Sweet Spots for Hot Spots? A Cost-Effectiveness Comparison of Two Patrol Strategies

Abstract

Research Question: Can police substantially reduce targeted patrol time without in- creasing crime and disorder in crime hot spots already receiving high levels ofpatrol, at high-risk times, to find a more cost-effective ‘sweet spot’ level of patrol staffing for each hot spot? Data Merseyside Police measured police presence every 5 min via GPS location trackers from body-worn police radios for five pairs of matched geo-fenced hot spots of crime and disorder in a larger night-time economy area. Crime and incident data were also collected in each of the ten hot spots, over two nights on each of six consecutive weekends, with matched crime data from the same 12 nights 1 year earlier, and matching GPS data from two weekend nights before the 6-week experiment. Methods: The research design was a Maryland-Scale Level 4 test in which a group of five pairs of hot spots was randomly divided into one member of each pair receiving substantially reduced patrol time compared to the standard level received by the other member of the pair. The five experimental hot spots received at least 12–15 min of police presence every hour. Higher levels ofpatrol were maintained or increased in the control group consisting of the other five hot spots. Patrol time in the ‘reduced patrol’ experimental group was tracked and supervised closely with weekly individual feed- back to a uniformed team of one sergeant and three constables. Another 40 uniformed officers working the larger area (including the five control group hot spots) were tracked to ensure they stayed out of the experimental hot spots. Findings: The experiment delivered 35% less police time in treatment hot spots than in patrol hot spots. Total incidents reported by citizens to police dropped for the five ‘reduced-patrol’ experimental hot spots but not for the five high-patrol control spots