Place-based policing: new directions, new challenges

Abstract

In recent years, place-based (or hot-spot) policing, has emerged as a new policing strategy, promising evidence-based reductions in crime (Weisburd, 2007; Weisburd and Wire, 2018). As a proactive approach, place-based policing refocuses often scant policing resources into areas that have the most crime, at times when crime occurs the most frequently. Such practices present the opportunities for far greater efficiencies in the use of police resources that aids in the legitimacy of said resources, particularly in an era of a crime decline. With hot spots policing strategies being used by a majority of large police departments in the USA (Weisburd and Majmundar, 2018) and having academic support for the efficient reduction in crime and deviance problems (Braga and Weisburd, 2010; Braga et al., 2014; Weisburd, 2008) further research is needed to broaden the evidence base for this policing strategy.