Policing Drug Hot Spots

1
Policing Drug Hot Spots

• David Weisburd
• Lorraine Green

2
Satisfaction Surveys

• Citizen satisfaction surveys continue to show
  public confidence in police
• Bayley 1994
• Clinton Gore 1992
• Mastrofski Green 1993
• BUT, criminologists and other academics continue
  to voice concern over expended police role

3
Expanded Police Role

• Academics voice concern over possible constraints
  on personal freedom
• Privacy vs. safety
• Research has shown, and continues to show, that
  police have little impact on overall crime and
  crime rates
• No evidence exists that augmentation of police
  forces or equipment, differential patrol
  strategies or differential intensities or
  surveillance have an effect on crime rates

4
Exceptions

• Police have been shown to have impact on crime
  when they adopt a more focused approach
• Crime specific policing
• Amazingly effective
• When police focus their efforts on specific
  crime(s) they can decrease severity of crime
  crime related problems

5
Drug Market Analysis Program

• DMA
• Way of addressing street level drug problems
• Encourage technical innovations in geographic
  analysis of crime
• Street level drug markets had been previous
  police target but no systematic research had been
  conducted yet

6
Method

• Jersey City, NJ
• Randomized experiment
• 56 hot spots identified using computer mapping
  techniques
• Hot spots randomly assigned to experimental and
  control groups

7
Experimental Groups

• Researchers sought to engage business owners and
  citizens in crime control efforts
• Apply pressure to reduce drug activity and drug
  related problems
• Initiate maintenance program with assistance of
  patrol division

8
Control Group

• Application of unsystematic, arrest oriented
  narcotics enforcement based on ad hoc target
  selection
• Stick with traditional policing tactics

9
Hot Spots

• Drug related emergency calls for service, and
  narcotics tip-line information over 6 month
  period of time was linked to intersection areas
  on a computer map of the city
• Of 1553 intersections in the city 10 evidence
  repetitive drug activity
• Within these areas 226 intersections recorded any
  emergency calls, arrests or tip-line entries

10
Lay Experts

• Narcotics detectives used as lay experts
• Enhanced knowledge of street level activity
• Better knowledge of area culture
• Better overall knowledge of city
• Example detectives knew that some intersections
  were drug specific sales areas
• This gave researchers other areas to examine

11
Results

• Calls for service pertaining to disorder were
  significantly lower in the experimental group
  than in the control group
• Disorder was separated into
• Nuisance
• Suspicious persons
• Public morals
• Assistance

12
Disorder Calls Mean Change

• Nuisance calls
• Exp. 8.71, Control 10.82 p lt .121
• Suspicious persons
• Exp. -.11, Control 5.96, p lt .001
• Public morals
• Exp. -2.14, Control .89, p lt .032
• Assistance
• Exp. 2.68, Control 7.71, p lt .052

13
Non Significant Results

• Violence
• Exp. 2.07, Control .96, p lt.237
• Property
• Exp. -2.36, Control -5.86, p lt .410
• Despite the non-significant nature of the mean
  changes the two categories did show slight
  improvement

14
Displacement Diffusion

• Difficult to address
• Takes many forms
• No evidence of displacement
• In surrounding areas
• As demonstrated by calls for service

15
More Results