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Proactive policing and traffic disturbances: A quasi-experiment in three Israeli cities
Abstract
This paper describes a quasi-experimental evaluation of a reform in Israel (‘EMUN’), which attempted to institutionalize problem-oriented policing on a national scale. The current study examines the effect of this reform on tackling traffic disturbance and road bullying offences. We compared three police stations that chose to deal with traffic offences using the tools and techniques provided through the reform (treatment stations) with five police stations that were matched - using a specially designed algorithm - on several criteria, including similar trends of traffic offences (comparison stations). Each treatment station was compared to two comparison stations using a difference-in-differences approach. In five out of six comparisons there were large and significant reductions in documented traffic disturbances in the targeted areas of the treatment stations compared to the control stations. We also found evidence of significant diffusions in crime control benefits in two of the treatment stations. However, there was evidence of significant geographical displacement to the buffer zone in the largest treatment stations. We attribute this to differences in the nature of the areas targeted and discuss the relative harms and benefits. The findings of the study show that institutionalizing a variety of evidence-based policing strategies has a promise not only for classic crimes (such as property and violence), but also for incivilities and quality-of-life offenses.
Substantial evidence suggests that focussing police resources on hotspots of crime has a discernable crime-reduction effect. However, little is known about the efficacy of proactively policing areas with higher concentrations of more common low-harm problems in society. This study evaluates the first national double-blind randomized controlled trial in which clearly identifiable hotspots (n = 488) of low-harm ‘quality-of-life’ incidents nested in 31 participating police stations were randomized to be either actively policed by any available police officer or by ‘business-as-usual’ reactive policing over a 12-month period. A series of count-based regression models show a moderate and statistically significant reduction in the number of quality-of-life incidents in treatment versus control hotspots, with more than 2,000 quality-of-life incidents prevented, without evidence of spatial displacement to street segments nearby. However, we find no diffusion of benefits in terms of other crime types within the same hotspots, which may suggest that either low- and high-harm crime hotspots are not spatially aligned with each other, that focussing police officers on one type of crime does not produce a suppression effect on other types of crime, or both. We discuss the implications of these results for crime policy and future research.
Crime statistics require a radical transformation if they are to provide transparent information for the general public, as well as police operational decision-making. This statement provides a blueprint for such a transformation.
Objectives
This updated systematic review assesses the effects of focused police crime prevention interventions at crime hot spots. The review also examined whether focused police actions at specific locations result in crime displacement or diffusion of crime control benefits.
Methods
Systematic review protocols and conventions of the Campbell Collaboration were followed to identify eligible hot spots policing studies, and meta-analytic techniques were used to assess the impact of hot spots policing on crime and investigate the influence of moderating variables.
Results
The search strategies identified 65 studies containing 78 tests of hot spots policing interventions. Meta-analyses revealed a small statistically significant mean effect size favoring the effects of hot spots policing in reducing crime outcomes at treatment places relative to control places. Crime displacement and diffusion effects were measured in 40 tests. Meta-analyses favored a small statistically significant diffusion of crime control benefits over displacement.
Conclusion
The extant evaluation research provides fairly robust evidence that hot spots policing is an effective crime prevention strategy. Focused police intervention at hot spot locations does not seem to result in the spatial displacement of crime into areas immediately surrounding targeted locations. Rather, crime control benefits seem to diffuse into proximate areas.
We interviewed a random sample of 918 passengers—308 Israeli Jews, 306 Palestinians who are Israeli citizens (Israeli Arabs),
and 304 non-Israelis—post check-in, at Ben-Gurion Airport, in an effort to learn about the individual and social cost incurred
by the Israeli Arabs going through the security process. The article discusses what we learned from the survey and draws some
policy implications. This is the first time such a survey was administered.
In this paper we examine the impact of quality-of-life policing on crime and disorder. Specifically, we examine a quality-of-life initiative conducted by the Chandler, Arizona Police Department, which was grounded in an operational strategy of policing social and physical disorder. Using data on calls for service, we employ an interrupted time-series analysis to examine the effect of the intervention on 10 offense categories within the overall target area and within four zones that constitute the target area. The findings suggest that the quality-of-life initiative exerted the strongest effect on two categories of crime and disorder: public morals and physical disorder. Diffusion of benefit and displacement effects were also observed in nearby areas. We discuss the implications of the findings for policy makers and researchers.
