Policing Problem Places

Anthony A. Braga is Senior Research Associate and Lecturer in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.David L. Weisburd holds a joint appointment as a Distinguished Professor in the Administration of Justice Department at George Mason University and also as the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem.

"Policing Problem Places is a must read for mayors, police executives, and academics alike. This landmark work makes a particularly important contribution by offering a framework to understand and change the underlying conditions that give rise to crime hot spots. Community members, in particular, will appreciate Braga and Weisburd's focus on preventing crime through collaboration and the engagement of policing strategies that are legitimate to thepeople the police seek to serve and protect."--William Bratton, former Chief, Los Angeles Police Department and former Commissioner, New York Police Department"Policing Problem Places seeks nothing less than a revolution in police organization and practice. While most of the police budget is spent on police patrol, most of that time is wasted on low-crime places. In a clear and engaging style, Braga and Weisburd synthesize three decades of police research around a distinctive and brilliant vision for reorganizing our system of public crime prevention around high-crime places. This will be a widely read andinfluential book."--Lawrence W. Sherman, Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Experimental Criminology, Cambridge University"Braga and Weisburd make an unequivocal case for a tightly focused emphasis on place in policing. They rehearse the empirical evidence for the relationship between hot-spots policing and crime prevention, but they do more. The authors introduce a critical normative criterion for good policing--legitimacy--that scholars must address and police executives must not ignore. This is the book on smarter and fairer law enforcement."--Tracey L. Meares, DeputyDean and Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law, Yale Law School"This book provides a clarion call to police officers and police leaders everywhere to follow the evidence, to focus on policing places and to reduce crime. It is a recipe book for safer places, less crime, and better policing."--Peter Neyroud QPM, Chief Constable and Chief Executive, National Policing Improvement Agency, UK"The National Academy of Sciences has recommended that the police concentrate their efforts on developing specific strategies to deal with specific problems rather than on the more general strategies of patrol and investigation that had been the core of policing for at least two generations. In this book, Anthony Braga and David Weisburd have shown how to meet this challenge. They have forged a strong connection between sophisticated crime control theory andthe existing scientific evidence on policing crime hot spots. The result is a rich, rigorous, and provocative analysis... A must read for both academics and practitioners."--Mark H. Moore, HauserProfessor of Nonprofit Organizations, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

• Acknowledgements ; Chapter 1. Introduction ; Chapter 2. The Emergence of Hot Spots Policing ; Chapter 3. The Theoretical Importance of Place in Crime Prevention ; Chapter 4. The Empirical Evidence for Hot Spots Policing ; Chapter 5. Dealing with Problem Places ; Chapter 6. Enhancing Police Legitimacy Through Community Engagement ; in Problem Places ; Chapter 7. Conclusion: Improving Policing by Focusing on Problem Places ; Tables and Figures ; References ; Notes