Policing is a human-centered profession. Beat officers, investigators, and police leaders spend much of their time talking to and working with people. A good beat officer is a master communicator, adapting their style and tone to the situation at hand—diffusing interpersonal conflicts, calming those affected by mental illness, and speaking with authority to avoid force during arrests. Investigators speak with crime victims and interrogate suspects, develop sources, and build community contacts. Police leaders are constantly taking calls, giving interviews, and engaging their constituents in dialogue.
As a natural outcome of the nature of this profession, the public expects human-centered responses to crime conditions, manifested primarily in the arrest of offenders. People expect arrests to reduce crime. In some cases, arresting offenders is effective. In other cases, crime reductions do not follow. If crime and crime control are exclusively human centered, why does the arrest of chronic offenders not always result in crime reduction?
Research and experience demonstrate there are more opportunities to produce public safety than offender interventions alone. Some crimes are influenced by physical and social structures such as drug trafficking in the vicinity of a neighborhood store. A trafficker in that common situation is influenced by a network of people (suppliers, competitors, and consumers) as well as place (active management, concealment, or avenues to elude pursuit). When structures are in play, individual participants have less influence than the sum of their parts, and social and environmental aspects cannot be ignored. Incapacitated offenders will be replaced by other individuals who attempt to capitalize on the same criminal opportunities as past offenders. The result is persistent crime and violence in the community despite apprehensions of offenders.
The Foundation of Crime Theory
This opportunity for more comprehensive and sustainable crime reduction is not a novel idea. It comprises the assimilation of crime theories that policing has successfully operationalized: the opportunity theories of crime including routine activities theory, rational choice perspective, and place-management theory.1 It is consistent with human ecological theory.2 Additionally, it is embodied largely through problem-oriented policing strategies.3 Criminal acts consist of more than an offender. Crimes involve interplay between offenders, victims, and others, each making choices that can inform investigations. Often these choices can be influenced by the actions of a place manager, who has power over how places are constructed, rules of conduct, and resources allocated to uphold these rules.
Human ecological theory suggests that humans interact with and depend upon their environment to facilitate behavior. Humans make environmental modifications to more efficiently achieve desired results. This has more frequently been recognized in conversations about the development of the built environment of a city and discussions regarding systems of agriculture and transportation. But, it is just as relevant for systemic illicit activities and as relevant for block-level micro systems as it is for macro systems. Macro-level environmental influences might include climate, elevation, distance from population centers, and natural resource availability. Micro-level environmental influences may include direction of the sun, shelter from rain and snow, availability of electricity, distance to prepared food, avenues of escape, and ability to conceal oneself or one’s illicit activities from the view of those not engaged in criminality. The characteristics of these spaces, their suitability for crime, and the absence of people prepared to deter crime can be modified in favor of law-abiding people or in favor of offenders. While place-based strategies are not a crime fighting panacea, they are aligned with policing’s strategic objective, yet their impact is frequently overlooked.
Place-Based Violence Reduction Tools
The tools available to the police to pursue offender-based violence reduction strategies are highly developed. Modern principles of criminal law are rooted in centuries old, English common law. Developing evidence, obtaining a warrant based on probable cause, and bringing a charged offender before the sovereign for trial and punishment are well known and familiar concepts.
“Place-based responses and problem-oriented frameworks, supported by litigators willing to work closely with police, provide the necessary tools to achieve positive outcomes”
In contrast, the legal mechanisms for place-based enforcement are less utilized, despite similar origins. The body of law that governs the ability of the public to abate or prosecute these harms is called nuisance law. Even more than criminal law, nuisance law is at the heart of the formational political philosophy in the United States. Nuisance law embodies the political philosophy espoused by John Locke that was central to the U.S. founders. Locke’s theory of government held that a society forms around an implicit agreement where some individual rights are surrendered to the need of the public to be free from collective harm. Nuisance law shows how Locke’s philosophy plays out through a constant tension between property rights and harm to the public.
The roots of nuisance law pre-date even modern criminal law principles. But despite the longevity of these foundations, nuisance law is less developed. Nuisance law represents a fraction of scholarly legal work, courses in law school, and police training. There are also fewer practitioners of placed-based strategies. Most cities and counties have well-established offices with dozens of attorneys prosecuting tens of thousands of criminal offenses each year. However, there is often limited or no dedicated nuisance support, despite its close relationship with offender-based investigations.