Preoccupation with the threat of displacement has led crime prevention researchers to overlook the phenomenon of "diffusion of benefits," the unexpected reduction of crimes not directly targeted by the preventive action. This phenomenon, which can bring considerable added value to sltuatlonal measures, has been described as the "complete reverse" of displacement. Two processes underlying diffusion are Identified Involving, on the one hand, offenders' uncertainty about the extent of the Increased risk, and, on the other, their exaggerated perception that the rewards of particular crimes are no longer commensurate with the effort These pro- cesses are labeled, respectively, deterrence and discouragement. Recent research provides numerous examples of both kinds of diffusion. Ways of enhancing diffusion are explored, and a program of research Is advocated on offender perceptions of the opening and closing of criminal opportunities.
Many criminologists doubt that the dosage of uniformed police patrol causes any measurable difference in crime. This article reports a one-year randomized trial in Minneapolis of increases in patrol dosage at 55 of 110 crime “hot spots,” monitored by 7,542 hours of systematic observations. The experimental group received, on average, twice as much observed patrol presence, although the ratio displayed wide seasonal fluctuation. Reductions in total crime calls ranged from 6 percent to 13 percent. Observed disorder was only half as prevalent in experimental as in control hot spots. We conclude that substantial increases in police patrol presence can indeed cause modest reductions in crime and more impressive reductions in disorder within high crime locations.
Today's police agencies are in a period of both crisis and reform as they try to improve their ability to deliver public safety to citizens in ways that are effective, legitimate, and sustainable. Evidence-based policing offers one such solution—an approach which emphasises the value that research can bring to police officers and, by extension, the public they serve. However, evidence-based policing is not just about the process of understanding and evaluating police practices. It is also about translating and using that knowledge in daily police activities. This book examines the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of various police practices and provides tools to help turn research into practice. Part I gives a practitioner's definition of evidence-based policing, a primer on how to judge and interpret research findings, and a review of the Evidence-Based Policing Matrix, a tool for translating research on police crime control interventions. In Part II the chapters review the breadth of knowledge about policing interventions for people, places, communities, and technology, focusing on how to optimize operations based on this information. Tools and ideas that can assist in implementing evidence-based practices into patrol, investigations, supervision, management, crime analysis, and leadership are provided in Part III. Finally, in Part IV the chapters contain conversations with researchers about how they might continue to work with police agencies to advance evidence-based policing.
Evidence-based policing (EBP) has become a key perspective for practitioners and researchers concerned with the future of policing. This volume provides both a review of where evidence-based policing stands today and a consideration of emerging trends and ideas likely to be important in the future. It includes comparative and international contributions, as well as researcher and practitioner perspectives. While emphasizing traditional evidence-based methods and approaches, the book also identifies barriers to the advancement of evidence-based policing and expands the vision of evidence-based policing by critically examining ethical and moral concerns and questions. The book's main focus is not on what has to happen in police agencies to advance EBP, but rather on an issue that has received far less attention - the science that is necessary to produce for EBP to be successfully integrated into policing.
There is considerable evidence that evidence-based policing (EBP) can aid the police in becoming more effective in responding to crime and improving relationships with communities. However, there are many obstacles to institutionalizing such a policy. To overcome the obstacles in instituting EBP, Sherman (1998) suggested the role of the "evidence cop", whether a sworn officer or an outside academic, can facilitate the translation of research into practice. Because policing is ordinarily organized as a strict hierarchical organization, for evidence-based policing to succeed, the head of the organization/the commissioner must take upon him or herself ownership of EBP, becoming what Perry & Wolfowicz (2022) call the “super evidence-cop”. This chapter identifies three such super evidence cops who have championed EBP from three different countries: former Commissioner Alsheich from Israel, Commissioner Hyde from Australia, and former Chief James Bueermann from the United States. This article demonstrates how these three Chief Executives in policing acted as “super evidence cops” and were successful in implementing evidence-based policing in their organizations.
Research Summary
In 1979 Herman Goldstein proposed a radical reform—problem‐oriented policing (POP)—which has had tremendous impact on scholars and practitioners. Even though his paper and subsequent work led to a large body of literature on how to carry out problem‐oriented policing tactics, scholars have often ignored the question of how POP can be institutionalized in police agencies. In this article, we evaluate a reform in Israel—EMUN— that attempted to institutionalize problem‐oriented policing on a national scale. Focusing on property crime, we compare three treatment stations (with high, moderate, and low crime) with control stations chosen through a systematic matching procedure. We find that there are large and significant reductions in the targeted areas (termed “polygons”) for high‐ and moderate‐property‐ crime stations as compared with the control stations. We also do not find evidence of displacement but instead evidence of significant diffusions of crime control benefits. Importantly, property crime declines occurred in these stations overall. Significant benefits were not found for the low‐crime treatment station. We attribute this to the low base rate of crimes and low resource allocation in this station.
