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The crime reduction benefits of focused efforts by police in crime hotspots is one of the most widely established facts from the field of evidence-based policing. A consensus report from the National Academy of Sciences notes that a number of high-quality experimental research studies have shown that deploying more police officers in areas where crime is concentrated reduces crime. This evidence comes from more than 30 field experiments that randomly assigned extra officers to small geographic areas where crime was concentrated and shows that extra police deployed to these areas consistently have significant crime reduction benefits.¹

For example, a study found that increasing police in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, led to significant reductions in robberies, burglaries, and thefts, even after accounting for some of the crime being displaced to nearby areas.² While the New Orleans study found some displacement of crime, scores of experimental studies have shown that a focus on hotspots typically leads to minimal displacement and is more likely to lead to a diffusion of crime reduction benefits. The research evidence also suggests that the effects are not temporary; rather, if police are deployed to hotspots and stay vigilant, they can help reduce serious crime levels over the longer term.³ An experiment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, found that assigning police to crime hotspots as part of an offender-focused program—requiring frequent contact with a list of high-rate offenders through interactions ranging from casual conversations to serving arrest warrants—led to a significant reduction in crime.⁴ These are only two examples from a large body of experimental evidence that suggests when police actively focus on crime prevention in hotspots, they can significantly reduce serious crime and violence at the hotspots and the surrounding areas.

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