Does Hot Spots Policing Have Meaningful Impacts on Crime? Findings from An Alternative Approach to Estimating Effect Siz
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Does Hot Spots Policing Have Meaningful Impacts on Crime? Findings from An Alternative Approach to Estimating Effect Sizes from Place‑Based Program Evaluations Anthony A. Braga1 · David L. Weisburd2,3 Accepted: 23 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Objectives Prior meta analyses of hot spots policing show that the approach reduces crime, but report relatively small mean effect sizes based on Cohen’s d. The natural logarithm of the relative incidence rate ratio (log RIRR) has been suggested as a more suitable effect size metric for place-based studies that report crime outcomes as count data. We calculate the log RIRR for hot spots policing studies to assess whether it changes interpretation of hot spots policing’s impact on crime. Methods Cohen’s d and log RIRR effect size metrics were calculated for 53 studies representing 60 tests of hot spots policing programs. Meta-analytic techniques were used to compare the estimated impacts of hot spots policing on crime and investigate the influence of moderating variables using the two differing effect size metrics. Results The Cohen’s d meta-analysis revealed a “small” statistically significant mean effect size favoring hot spots policing in reducing crime outcomes at treatment places relative to control places (d = .12) of approximately 8.1%. In contrast, the log RIRR meta-analysis suggests that hot spots policing generated a more substantive 16% (d = .24) statistically significant crime reduction. The two metrics also produced differing rank orders in magnitudes of effect for the same studies. Conclusion Cohen’s d provides misleading results when used to calculate mean effect size in place based studies both in terms of the relative ranking of the magnitude of study outcomes, and in the interpretation of average impacts of interventions. Our analyses suggest a much more meaningful impact of hot spots policing on crime than previous reviews. Keywords Hot spots policing · Meta-analysis · Effect size · Cohen’s d · Log RIRR
* Anthony A. Braga [email protected] 1
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, 204 Churchill Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA
2
Institute of Criminology, Hebrew University Law School, Jerusalem, Israel
3
Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Introduction Hot spots policing is an important innovation in policing that is used to control crime by many police departments in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries throughout the world (e.g., see Ariel et al. 2020; Weisburd and Braga 2019; Weisburd and Majmundar 2018). Simply defined, hot spots policing is the application of police interventions at very small geographic units of analysis. The emergence of hot spots policing can be traced to innovations in criminological theory that recognized the uneven distribution of crime across urban landscapes (Sh
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