Policy Implications
These findings suggest that the EMUN reform provides a potential model for institutionalizing problem‐oriented policing as an organizational reform. EMUN attempted to support and reinforce each of the main steps of the problem‐oriented policing model. It also developed sophisticated computer tools to aid in this process that not only supported problem‐solving efforts but also allowed for wide‐scale supervision of each stage of the POP model.
The randomized experiment has achieved the status of the gold standard for estimating causal effects in criminology and the other social sciences. Although causal identification is indeed important and observational data present numerous challenges to causal inference, we argue that conflating causality with the method used to identify it leads to a cognitive narrowing that diverts attention from what ultimately matters most—the difference between counterfactual worlds that emerge as a consequence of their being subjected to different treatment regimes applied to all eligible population members over a sustained period of time. To address this system-level and long-term challenge, we develop an analytic framework for integrating causality and policy inference that accepts the mandate of causal rigor but is conceptually rather than methodologically driven. We then apply our framework to two substantive areas that have generated high-visibility experimental research and that have considerable policy influence: (a) hot-spots policing and (b) the use of housing vouchers to reduce concentrated disadvantage and thereby crime. After reviewing the research in these two areas in light of our framework, we propose a research path forward and conclude with implications for the interplay of theory, data, and causal understanding in criminology and other social sciences. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology Volume 2 is January 13, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
This study uses a unique individual-level dataset that merges Israeli census data with official information on traffic tickets issued over a period of seven years in order to explore the socio-demographic characteristics of drivers who receive traffic tickets. The dataset included 409,051 drivers who received a total of 830,763 traffic tickets. The results indicate that about 60% of drivers received at least one ticket during the study period. However, drivers who received tickets were not distributed evenly in society. Of those with the most tickets, 93% were male, and half were in the youngest group of drivers studied. The effect of socioeconomic status appears to differ across different types of offenses. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Situational crime prevention (SCP) measures are those that aim to prevent crime by reducing opportunities for offending and by increasing the effort and risk to offenders (Clarke, Building a safer society: Strategic approaches to crime prevention, 1995). There have been a number of systematic reviews, using the explicitly stated, transparent method adopted and documented by the Campbell Collaboration that focus on assessing the effectiveness of SCP interventions. In this chapter, we review the evidence arising from these reviews to assess whether general conclusions can be made about the effectiveness of situational approaches to the reduction and prevention of crime. In reviewing the evidence, we examine the individual effect sizes from all contributing studies as a single group. Our reason for taking this approach is that it allows us to examine the heterogeneity in evaluation effect sizes when assessing the broad effectiveness of SCP interventions and to see if there are any systematic patterns. We do this by classifying studies on a number of factors other than the type of situational measure employed. Analysis of the available reviews (there were seven that met our criteria) indicates that the mainstream situational measures such as closed-circuit television camera, improved lighting, and public area surveillance are effective at reducing crime, as are some of the situational strategies such as repeat victimization schemes and neighborhood watch. Our heterogeneity analysis revealed that other contextual factors, such as the time and place of implementation or the type of crime targeted, appear to be as important in explaining variation in effectiveness as the type of SCP employed.
According to Lorraine Mazerolle and Janet Ransley (2003), “third-party policing” describes police efforts to persuade or to coerce third parties, such as landlords, parents, local government regulators, and business owners to take on some responsibility for preventing crime or reducing crime problems. Obviously this definition seeks to distinguish policing directed at those who are and who might be criminal offenders from policing efforts directed at non-offending “others.” Thus, the definition emphasizes the affinities that third-party policing has with other forms of civil regulation. Examples of such regulation abound. In an effort to ensure that corporations do not defraud stockholders, regulators place constraints, both civil and criminal, on accountants and lawyers. In an effort to make sure that employers do not violate civil rights laws, legislators have structured statutes so that violators pay plaintiffs' attorneys fees should the plaintiffs win. In this way, plaintiffs are persuaded to become “private attorneys general” helping public officials to enforce the law. In an effort to ensure that athletes do not take illegal drugs, the National Football League requires teams to complete random urine tests of players. The federal government is now pressuring the Major League Baseball to do the same. In this way, the sports leagues become third-party enforcers of laws prohibiting the use of certain drugs. Given the pervasive forms of such regulation today, that such “third-party” efforts are becoming common in the enterprise of street crime control should hardly be surprising. © Cambridge University Press 2006 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Objectives
To conduct a systematic review examining the extent to which there is crime displacement or a diffusion of crime control benefits in social control interventions implemented in medium sized or large geographic areas.
