A Quantitative Comparison of Different Hot Spot Identification Methods

• In Event: Crime and Place: Focusing Efforts and Resources

Abstract

Crime has consistently been shown to concentrate in a small number of micro-places. That finding has had important implications for policing. Under a hot spots policing model, police departments can focus their scarce resources on the few places that host the majority of crime. A major challenge in hot spots policing, however, is identifying hot spots where resources should be deployed. Clear guidelines on how to define or identify hot spots do not exist, and identifying hot spots is sometimes described as being “more art than science” due to the potential arbitrariness of the input parameters and the related pros and cons of different hot spotting techniques. Therefore, this study compared multiple popular hot spot identification techniques to quantify the extent to which different techniques identify different places as hot spots with the goal of providing some guidance on hot spot identification for police commanders and crime analysts.

Authors

• Cory Haberman, University of Cincinnati

• Jillian Shafer, University of Cincinnati

• Murat Ozer, University of Cincinnati