Place Based Policing

This policing strategy directs daily policing efforts towards those areas that show the highest crime rates, but its focus away from specific criminals could be counterproductive; still it is a thoughtful approach worthy of discussion and continued research.

Here is an article about it from Professor Weisburd.

An excerpt from a recent award news release to Professor Weisburd.

“The 2010 Stockholm Prize in Criminology has been awarded by its International Jury to Professor David L. Weisburd for a series of experiments showing that intensified police patrol at high crime "hot spots" does not merely push crime around.

“This line of research encourages police around the world to concentrate crime prevention efforts at less than 5% of all street corners and addresses where over 50% of all urban crime occurs, yielding far less total crime than with conventional patrol patterns.

“The jury selected Weisburd's work on spatial displacement as the most influential single contribution of his wider body of work that has helped to bridge the gap between criminology and police practice. The jury noted that Weisburd has been a leader among the growing number of criminologists whose evidence shows how the application of research findings can help to reduce not only crime, but also the unnecessary impositions on public liberty from policing activities that do not address a predictable crime risk.

“Weisburd's work builds on and adds to other research showing the effectiveness of placing almost all police patrols at street corners, addresses or blocks with high rates of robbery, purse snatching, street fights, or illegal drug markets. Police have generally been reluctant to re-structure most patrols to match the extreme version tested in this research for fear that "spatial displacement" of crime will yield no net reduction in criminal events. This theory holds that, like air in a balloon, criminals and their crimes will simply move from one part of a city to another if pressure is placed on crime at any given location. The competing theory is that most public crime only happens in certain kids of locations, all of which can be made less hospitable to crime by proactive police efforts. Yet until Weisburd's series of crucial experiments, police have widely accepted the spatial displacement theory by spreading patrol out widely."