The Pros And Cons Of Hotspot Policing

Similarly to the Oakland boys, finally, I too have suffered from over/under policing. Certain negative behaviors in my elementary were overlooked, such as bullying, despite the zero-tolerance policy. Most teachers would ignore the zero-tolerance policy and choose not to police my bully's bad behavior. When it came to pushing me down stairs, calling me fat and ugly, or rubbing my possessions into the dirt to ruin them, my teachers were lackluster in their policing. However when it came to minor, easily punishable 'crimes' that I committed, like wiggling in my chair, they were over-policing machines. This led me to the same distrust in authority as it did for the Oakland boys, I despised my teachers and thought of them as incompetent, unfair, and part of the problem- not to be trusted.

The routine activities theory is based on the concept of the crime triangle. This triangle consists of a “motivated offender a suitable target and the lack of guardianship” (Cohen & Felson, 1979). When Hot spot policing is employed its focus is directed at two of the three elements of the triangle. Those elements are the suitable target and the lack of a capable guardian (Hoover, 2014). Some of the major tenants of this perspective are geographic targeting, focused patrol, saturation patrol, and interactive programs. There are other tenants such as simple visibility and foot patrol but I will focus on the three mentioned above. Geographic targeting uses techniques which address crime based on the “hot spot” theory. Hot spots are another

A system called “CompStat” was used to track crime reports and other data in an effort to track areas with high crime rates and gang hot spots. Karoliszyn reports that “after patrolling these hot spots for a year, murders had dropped by 60 percent. By 2003, murders were the lowest they had been since 1964” (338). With these statistics, Karoliszyn proves the effectiveness of the system when actually used in the workforce. There is a flaw in his claim. The author only proved the system’s effectiveness in one city, and in one year. As with a great majority of statistics, these numbers could vary either towards or against the system’s value if done in different cities and in different amounts of time. With more data spread across the spectrum, a bigger picture could be seen regarding the reliability of a precognitive policing system.

The design of the Kanas City Preventative Patrol Experiment was to test the assumption that marked police units patrolling the streets can prevent individuals from committing crimes. Areas of the city were assigned either- no routine patrols the proper level of patrols and substantially increased patrols. “The concept of preventive patrol postulated the "self-evident truth" that the mere presence of the police or reasonable potential for their presence would deter criminals from committing offenses in the immediate geographic area of the patrol” (Deployment by analysis, 2000).

In 1994, the New York City Police Department adopted a law enforcement crime fighting strategy known as COMPSTAT (COMPuter STATistics). COMPSTAT uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map the locations of where crimes occur, identify “ hotspots”, and map problem areas. COMPSTAT has amassed a wealth of historical crime data. Mathematicians have designed and developed algorithms that run against the historical data to predict future crimes for police departments. This is known as predictive policing. Predictive policing has led to a drop in burglaries, automobile thefts, and other crimes in some cities.

Beginning in the 1990’s, crime numbers began to fall and and there are many explanations for the decrease in crime. To begin, the police began using new catching approaches by changing aspects such as an increase in enforcement of nuisance activities. Additionally, they began to invest in their technology and started to identify crime hot spots. The hot spots are where crime is found most often but never recognized.

The biggest issue that effects policing is technology. Technology is at a rise and growing at an incredible rate. Technology advancement gives criminals a whole new way or an easier way to commit crimes. Eventually technology is going to take away jobs from our police officers and other individuals working in law enforcement. We are no longer going to need police officers out on patrol monitoring traffic, we have high speed cameras to detect incident detection, and vehicle counting, traffic flow monitoring and even people who violate traffic laws like speeding, running red lights and stop signs.

The “broken windows” model of policing was created as an experimental way of policing areas of high crime. The main focus of the “broken windows” model of policing was

​Crime is a very serious issue all over the world, and the United States is among the highest-ranked countries with elevated crime levels. One of the most crime-stricken cities in the United States is New Orleans. Crime affects both the physical and mental aspects of the lives of New Orleanians. Many are afraid to travel to certain parts of the city during the day and night, and those who travel feel the need to do so in groups in order to make criminals think twice before attacking. The NOPD is attempting to increase the number of police officers in the city, but the campaign for more law enforcement is not working as quickly and as effectively as chief law officials had previously hoped.

It is my opinion, that Hot spot policing is a fantastic idea orf thought. Personally my worry would be that even thpough crime rate might slow down in the area disignated, that the criminals just caught on to the police coming to a particular area. So these indivuals are probaly still breaking the law just somewhere else. For example if you announce a road block, subrity check point, most of the poeple driving under the influence are going to go another route.

The Philadelphia foot patrol experiment: a randomized controlled trial of police patrol effectiveness in violent crime hotspots is an experiment that had over 200 foot patrol officers during the summer of 2009, in the Philadelphia area (Ratcliffe, 2011). This research covered 60 violent crime hotspots in twelve weeks (Ratcliffe, 2001). There was a noticeable reduction in the violent crimes within those area hotspots. Furthermore, 53% of violent crimes were prevented during the twelve weeks of the experiment (Ratcliffe, 2011). In conjunction the type of patrol that was utilized, was foot patrol in the hotspot areas, which was the independent variable. The dependent variable was the reduction

Examining the crime rates following the ‘New York miracle’ certainly lend credibility to the effectiveness of ZTP. Gibbons (1996) noted that burglaries decreased 24%, robberies 32% and motor crime 40% in the two years following April 1994. The overall crime rate was reduced by 37%, with decreases in homicide and violent crime of 51% and 38% respectively (Bratton, 1997). Advocates of ZTP attribute these reductions in crime rates to the use of a proactive and intensive policing approach, situational crime control, rapid analysis of information and heightened efficiency & accountability (Bratton & Knobler, 1998, Bintcliffe, 2014).

According to McGarrell et al. (2001), earlier studies suggested that directed police attention to high crime areas or to specific crime types can lead to crime reductions. Studies such as this has supported the concept that the most serious crime should be first priority, however the most serious crimes are what tend to use up a lot of the resources that law enforcement officers use. Wells (2012) focused on the impacts of firearms crime. The study indicated that police can affect serious crimes by targeting firearms that are illegally possessed and carried, relatively small amounts of gun seizures generated meaningful results. With a focus on high crime areas, the more serious crimes are easily targeted and resources will be

Police can spend extra time in the areas at risk for crime, the thinking goes, and prevent those

Regarding the final products of my analysis, I am pleased with the maps and results that I have created. The results were as I was expected, with large hotspots of violent and sexual crime located in the city center of Liverpool as well as the football grounds. I also expected a substantial portion of the map to show little or no clustering of crimes, which most likely represent isolated incidents in which location bears no factor. I did not expect to see such a large variation of rate changes between all the wards, but this illustrates just how dynamic crime rates and crime distribution can be. Moreover, this analysis does have real-world implications, as from this analysis police forces can identify areas where more resources should be allocated, and where specialist units should patrol to curb sharp rises in certain types of crime. Ideally, this analysis should be performed as frequently as possible as to keep pace with the dynamic changes in crime frequency and distribution that this research project has highlighted.