While practitioners may not always recognize the interplay, many place-based concepts are incorporated in criminal law. The enforcement associated with any place-based initiative has many of the same investigative steps and always has the same goal as an offender-based strategy: find the offender who is doing bad things and stop them. But in the place-based strategy, the “bad thing” is not defined by a criminal statute. Instead, liability is a more flexible concept of what is an unreasonable response to the circumstances.
In that way, place-based investigations are far more challenging. In an offender-based investigation, practitioners apply a well-worn response to a problem through the application of a criminal charge. In contrast, the place-based investigator must first define the problem, then determine what is lacking about the response. Answering that question often requires context and understanding well beyond a handful of sentences in a criminal statute. Fixing a nuisance requires an understanding of it or, more specifically, the people contributing to it. Being able to answer both “how” the subject of an investigation is contributing to the nuisance as well as “why” can be critical to solving the problem.
Culpability of Place Managers
The person responsible for place management has a role in either the problem’s creation or continuance. Understanding where the subject of an investigation falls on the liability spectrum is necessary for crafting an effective response, particularly when it leads to enforcement action. The impact that the law can bring to bear can run across a wide range depending on the seriousness of the person’s failure. The less serious, the more forgiving the law can be—a frustrating truth when even casual disinterest can have the same devastating impact as intentional misconduct. For example, an absentee or deceased property owner who does nothing can have the same effect as the owner who middles drug deals or provides a market for stolen goods.
Determining the owner or operator’s actions or inactions that lead to liability is the foundation of any place-based enforcement. Understanding a place manager’s acts (or inaction) that contribute to the creation or maintenance of a nuisance is the key to enforcement for two reasons: first, to fulfill the need to prove the case against the person, and second, to create an effective remedy.
Proving a case can be a challenge because the law does not favor third-party liability. Third-party liability is the concept of holding one person automatically responsible for the actions of someone else. The Due Process Clause to the Fourteenth Amendment limits imposing automatic responsibility for someone else’s actions.
While a person can be held accountable for another’s conduct, the responsibility is not automatic. Instead, responsibility arises from the person’s own actions. For example, a parent is not automatically responsible when a child skips school and commits a crime. But the parent might be responsible based on the parent’s own failure to ensure the child was at school if the parent knew of the problem and the likely harm perpetrated by the child, yet the parent still did nothing.
The ability to hone in on the things the owner is doing wrong is also important at the end of the case. After a court determines that the defendant is liable, the court will look to order the defendant to take some action. The most common relief sought against a defendant is for the court to order them to fix the problem or “abate the nuisance.” But for that order to impose punishment for noncompliance, it must be clear what the defendant is to do or not do. Stated differently, unless what the defendant has done wrong can be articulated, it is impossible to craft an enforceable order to do or not do that action in the future. Consequently, a complete understanding of where the defendant has failed is critical.
“Violent crime and shootings continue to present serious challenges that test the police’s ability to improve public safety”
In seeking an answer to that question, it can also be useful to ask another first: how does the place contributing to the nuisance connect to other locations? Much like offenders have a network that facilitates their behavior, so do places. The most obvious places are visible: where violence and disorder occur. But other places help create the problem, like where contraband is stored, bought, or sold or where offenders flee after committing a violent offense. Once a place’s function in contributing to the nuisance is determined, the defendant’s role becomes easier to articulate.
Most cases fall into common scenarios, such as the corner market where shootings occur. Violence in this situation typically involves those who frequent the market and loiter in the common areas. The reason for the loitering ranges from socializing in a common neighborhood location to to more nefarious, illicit activity. While environmental factors may influence the utility of the location (visibility or effective routes to flee from police), the operator of the market tolerates the congregation.
The owner may be driven by fear of reprisals or a desire to profit from the loiterers as patrons. But once the owner’s tolerance of loitering is established as the theoretical framework for the owner’s liability, investigators can proceed with filling in “how” the owner has tolerated it: failure to trespass those involved in crime and disorder, unwillingness to call the police, refusal to make environmental design modifications to discourage congregating, profiting from the activity by serving congregants as patrons, and so forth.
If the owner fails to modify their behavior voluntarily, then there is a clear path to enforcement.
