Joshua C. Hinkle

The Problem Is Not Just Sample Size The Consequences of Low Base Rates in Policing Experiments in Smaller Cities

Background: Hot spots policing is one of the most influential police innovations, with a strong body of experimental research showing it to be effective in reducing crime and disorder. However, most studies have been conducted in major cities, and we thus know little about whether it is effective in smaller cities, which account for a majority of police agencies. The lack of experimental studies in smaller cities is likely in part due to challenges designing statistically powerful tests in such contexts. Objectives: The current article explores the challenges of statistical power and “noise” resulting from low base rates of crime in smaller cities and provides suggestions for future evaluations to overcome these limitations. Research Design: Data from a randomized experimental evaluation of broken windows policing in hot spots are used to illustrate the challenges that low base rates present for evaluating hot spots policing programs in smaller cities. Results: Analyses show low base rates make it difficult to detect treatment effects. Very large effect sizes would be required to reach sufficient power, and random fluctuations around low base rates make detecting treatment effects difficult, irrespective of power, by masking differences between treatment and control groups. Conclusions: Low base rates present strong challenges to researchers attempting to evaluate hot spots policing in smaller cities. As such, base rates must be taken directly into account when designing experimental evaluations. The article offers suggestions for researchers attempting to expand the examination of hot spots policing and other microplace-based interventions to smaller jurisdictions.

Understanding the Mechanisms Underlying Broken Windows Policing: The Need for Evaluation Evidence

Objectives: We argue that the model underlying broken windows policing requires a developmental sequence involving reductions in fear of crime and eventual enhancement of community social controls. We investigate whether existing evaluation studies provide evidence on these mechanisms. Methods: Drawing from a larger systematic review of disorder policing, we identify six eligible studies. We use narrative review and meta-analytic methods to summarize the impacts of these interventions on fear of crime and collective efficacy (a proxy for community social controls). Findings: Disorder policing strategies do not have a significant impact on fear of crime in a meta-analysis of six studies. In the one study measuring collective efficacy, there is also not a significant outcome. Conclusions: Existing broken windows policing programs do not show evidence of influencing the key mechanisms of the broken windows model of crime prevention, though evidence is currently not persuasive. We outline four key directions for improving research in this area, namely, (1) explore the mechanisms underlying the model, not just test crime outcomes; (2) use measures of disorder distinct from crime; (3) employ longitudinal designs to better fit the developmental nature of the mechanism; and (4) include observational analyses to examine the complex nature of feedback mechanisms.

The relationship between disorder, perceived risk, and collective efficacy: a look into the indirect pathways of the broken windows thesis

The broken windows thesis suggests that disorder is a key part of a cycle of community decline that leaves neighborhoods vulnerable to crime. Some recent research has challenged this thesis by finding limited support for a direct relationship between disorder and crime. However, others argued that such studies ignore the indirect pathways posited in the thesis. The current study sheds light on this debate by examining the relationships between disorder, fear of crime, and collective efficacy and finds support for the relationships suggested by the broken windows model. However, the findings also suggest that the model is overly simplistic and needs to consider other mediating factors in addition to fear. Additionally, the findings show that perceptions of disorder may have different impacts for residents of an area vs. people who work at a business in the area. Implications for theory and policy are discussed.

Issues in Survey Design: Using Surveys of Victimization and Fear of Crime as Examples

This chapter explores three crucial, but often overlooked, issues in survey design that can affect the quality of data collected and the direction or magnitude of relationships among variables measured with survey data. The first issue is response option effects, which deal with the notion that the response options provided to survey questions can have an impact on the responses. The second issue is question wording effects, which deal with examining how the ways in which questions are worded can affect responses. Finally, the third issue examined is question order effects, which deal with the problem of the order in which questions are presented on a survey potentially influencing responses. This chapter discusses each of these issues in detail, focusing on their implications for obtaining accurate, valid, and reliable data from surveys. Examples from survey research on victimization and fear of crime are used to illustrate the impact these issues can have on topics central to the field of criminology.

Why Getting Inside the “Black Box” Is Important Examining Treatment Implementation and Outputs in Policing Experiments

We propose that the causes of the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of police interventions can be better understood with an increased focus on the measurement of treatment implementation and outputs, as opposed to the more common “black box” conceptualizations of police interventions and outcome-only evaluations used in most experimental studies. We present findings from a randomized, experimental evaluation of broken windows policing at hotspots in three California cities. Our analysis suggests that variation in the treatment delivered to target street segments within and between cities limited the ability of the study to detect potential treatment impacts and was due in part to the failure of the police agencies to take ownership of the science of the intervention.

Protection motivation theory as a theoretical framework for understanding the use of protective measures

The use of defensive measures can be a double-edged sword: it can provide the means to protect people and property from potential criminal victimization, but can also be a costly and possibly unnecessary endeavor. However, research examining the factors contributing to the decision whether or not to engage in protective measures is often limited in both quantity and scope. In this article, we propose a theoretical framework for understanding the use of protective measures in response to criminal victimization threats based on Ronald Rogers’ protection motivation theory. Our discussion details Rogers’ theory, suggests variables and measures appropriate for the context of criminal victimization and protective responses, and provides guidance on testing and model adaptation issues. We hope that this will encourage further model development and testing to improve the understanding of individual protective behavior in response to crime or the threat of crime.

Die Bedeutung von randomisierten Experimenten bei der Evaluation von Kriminalprävention

Dieser Beitrag zeigt die Notwendigkeit von randomisierten Experimenten auf, die die uberzeugendsten Evaluationen zur Wirkung von kriminalpraventiven Bemuhungen darstellen. Er diskutiert die Grenzen nicht-experimenteller Ansatze bei Wirkungsuntersuchungen kriminalpraventiver Interventionen bevor er auf die statistischen Vorteile randomisierter Experimente eingeht. Anschliesend werden die Risiken erlautert, die mangels Verwendung der prazisesten Methodologie bei der Evaluation von Kriminalpravention entstehen. Der Beitrag erklart daruber hinaus, warum WissenschaftlicherInnen, die sich mit Kriminalpravention auseinandersetzen, experimentelle Methoden oftmals ausen vor gelassen haben und geht auf die Bedingungen ein, unter denen randomisierte Experimente am erfolgreichsten sind. randomisierte Experimente, Forschung zu kriminalpraventiven Bemuhungen, (nicht-)experimentelle Methoden, statistische Vorteile

Using Multitrait-Multimethod (MTMM) Techniques to Examine the Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Social Disorder:

Objectives: Disorder has been measured by various data sources; however, little attention has been given to comparing the construct validity of different measures obtained through various methods in capturing social disorder and related phenomena. Methods: The multitrait-multimethod approach was used to triangulate the consistency between social disorder, prostitution and drug activity across resident surveys, systematic social observations, and police calls for service data. Results: Prostitution and drug activity showed convergent validity, while there was little evidence that social disorder was consistently measured across the three methods. None of the three social problem measures showed high discriminant validity. Drug activity seems to have highest trait-specific discriminant validity across measures, and prostitution is the most identifiable measure across data sources. Social disorder was found to have low discriminant validity. However, the agreement between databases varies across the type of social problems. Conclusions: Social disorder appears to the most difficult concept to define and measure consistently. The lack of correspondence across data sources cautions against the use of a single source of information in studying disorder. Future studies should explore the factors that shape perceptions of disorder and how to best measure disorder to test the broken windows thesis and related concepts.

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.