The Importance of Place in Policing - Empirical Evidence and Policy ...

V. The Importance of Place-Based Rather than Community-BasedCrime PreventionWhile the evidence discussed above establishes the concentrationand stability of crime at place, we have so far not examined how hotspots of crime are distributed geographically. This question is importantto explore, because it gets at the issue of whether using microplaces as the unit of analysis as opposed to larger areas of geographyaffects our understanding of crime and our approach to crime prevention(see Weisburd, Bruinsma, & Bernasco, 2009). Is it importantto focus on crime places, or would we have about the sameimpact on crime if we focused on beats, communities or neighborhoods?Are crime hot spots concentrated in only one or twoneighborhoods in a city, suggesting that despite the concentration ofcrime in hot spots we would be better off focusing crime preventionon communities?Evidence to date suggests that crime hot spots can be foundthroughout a city. Weisburd and Mazerolle (2000) for example,identified 56 drug markets in Jersey City, New Jersey. As Figure 4illustrates the drug markets were spread across Jersey City. To thesurprise of police involved in the study, though the drug marketswere more concentrated in socially disadvantaged areas, they couldeven be found in areas that were generally seen as more establishedand better off. Weisburd and Mazerolle argued that even goodneighborhoods can have bad places. Importantly, most places evenin very disadvantaged neighborhoods were relatively free of seriousdrug problems. Echoing this finding nearly sixty years ago, HenryMcKay noted the lack of offenders on some blocks within highcrime neighborhoods (Albert J. Reiss, Jr., personal communicationas cited in Sherman & Weisburd, 1995).23