Methods
A number of search strategies were used to identify and code eligible experimental or quasi-experimental studies that measured displacement in areas larger than crime hot spots. A total of 33 publications covering 43 quasi-experimental studies were identified as eligible. Nineteen of these publications covering 20 studies were included in a meta-analysis.
Results
The narrative results overall suggest that displacement is not a common occurrence in interventions implemented at larger units of geography and a diffusion of crime control benefits is somewhat more likely to occur. The effect sizes from the meta-analyses suggest that, while the interventions, on average, were associated with a significant decline in crime, displacement was not likely to occur. The meta-analyses found no significant overall evidence of displacement or a diffusion of benefits.
Conclusions
These findings are in line with previous reviews that have focused on displacement at smaller geographic units. When examining larger geographic scales and a broader array of interventions, spatial displacement is still a fairly unlikely occurrence.
This study revisited the Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment and explored the longitudinal deterrent effects of foot patrol in violent crime hot spots using Sherman's (1990) concepts of initial and residual deterrence decay as a theoretical framework. It also explored whether the displacement uncovered during the initial evaluation decayed after the experiment ended. Multilevel growth curve models revealed that beats staffed for 22 weeks had a decaying deterrent effect during the course of the experiment, whereas those staffed for 12 weeks did not. None of the beats had residual deterrence effects relative to the control areas. The displacement uncovered had decayed during the 3 months after the experiment, and it is theoretically plausible that previously displaced offenders returned to the original target areas causing inverse displacement. These results are discussed in the context of Durlauf and Nagin's (2011) recent proposal that prison sentences should be shortened, mandatory minimum statutes repealed, and the cost savings generated by these policy changes shifted into policing budgets to convey more effectively the certainty of detection. It is concluded that if Durlauf and Nagin's proposal is to succeed, then more holistic policing strategies would likely be necessary. Foot patrol as a specific policing tactic seems to fit nicely into a variety of policing paradigms, and suggestions for incorporating them to move beyond strictly enforcement‐based responses are presented.
Problem‐oriented policing (POP) has emerged as a fertile area of innovative police research and practice. Its core ideas have existed for over 20 years; however, research suggests that POP has been routinized into the practice of few police departments. This paper argues that POP has not gained widespread adoption because of the inclination to make line officers the central actors in POP’s implementation. It presents an integrated model reconsidering how problems are defined, analysis is used, and how problem‐solving accountability is distributed throughout an organization and builds upon the strengths of traditional policing – information‐gathering, centralized command, and accountability structure.
It is important to assess the effectiveness of the full range of surveillance measures that are used to prevent crime in public places. Closed-circuit television and improved street lighting are the most well developed measures that are in current use, at least in terms of the evaluation literature. Other widely used public area surveillance measures include security guards, place managers and defensible space. This paper reports on a systematic review of the effects on crime of these other forms of public area surveillance. Twelve evaluations met the inclusion criteria. There is fairly strong and consistent evidence that the defensible space technique of street closures or barricades is effective in preventing crime in inner-city neighborhoods. In the case of security guards, the weight of the evidence suggests that it is a promising technique of formal surveillance when implemented in car parks and targeted at vehicle crimes. The surveillance technique of place managers appears to be of unknown effectiveness in preventing crime in public places. Implications for policy and research are discussed.
The police have been particularly susceptible to the "means over ends" syndrome, placing more emphasis in their improvement efforts on organization and operating methods than on the substantive outcome of their work. This condition has been fed by the professional movement within the police field, with its concentration on the staffing, management, and organization of police agencies. More and more persons are questioning the widely held assumption that improvements in the internal man agement of police departments will enable the police to deal more effectively with the problems they are called upon to handle. If the police are to realize a greater return on the investment made in improving their oper ations, and if they are to mature as a profession, they must concern them selves more directly with the end product of their efforts.
