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Police in one of the most crime-hit areas of the United Kingdom are to launch the first controlled experiment in history based on a successful technique pioneered in the US. The results could have implications for policing around the world. Professor Lawrence Sherman, Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the University of Cambridge in England and the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, pioneered the technique of policing crime hotspots in the US in the late 1980s.
In 1987, he discovered that just three percent of the street addresses in Minneapolis produced more than half of all calls to police. In parts of the US, concentrating police on these streets has since successfully cut crime by two-thirds within the hotspots.
What remains unknown from US studies is how much this strategy may encourage offenders to commit crimes at other locations. The UK initiative, which is due to begin in the spring with results scheduled to be published early next year, will focus on the Greater Manchester area in the north of England, which has one of the highest crime rates in the country.
Researchers believe that by focusing resources on hundreds of small areas through Greater Manchester and focusing police officers on these “pressure points” with highest rates of violent crime, it may be possible to reduce crime more significantly than if they were to patrol a wider area.
Professor Sherman says it will be the first time that research has been conducted into whether this pressure point style of policing just serves to displace crime to other areas, and could have implications for policing styles around the world.
“This will be the first controlled experiment in history which allows us to assess not only whether this patrol design will reduce crimes in those areas, but also whether it just encourages offenders to go elsewhere,” he said.
“We believe that simply having a police officer stationed in the middle of one of these pressure points can spoil the party for would-be offenders and stabilize the area.
“If the experiment produces the results we hope it will, we could end up revolutionizing policing by putting officers not on neighborhood beats, but focusing them heavily on these pressure points.”
Because street layouts and other factors are quite different in the US than the UK, it could be that the effects may not be the same as in the US. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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