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This study focuses on crimes involving firearms in Baltimore, Maryland to answer three research questions concerning the effect of seasonality: (1) Do changes in the seasons affect which spatial fa...

Near repeat analysis has been increasingly used to measure the spatiotemporal clustering of crime in contemporary criminology. Despite its predictive capacity, the typically short time frame of nea...

Research has shown that mapping techniques are useful in forecasting future crime events. However, the majority of prospective mapping techniques has focused on the event-dependent influence of instigator incidents on subsequent incidents and does not explicitly incorporate the risk heterogeneity of the setting. The study here discussed is a modest attempt to address this issue by using a two-step process: first, using risk terrain modeling, we operationalized the “environmental backcloth,” (the risk heterogeneity of an area) to forecast locations of residential burglaries in the urban city of Newark, New Jersey. Second, using the near repeat calculator, we assessed the variability of underlying risk between different types of residential burglaries. A discussion of the findings and the joint utility of these approaches is provided.

The primary preventive mechanism of CCTV is considered to be deterrence. However, the relationship between CCTV and deterrence has been left implicit. Empirical research has yet to directly test whether CCTV increases the certainty of punishment, a key component of the deterrence doctrine. This study analyzes CCTV’s relation to punishment certainty in Newark, NJ. Across eight crime categories, CCTV and 9-1-1 calls-for-service case processing times and enforcement rates are compared through Mann-Whitney U and Fisher’s Exact tests, respectively, with a Holm-Bonferroni procedure correcting for multiple comparisons. ANOVA and negative binomial regression models further analyze the frequency of CCTV activity and the impact of various factors on the (downward) trend of detections and enforcement. Findings suggest that CCTV increases punishment certainty on a case-by-case basis. However, a reduction of CCTV activity caused by specific “surveillance barriers” likely minimized the effect of the enhanced enforcement.

This study incorporates a quasi-experimental design to evaluate a saturation foot-patrol initiative in Newark, NJ. Violent crime was measured for one year prior and during the initiative within the target area, a surrounding catchment area, and two separate control areas. The overall findings provide further support for foot-patrol as a crime prevention tactic. Total street violence as well as the disaggregate categories of murder, shootings, and nondomestic aggravated assault decreased within the target area absent of any displacement effects. However, robbery suffered from substantial levels of both temporal and spatial displacement, showing saturation foot-patrol to have varying impact on different types of street violence. This finding suggests that police should design large-scale foot-patrol initiatives in a manner that does not allow offenders, particularly robbers, to easily gauge the scope of the intervention and identify alternate crime opportunities.