Commentary: Place-Based Delinquency Prevention: Issues and Recommendations (2013)

IntroductionIn recent years, police agencies have implemented a variety of place-focused efforts that are collectively known as policing. These tactics, which focus law enforcement resources on small, problematic geographical areas, have become popular. In one recent survey, 83% of police executives claimed they had mostly or completely implemented hot spots policing; fewer than 1 % stated that they had not implemented these methods (Kochel, Mastrofski, Maguire, & Willis, 2006 as cited in Kochel, 2011). Place-focused policing is grounded in a robust body of indicating that tends to occur in geographic clusters. For example, an assessment by National Academy of Sciences concluded that place-focused policing has strongest base of any law enforcement approach (Weisburd, Morris, & Ready, 2008).There is substantially less research regarding geographic concentration of juvenile (Weisburd, Morris, & Groff, 2009; Weisburd, Groff, & Morris, 2011). Similarly, few studies have examined effectiveness of preventing juvenile delinquency through place-based policing (Weisburd et al., 2008). Nevertheless, Weisburd et al. (2009) contend that the concept of hot spots is also salient for juvenile crime (p. 448).The Crime-Place ConnectionIn his 2003 presidential address to American Society of Criminology, John Laub praised criminological pioneers Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay for their work in illuminating role of environmental factors in etiology of delinquency (Laub, 2004). As early as 1942, Shaw and McKay noted that residences of delinquents clustered in particular areas of Chicago. Since that time, scholars have continued to explore relationship between and place, particularly among adults. There is now a large body of suggesting that certain locations experience more than others (Groff, Weisburd, & Yang, 2010). Not only does occur in geographic clusters, but there is general consensus that a large majority of crimes occur in a small number of places (Weisburd, 2011).The supporting this claim is so strong that Bichler, Christie-Merrall, and Sechrest (2011 ) concluded that there is irrefutable evidence that understanding patterns requires considering situational factors particular to specific locations (p. 490).The geographic location of a cluster is often specific; even locations within same neighborhood can have widely divergent rates (Groff et al., 2010). Because indicates is closely associated with microgeographic locations such as street segments or single addresses, recent research on crime-place relationship has advanced concept of (Weisburd, 2011, p. 154). For example, Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger (1989) found that only 3% of addresses in Minneapolis produced 50% of calls for police service. Similarly, Braga, Papachristos, and Hureau (2010) suggested that gun violence trends in Boston could best be understood by analyzing trends at street segments and intersections rather than larger units such as neighborhoods, police districts, or census tracts. These researchers noted that much of spatial research on gun violence does not account for possibility of variation between particular blocks and street corners within larger geographic units (Braga et al., 2010).The distinction between places and micro-places has important implications for applying hot spots policing to juvenile problems, particularly because this distinction may contradict traditional ideas about high-crime communities (Braga & Weisburd, 2010). Although particular neighborhoods have a (sometimes justifiable) reputation for high rates, police activity that focuses on entire communities ignores relationship between micro-places and crime. Evidence indicates that not every block in highcrime neighborhoods has high levels of crime; some blocks have a great deal of while others are relatively free (Braga et al. …