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The Atlantic City Police Department intervened to reduce robberies with an evidence-based approach grounded in problem-oriented policing. Informed by risk terrain modeling and hot spot analysis, police commanders implemented a place-based intervention focused around convenience stores. Target areas throughout the city were reprioritized each month to create a dynamic deployment strategy that efficiently allocated resources to the most vulnerable places. Risk reduction actions, such as business checks, were favored over law enforcement against people. Robberies significantly decreased by 63% within four months. There was a significant spatial diffusion of benefits and there were fewer arrests, as should be expected with fewer crimes and a tactical place-based, not person-oriented, approach. Implications for policy and practice are discussed within the contexts of rapid evidence-based police responses to urgent crime problems, police culture, and data analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kansas City, Missouri Police Department sought to reduce violent crime with an evidence-based approach to problem analysis and intervention planning. Informed by hot spot analysis and risk terrain modeling, police and their community partners implemented a place-based crime intervention program focused on key attractors and generators of the environmental backcloth. Target and comparison areas were selected for an outcome evaluation. During the 1-year program time period, violent crimes decreased significantly by over 22%. There was both a significant spatial diffusion of benefits and significantly fewer police officer-initiated actions resulting in arrests or citations. Crime prevention was achieved without an abundance of law enforcement actions against people located at the target areas. Implications for policy and practice are discussed within the contexts of police responses to urgent crime problems and data analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the conditions under which clearance rates improve by looking at the experience across New York City. Using one agency provides a control on the administrative differences that appear across other jurisdictions that have been studied, usually through cross-national analysis. Our analysis uses Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) to identify environmental features that relate to closed versus open homicide cases using two years of New York City Police Department (NYPD) data. This analysis is supplemented with an investigation of precinct-wide social structure variables to examine how context matters in influencing closure rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]