Crime concentrations at places

Every research enterprise takes place in a context, political, economic, and technological context. So it is with policing research. This chapter begins by sketching out where the practice of policing is heading, and what we need to do differently, so as to arrive at a roughly envisioned future ethically and in good order. A police presence at all places at all times being impossible, the practical issue is where and when to place officers or their technological surrogates. The chapter considers optimized distribution of effort and resource, given the central aim of fairness in the distribution of crime harm. It illustrates current levels of inequality of victimization, and claims that reducing the current concentration at individual and area levels should be an explicit underpinning vision for policing. It also briefly reviews the relevant literature and its implications.