Prospective crime mapping in operational context Final report

Selecting a pilot siteThe decision as to which area in which to implement the pilot was taken by a steering groupwhich included members of the Home Office, Government Office for the East Midlands andresearchers from the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science. The main reasons forselecting the site chosen, ‘A’ Division, were that the Command Team expressed a strongdesire to participate in the pilot, they were especially concerned with the residential burglaryproblem in their Division, and they had been experiencing a stable volume of burglary prior tothe pilot.A tactical options matrix for reducing burglaryInnovations require new ways of thinking. Early software often sought to mimic electronicallywhat had previously been done manually. Only with time was the potential to do things in newways realised. One poignant instance of how innovation requires rethinking comes with theintroduction of the battle tank. Its qualified success upon introduction at the Battle of Cambraiderived from the failure to modify infantry movements to capitalise on the advantages createdby the tank, with long-term unhappy consequences for military tactics (see Dixon 1976). Theworst fate for Promap (short of neglect) would be implementation without rethinking policingtactics.As noted above, prior to the start of the pilot a literature review was undertaken to summarisethe available literature on tactical options used in the reduction of burglary, so that those thatmight be used in response to the maps could be identified. However, by outlining theapparent efficacy of extant burglary reduction tactics, in a sense one falls into the mode ofthought which Promap is intended to make obsolete. Improving one’s capacity to predictthereby changes the terrain. It may mean that hitherto untried or apparently unsuccessfulapproaches become potentially effective. For example, the potential of patrolling as a crimereductive measure has generally been considered low, but when directed by better prediction,this may change. At the risk of appearing to oversell Promap, it may change the ground rulesfor crime reduction. For this reason, it was strongly emphasised that the learning processinvolved in field testing may involve rethinking some of what is set out below.There is no single menu of burglary reductive options that is guaranteed to work in allcircumstances, rather measures need to be tailored according to the specific opportunitiesand situations apparent in an area. One of the main reasons why replications of interventionsoften fail is because the knowledge and understanding of the specific contexts andmechanisms for an intervention are lacking (Tilley, 1993). Sometimes sheer lack of effortmakes for implementation failure. Something that has been successful in one area or situationwill not automatically be successful in others. As such, it must be recognised that whichevertactical options are selected to be used with the predictive mapping system, they may need tobe specifically tailored for the purpose of reducing residential burglary in the chosen pilotarea. Moreover, the most effective burglary prevention strategies involve a combination ofcomplementary responses (Lamm Weisel, 2002), and hence consideration of how a variety ofdifferent interventions might interact, and/or complement the system should be considered.To inform this element of the project, a review of the available literature was conducted and ispresented here as a Tactical Option Matrix in Table 3.2. The matrix can be broken down intofive main component parts: the type of intervention, a summary of the evidence of itseffectiveness, cost (financial and latency of implementation), the geographical coverage of themeasures, and the potential partners who may be involved in the implementation of thatintervention. The following sections elaborate upon and clarify the content of these fiveelements of the matrix.Types of intervention and evidence of effectivenessThe list is not exhaustive by any means, however, the most commonly used crime preventionmeasures for reducing residential burglary are discussed. Over the last two decades therehas been a plethora of research on the effectiveness of various types of crime preventionmeasures and some of the key studies are mentioned here. While the authors are cognisant30