The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Plains: Using Geography to Predict Crime

• In Event: Spatial Risk Assessment, II

Abstract

This practitioner-researcher team is developing an understanding of how police enforcement tactics interact with contextual risk factors to affect crime in micro-areas across a large metropolitan area. Even with records of crime-reduction success across the country achieved through hot spot style policing, there is a gap in the knowledge of understanding why persistent hot spots exist, and where specific enforcement tactics would be most successful. It is especially important to have the ability to not only forecast where certain crimes are most likely to occur, but to be able to model how those future hot spots will react to different police tactics and chose the most cost-effective approach to enforcement. This multi-level study examines how combinations of risk factors exacerbate or mitigate the risk of a future shooting, robbery, or felony assault. This information also supports a focus on understanding the interrelation of risk factors, police enforcement tactics, and crime trends with the aim of identifying those police tactics that work best for certain crimes in particular types of areas, as defined by their risk terrain. Ultimately, a model will be developed to allow the forecasting of an identified crime type and how it would respond to various enforcement techniques.

Authors

• Christopher Fisher, New York City Police Department

• Jorma Huttunen, New York City Police Department

• Gabriel Paez, John Jay College of Criminal Justice