all crimes designated by Bedfordshire Police analysts as serious youth violence were extracted and mapped by Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA). The monthly risk of such crimes in each hot spot was calculated on a rolling basis, given each area’s incidence of the crime in the previous 90 days. The analysis was further refined with the addition of crime harm weightings using the Cambridge Crime Harm Index and a four-tier classification of hot spots based on how frequently they would be targeted by serious youth violence over 1 year. The 21 highest-frequency hot spots were selected. The hot spots were all within urban areas but split between large-population towns and smaller towns. Each hot spot contained about 1,000 to 1,500 people and was an average of 2,000 square meters. Each hot spot was randomly assigned to two conditions (patrol or no patrol) for 90 days. The randomization was undertaken at the beginning of the experiment and given to the onsite project manager on a week-by-week basis. Supervising officers were issued their instructions for the week ahead by Friday of each week.

The unit of analysis was the location-day, with 21 locations over 90 days for a total of 1,890 units. For each day, seven hot spots were assigned to receive the foot patrol by a uniformed officer during the 10-hour late shift (2:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.). The remaining 14 hot spots each day were assigned to the control condition of no patrol. Data on 630 treatment units and 1,260 control units were collected during the 90-day period.

The source of daily crime data to measure outcomes in the hot spots was the Bedfordshire Police’s records management system. Only crimes that occurred in a public space were analyzed. Domestic abuse crimes, malicious communications crimes, blackmail, taking of indecent images of children, the facilitation of travel for exploitative purposes, and all crimes relating to the local prison were excluded. Crimes were categorized as follows: Violent crimes and robbery consisted of assault with and without injury, assaults on police and other emergency workers, harassment, threats to kill, both personal and commercial robberies, and other crimes against personal victims including sexual offenses, thefts, burglaries, criminal damage, and arson. Antisocial behavior (any action that lacked consideration for others but did not meet the definition of a criminal offense, such as noise disturbances or rowdy behavior) data were taken from the force command and control system. The CrimeSolutions review of this study focused on the violent crime and robbery and other crimes against personal victims outcomes.

An intention-to-treat framework was used for the analysis. Differences in the dependent variables were analyzed using two-tailed independent-sample t-tests and analysis of variance tests for analysis of consecutive days. To analyze crime displacement, 100-meter buffers were added to all 21 hot spots, and all dependent variable measurements that fell within them were extracted. No subgroup analysis was conducted.

Bland and colleagues (2021) also examined the impact of Operation Rowan foot patrols on crime displacement in 100-meter buffers around all 21 hot spots and found no statistically significant differences on the prevalence or mean number of reports of violent crime and robbery, other crimes against personal victims, or antisocial behavior on treatment days, compared with control days.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Hot Spots Policing

Hot spots policing strategies focus on small geographic areas or places, usually in urban settings, where crime is concentrated. Through hot spots policing strategies, law enforcement agencies can focus limited resources in areas where crime is most likely to occur. This practice is rated Effective for reducing overall crime and rated Promising for reducing violent, property, public order, and drug and alcohol offenses.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

	Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types
	Crime & Delinquency - Violent offenses
	Crime & Delinquency - Property offenses
	Crime & Delinquency - Public order offenses
	Crime & Delinquency - Drug and alcohol offenses

Geographically Focused Policing Initiatives

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.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?