TY - JOUR
T1 - The Dallas patrol management experiment
T2 - can AVL technologies be used to harness unallocated patrol time for crime prevention?
AU - Weisburd, David
AU - Groff, Elizabeth R.
AU - Jones, Greg
AU - Cave, Breanne
AU - Amendola, Karen L.
AU - Yang, Sue Ming
AU - Emison, Rupert F.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - Objectives: To examine whether information on where the police patrol drawn from automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems can be used to increase the amount of directed patrol time at high-crime police beats and crime hot spots, and whether such increases would lead to reductions in crime. Methods: In an experimental study with a block-randomized design, 232 police beats were randomly allocated to an experimental or control condition. In the experimental condition, the police commanders knew the amount of time that police spent in beats and crime hot spots. This information was not provided to commanders in the control condition. Over a 13-week period, assigned patrol time, unallocated patrol time, total patrol time, and crime were tracked at both police beats and crime hot spots (N = 1006). Results: Knowledge of where police officers patrolled did not affect directed patrol at the beat level. At the hot spots level, the treatment group experienced meaningful increases in unallocated patrol time and total patrol time, and a decrease in crime. Conclusions: A key finding of the study is that information generated from AVL can be used to increase directed patrol time at crime hot spots, and that these increased levels of patrol will lead to reductions in crime. At the same time, our study points to the fact that only a small proportion of unallocated time in Dallas is actually focused on hot spots policing. We suggest that this is the reason why crime went down significantly at the hot spots but not in beats overall in Dallas.
AB - Objectives: To examine whether information on where the police patrol drawn from automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems can be used to increase the amount of directed patrol time at high-crime police beats and crime hot spots, and whether such increases would lead to reductions in crime. Methods: In an experimental study with a block-randomized design, 232 police beats were randomly allocated to an experimental or control condition. In the experimental condition, the police commanders knew the amount of time that police spent in beats and crime hot spots. This information was not provided to commanders in the control condition. Over a 13-week period, assigned patrol time, unallocated patrol time, total patrol time, and crime were tracked at both police beats and crime hot spots (N = 1006). Results: Knowledge of where police officers patrolled did not affect directed patrol at the beat level. At the hot spots level, the treatment group experienced meaningful increases in unallocated patrol time and total patrol time, and a decrease in crime. Conclusions: A key finding of the study is that information generated from AVL can be used to increase directed patrol time at crime hot spots, and that these increased levels of patrol will lead to reductions in crime. At the same time, our study points to the fact that only a small proportion of unallocated time in Dallas is actually focused on hot spots policing. We suggest that this is the reason why crime went down significantly at the hot spots but not in beats overall in Dallas.
KW - AVL systems
KW - Crime hot spots
KW - Crime prevention
KW - Police patrol
KW - Preventive patrol
KW - Unallocated patrol time
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84942988572&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11292-015-9234-y
DO - 10.1007/s11292-015-9234-y
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AN - SCOPUS:84942988572
SN - 1573-3750
VL - 11
SP - 367
EP - 391
JO - Journal of Experimental Criminology
JF - Journal of Experimental Criminology
IS - 3
ER -