The Uses and Impacts of Mobile Computing Technology in Hot Spots Policing.

BACKGROUND: Recent technological advances have much potential for improving police performance, but there has been little research testing whether they have made police more effective in reducing crime. OBJECTIVE: To study the uses and crime control impacts of mobile computing technology in the context of geographically focused "hot spots" patrols. RESEARCH DESIGN: An experiment was conducted using 18 crime hot spots in a suburban jurisdiction. Nine of these locations were randomly selected to receive additional patrols over 11 weeks. Researchers studied officers' use of mobile information technology (IT) during the patrols using activity logs and interviews. Nonrandomized subgroup and multivariate analyses were employed to determine if and how the effects of the patrols varied based on these patterns. RESULTS: Officers used mobile computing technology primarily for surveillance and enforcement (e.g., checking automobile license plates and running checks on people during traffic stops and field interviews), and they noted both advantages and disadvantages to its use. Officers did not often use technology for strategic problem-solving and crime prevention. Given sufficient (but modest) dosages, the extra patrols reduced crime at the hot spots, but this effect was smaller in places where officers made greater use of technology. CONCLUSIONS: Basic applications of mobile computing may have little if any direct, measurable impact on officers' ability to reduce crime in the field. Greater training and emphasis on strategic uses of IT for problem-solving and crime prevention, and greater attention to its behavioral effects on officers, might enhance its application for crime reduction.

Violence, drug markets and racial composition: challenging stereotypes through spatial analysis.

Places in which there is a strong spatial connection between violence and drug activity can often evoke particular stereotypes. They are believed to be places marked by high levels of social disorganisation, unemployment, disorder and racial heterogeneity. Yet scholars have argued that the spatial relationship between drug market activity and violence is more complicated and that other factors may explain this geographical connection. In the first article of this two-part series, different types of spatial analysis were employed to describe crime concentrations of drugs and violence. Evidence was found that challenges the notion that places with drug activity are inevitably more violent. This second paper examines what factors predict these variations in drug­violence spatial patterns in Seattle when derived using different spatial methods. The findings indicate that racial composition, disorder and unemployment may not be as salient as once believed in predicting places that are violent drug markets.

Is counter-terrorism policy evidence-based? What works, what harms, and what is unknown / ¿Está basada la política antiterrorista en la evidencia? Lo que es efectivo, lo que es perjudicial, y lo desconocido

One of the central concerns surrounding counter-terrorism interventions today, given the attention and money spent on them, is whether such interventions are effective. To explore this issue, we conducted a general review of terrorism literature as well as a Campbell systematic review on counter-terrorism strategies. In this article, we summarize some of our findings from these works. Overall, we found an almost complete absence of evaluation research on counter-terrorism strategies and conclude that counter-terrorism policy is not evidence-based. The findings of this review emphasise the need for government leaders, policy makers, researchers, and funding agencies to include and insist on evaluations of the effectiveness of these programs in their agendas (AU)

Una de las mayores preocupaciones de las políticas antiterroristas es su efectividad, dado el gasto enorme que suponen. Para explorar este punto llevamos a cabo una revisión sobre la literatura en general del terrorismo, así como una revisión Campbell sobre las estrategias antiterroristas. En conjunto hallamos casi una ausencia completa de evidencia sobre estos programas, y concluimos que la política antiterrorista no está basada en la evidencia. Esta revisión enfatiza la necesidad de que los políticos, los investigadores y los responsables de la gestión de estas políticas acentúen la necesidad de promover la evaluación de la efectividad de esos programas (AU)

Is counter-terrorism policy evidence-based? What works, what harms, and what is unknown.

Is counter-terrorism policy evidence-based? What works, what harms, and what is unknown. One of the central concerns surrounding counter-terrorism interventions today, given the attention and money spent on them, is whether such interventions are effective. To explore this issue, we conducted a general review of terrorism literature as well as a Campbell systematic review on counter-terrorism strategies. In this article, we summarize some of our findings from these works. Overall, we found an almost complete absence of evaluation research on counter-terrorism strategies and conclude that counter-terrorism policy is not evidence-based. The findings of this review emphasise the need for government leaders, policy makers, researchers, and funding agencies to include and insist on evaluations of the effectiveness of these programs in their agendas.

The geography of drug activity and violence: analyzing spatial relationships of non-homogenous crime event types.

The pervasiveness of interest regarding the theme of a relationship between street-level drug activity and violence has been reflected throughout criminal justice research, policy, and practice as well as in public opinion. Most research has focused on the connection between the two at the individual level. This study extends previous research by examining the place-based relationship between drugs and violence. To do so, this project employs three spatial statistical approaches--measures of spatial intensity/density, measures of spatial dependence for drugs and violence separately, and a modified spatial dependence approach for non-homogenous populations to explore the relationship between drug activity and violence. The findings indicate that while drugs and violence often exhibit overlapping spatial patterns, important variations exist in the spatial relationship between the two.