Clarke's classification of situational crime prevention tech- niques is designed to provide a conceptual analysis of situational strategies, and to offer practical guidance on their use in reducing criminal opportunities. It has developed in parallel with a long program of empirical research, conducted by many researchers, on the situ- ational determinants and the prevention of a wide variety of crimes. For this reason the classification has been subject to constant revision and updating, of which Clarke's (1997) version, which lists 16 such techniques, is the latest. Recently, Wortley (2001) has suggested the need to augment the existing classification, which deals with the analysis of situational opportunities, with a complementary analysis of situational precipitators. These are factors within the crime setting it- self that may prompt, provoke, pressure, or permit an individual to of- fend. The present chapter examines the assumptions underlying the development of situational crime prevention, and offers some views about the theoretical and practical significance of Wortley's suggested additions and revisions. It concludes by proposing a revised classifica-
In recent years, crime scholars and practitioners have pointed to the potential benefits of focusing police crime prevention efforts on crime places. Research suggests that there is significant clustering of crime in small places or “hot spots.” A number of researchers have argued that crime problems can be reduced more efficiently if police officers focused their attention to these deviant places. In this article, we update and improve upon a previously completed Campbell Collaboration systematic review of the effects of hot spots policing and crime. Meta-analyses were used to determine the size, direction, and statistical significance of the overall impact of hot spots policing strategies on crime. The results of our research suggests that hot spots policing generates small but noteworthy crime reductions, and these crime control benefits diffuse into areas immediately surrounding targeted crime hot spots. Our analyses find that problem-oriented policing interventions generate larger mean effect sizes when compared to interventions that simply increase levels of traditional police actions in crime hot spots. We also find that only a small number of studies examine the impacts of hot spots policing on police-community relations. The extant research on this topic, however, suggests that community members have positive reactions to these focused policing actions.
It has been claimed that the rational choice perspective, which sees criminal behavior as the outcome of decisions and choices made by the offender, can provide a useful framework for analyzing crime control policies. By developing the concept of “choice-structuring properties,” which refers to the constellation of opportunities, costs, and benefits attaching to particular kinds of crime, this paper attempts to develop rational choice theory in order to improve analysis of crime displacement—a concept frequently invoked by the critics of opportunity-reducing measures of crime prevention.
Private actions to avoid and prevent criminal victimisation and assist public law enforcement are vital inputs into the crime-control process. One form of private action, the business improvement district (BID), appears particularly promising. A BID is a non-profit organisation created by property owners to provide local public goods, usually including public safety. Our analysis of 30 Los Angeles BIDs demonstrates that the social benefits of BID expenditures on security are a large multiple (about 2'7 of the private expenditures. Crime displacement appears minimal. Crime reduction in the BID areas has been accompanied by a reduction in arrests, suggesting further savings.
We examine inference in panel data when the number of groups is small, as is typically the case for difference-in-differences estimation and when some variables are fixed within groups. In this case, standard asymptotics based on the number of groups going to infinity provide a poor approximation to the finite sample distribution. We show that in some cases the t-statistic is distributed as t and propose simple two-step estimators for these cases. We apply our analysis to two well-known papers. We confirm our theoretical analysis with Monte Carlo simulations. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In two studies the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) including moral norms, anticipated regret and past behaviour was applied to predicting intention to exceed the posted speed limit across different roads and objectively assessed speeding behaviour. All measures except behaviour were taken by self-report questionnaires referring to different driving scenarios. The behaviour measures were based on performance in a simulator (Study 1) or unobtrusive on-road speed camera assessment taken without driver awareness (Study 2) across roads with varying posted speed limits. Results are reported averaged across road types in both studies. In Study 1 (N=83), 82% of the variance in intentions to speed was explained, with attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control (PBC), moral norms, anticipated regret and past behaviour being significant predictors. A total of 35% of the variance in speed as assessed on a driving simulator was accounted for with intentions, PBC, moral norms and previous accidents being significant predictors. In Study 2 (N=303), 76% of the variance in intentions to speed was explained with attitudes, moral norms, anticipated regret and past behaviour being significant predictors. A total of 17% of the variance in speed as assessed on-road was accounted for with intentions and moral norms being significant. Practical implications of the findings for road safety are discussed.
‘Police: Reforms have Reduced Tensions, Improved Relations with Citizens.’
- Eisenbud
‘Crime Prevention and the Displacement Phenomenon.’
- Repetto
Traffic Congestion Around Schools
- La Vigne