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Fifteen Minutes per Day Keeps the Violence Away: a Crossover Randomised Controlled Trial on the Impact of Foot Patrols on Serious Violence in Large Hot Spot Areas

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Type

Article

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Authors

Bland, Matthew 
Leggetter, Michelle 
Cestaro, David 
Sebire, Jacqueline 

Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:sec jats:titleResearch Question</jats:title> jats:pDid a 15-min patrol delivery over 1 day reduce serious violent crime in large hot spots (mean size = 2 km × 2 km), without displacing such crimes to nearby areas?</jats:p> </jats:sec>jats:sec jats:titleData</jats:title> jats:pWe tracked daily official crime reports in a sample of 21 high-crime Bedfordshire (UK) Lower-layer Super Output areas (LSOAs). We measured time spent by two-person police foot patrols in those areas with daily GPS data from handheld devices given to officers working on overtime. We also counted proactively initiated arrests.</jats:p> </jats:sec>jats:sec jats:titleMethods</jats:title> jats:pWe used a crossover randomised controlled trial on the 21 “hot spot” LSOAs, each of which was randomly assigned daily to be either in a treatment condition of 15-min of patrol (as one of seven each day) or a control condition of no patrol (as one of 14 each day) for each of 90 days. We used an intention-to-treat framework to analyse the impact of patrols on the outcome measures overall, on consecutive days of assignment to the same condition, and in 100-m ‘buffer’ zones around each hot spot.</jats:p> </jats:sec>jats:sec jats:titleFindings</jats:title> jats:pWe found that on treatment days the hot spots had 44% lower Cambridge crime harm index scores from serious violence than on control days, as well as 40% fewer incidents across all public crimes against personal victims. Statistically significant differences in lower prevalence, counts and harm of both non-domestic violent crime and robbery and other non-domestic crimes against personal victims were also found. We found no evidence of either displacement of serious crime into a 100-m buffer zone, nor any evidence of residual deterrence on no-patrol days following patrol days. We did find evidence of a cumulative effect: the largest differences in crime harm on control days were found in treatment days that came after 3 days of consecutive patrol in the same LSOA.</jats:p> </jats:sec>jats:sec jats:titleConclusions</jats:title> jats:pEven minimal amounts of foot patrol can prevent serious violent crime across a large area, and repeated patrols over several days help even more. Our findings suggest that, to reduce both violent and other forms of crime, uniformed officers need to patrol hot spots for short amounts of times on consecutive days.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Description

Keywords

48 Law and Legal Studies, 4805 Legal Systems, 4402 Criminology, 44 Human Society, Violence Research, Mental Health, Clinical Research, Mental health, 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Journal Title

Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2520-1344
2520-1336

Volume Title

5

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC