Breanne Cave

Community support for license plate recognition

Purpose – Although the use of license plate recognition (LPR) technology by police is becoming increasingly common, no empirical studies have examined the legal or legitimacy implications of LPR. LPR may be used for a variety of purposes, ranging from relatively routine checks of stolen vehicles to more complex surveillance functions. The purpose of this paper is to develop a “continuum of LPR uses” that provides a framework for understanding the potential legal and legitimacy issues related to LPR. The paper then analyzes results from the first random-sample community survey on the topic. Design/methodology/approach – Random-sample survey (n=457). Findings – The paper finds substantial support for many LPR uses, although the public also appears to know little about the technology. The survey also reveals that the public does not regard the uses of LPR as equivalent, but rather support is qualified depending upon the use at issue. Originality/value – Previous research has not systematically categorized th...

Rigorous evaluation research among US police departments: special cases or a representative sample?

This study considers whether police departments’ characteristics relate to the methodology and results of the evaluations that they participate in, and contrasts police departments that have carried out rigorous crime prevention research to comparison groups of US police agencies. Findings include departments that participate in quasi-experimental crime prevention research are larger and more likely to find statistically significant successes than those that participate in experiments, and evaluators differ in composition and practices from most US police departments. This suggests that researchers and policy makers should involve smaller suburban and rural police agencies to increase the generalizability of evaluation research.

Counterinsurgency and Criminology: Applying Routine Activities Theory to Military Approaches to Counterterrorism

Counterinsurgents have two distinct but connected problems to manage when responding to an insurgency. First, they must be able to control and reduce insurgent violence. Second, they must assert and maintain the authority of a central government (see Kilcullen, 2009). While scholarly interest in counterinsurgency has expanded over the past decade, there is not much evidence base developed for counterinsurgency and relatively little research attention that focuses on the outcomes of tactical-level military interventions during counterinsurgency, particularly in urban environments.

Theories of Crime and Place

In the previous chapter, we showed that crime is concentrated at very small geographic units, substantially smaller than neighborhoods, and that these concentrations, on average, are relatively stable. This is true whether examining high- or low-crime neighborhoods. Although high-crime places do cluster, they seldom form a homogeneous block of high-crime places. Rather, interspersed within concentrations of high-crime places are many low- and modest-crime places. Why is crime concentrated in a relatively small number of places? Standard criminology has not asked this question, largely because standard criminology focuses on criminality and implicitly assumes that the density of offenders explains crime density. Recognition that place characteristics matter is the starting point for this chapter. We look at two perspectives on crime place characteristics. We use the term “perspective” because each type of explanation is comprised of multiple theories linked by a common orientation. The first perspective arises from opportunity theories of crime. The second perspective arises from social disorganization theories of crime. We begin by contrasting two ways of thinking about how a place becomes a crime hot spot and suggest that the process by which high-crime places evolve must involve place characteristics. In the next sections, we examine opportunity and social disorganization explanations. In the final section of the chapter, we examine possible ways researchers might link these two perspectives. PROCESSES THAT CREATE CRIME PLACES Before we look for explanations of why places become hot spots of crime it is important to consider two processes that might lead to such an outcome. Criminologists have generally proposed two generic models to account for the processes that lead to variation in place susceptibility to crime. One model suggests that places may start with reasonably similar risks of an initial criminal attack, but once attacked the risk of a subsequent attack on the place rises. Over time, places diverge in their crime risk, and consequently in their crime counts. This temporal contagion model is also known as a boost model (see Chapter 2) or a state-dependence model. It puts the emphasis on offenders’ willingness to return to a previously successful crime site (Johnson et al. 2007; Townsley et al. 2000). It suggests that irrespective of initial crime risk the occurrence of a crime will lead to changes in risk of crime at a place.

Crime Places within Criminological Thought

A new perspective in criminology has emerged over the last three decades, a perspective with considerable potential to add to our understanding and control of crime. In the same way the invention of the microscope opened up a biological world scientists had not previously seen, this new perspective opens the world of small geographic features we had overlooked. Research has demonstrated that actions at these microplaces have strong connections to crime. Just as the microscope paved the way to new treatments and advances in public health, this new perspective in criminology is yielding improved ways of reducing crime. This new perspective shifts our attention from large geographic units, such as neighborhoods, to small units, such as street segments and addresses. This shift in the “units of analysis” transforms our understanding of the crime problem and what we can do about it. There are two aspects to this shift in units. The first shifts our attention from large geographic units to small ones. This we have just mentioned. The second shifts our attention from people to events, from those who commit crimes to the crimes themselves. Criminology has been primarily focused on people (Brantingham and Brantingham 1990; Weisburd 2002). Frank Cullen (2011) noted in his Sutherland Address to the American Society of Criminology in 2010 that the focus of criminology has been even more specific. He argued that criminology was dominated by a paradigm, which he termed “adolescence-limited criminology,” that had focused primarily on adolescents. To what extent have person-based studies dominated criminology? Weisburd (2015a) examined units of analysis in all empirical articles published in Criminology between 1990 and 2014. Criminology is the highest-impact journal in the field and the main scientific publication of the largest criminological society in the world, the American Society of Criminology. He identified 719 research articles. Of the 719 articles, two-thirds focused on people as units of analysis. The next main units of study were situations (15 percent) and macrogeographic areas such as cities and states (11 percent). Eck and Eck (2012) examined the 148 research papers published in Criminology and Public Policy from its first issue in 2001 until the end of 2010, and the 230 articles published in Criminal Justice Policy Review during the same time period.

Translational Criminology: Using Existing Evidence for Assessing TSA’s Comprehensive Security Strategy at Airports

One of the recent developments in airport security has been the call for a more coordinated security apparatus. In 2009, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) revised and reimplemented its Comprehensive Strategy to Security at Airports, also known as “the Playbook,” to supplement and coordinate additional security at airports. The Playbook reflects the many everyday prevention and deterrence mechanisms to physically secure the airport environment, which are similar to other security measures used to prevent crime. Here, we use translational criminology concepts and tools to examine the Playbook in the context of evidence-based deterrence and prevention mechanisms. Overall, we find that the Playbook is in part supported by evidence-based crime prevention and deterrence principles. However, we also find areas where the Playbook needs further assessment, specifically in the areas of randomization and unpredictability, place-based focus, interagency cooperation, and implementation.