Enforcement Options
Once enforcement becomes necessary, options include enforcement of property maintenance or zoning requirements; regulatory actions such as termination/revocation of licensing; administrative actions such as fines for tolerating nuisance activity; or civil or criminal prosecution. Each approach has benefits and detriments that impact utility.
Before delving into an adversarial action, some effort should be devoted to non-adversarial resolution. Attempting to talk through the problem is not so much an effort to avoid conflict or be efficient as a useful investigative step before pulling enforcement levers. The information that can be gathered by engaging with a place-manager often makes it the most critical step to an enforcement action. Many investigators make the mistake of approaching the subject first with requests to solve the problem. However, a more effective strategy starts with a list of questions to gather critical evidence, such as the following:
- Who are the people making the decisions? Are they the same people responsible for executing the decisions or does the subject leave that to others?
- Is the person aware there is a problem or agree that a problem exists? How would they describe the problem?
- What has the person done to date to solve the problem? Why have those efforts failed, in their view?
Understanding whether the place-manager agrees that there is a problem is an important place to start. Recognition of the problem is critical, particularly as evidence in an enforcement action to assess the subject’s willingness or ability to effectively respond. Attempted collaboration can be an effective way to determine sincerity or the likelihood of promises going unfulfilled. If an owner is simply unwilling to take any meaningful action or engagement is futile because the owner is unavailable to engage, enforcement is necessary.
Administrative Enforcement
The first group of enforcement options are administrative: actions that can be initiated to enforce some existing nuisance, zoning, or property maintenance code requirements. These actions are quick. They can be initiated within days. But their impact is constrained by the limitations on the punishment that can be levied for noncompliance. Most violations are enforced by civil fines, which are limited in amount, and the fine must be collected if the owner does not voluntarily pay—a dubious proposition in many cases. Filing a separate collection action requires legal counsel and likely months before a judgment is issued. Additional actions, like filing a lien or garnishment, are sometimes necessary to compel payment, assuming the entire endeavor is not sidetracked by other legal maneuvers like bankruptcy.
Moreover, some administrative actions, such as property maintenance code enforcement, for example, are pretextual actions to leverage other crime reduction objectives. While blight and crime are highly correlated, the connection is not exclusive. Compliance with these orders does not always achieve the objective of the overall project. Time, resources, and effort might be expended to gain a limited crime reduction benefit. There is also the potential danger of stretching the scope of enforcement beyond the original intent of the law. The risk is greater when the tools are utilized by those without experience in the underlying subject matter. Misuse can jeopardize the enforcement if the erstwhile defendant can shift from the defense to the offense. Such a maneuver can result in the enforcers losing the initiative and, more importantly, the focus of the court or public on the overall narrative.
Regulatory Enforcement
Similarly, regulatory actions, such as those involving licensing or permitting are potential enforcement actions. Most licenses or permits include requirements that the licensee abide by applicable law and not create a nuisance. The revocation of licenses can dramatically limit all or part of the licensed activity. The effect can vary from closing the business to limiting a single part of the business’s operations. Regulatory actions also tend to be delayed, with layers of administrative appeal hearings that likely require months to resolve, if not longer.
Civil or Criminal Enforcement
Finally, civil or criminal prosecutions can be brought in court to obtain orders to address the underlying acts or omissions creating the nuisance. Like any action involving courts, obtaining relief is frequently a long-term process, absent conditions that warrant emergency judicial relief. There is also a barrier to entry: an attorney must be involved in the process. But court actions have the benefit of achieving a final result that addresses the underlying cause of the nuisance. Litigation can also be used to coordinate enforcement from different agencies involved in the case. The effort stays on the offensive and focused on the resolution of its goals. In contrast, if a regulatory or administrative action ends up in court, the government is defending its action. While the difference might lack distinction to many, allowing the issue to be reframed by the property owner in court can be disastrous, particularly if a judge is disposed to grant permission rather than forgiveness or is suspicious of governmental action. While these issues are not insurmountable, they will cost time whereby the underlying safety issues persist.
But most important is what a court can achieve in contrast to the other actions. A court can use its powers more flexibly to fashion a result that is more tailored to the circumstances. By placing a defendant on probation, the court can impose requirements tailored to the conditions underlying the problem and then supervise their execution. Examples of requirements might include installing a light at this corner, cutting back the vegetation along this building, or razing this dilapidated structure.
While there is utility in using any or all these tools, careful consideration should be given to the goal before proceeding. Where there is a substantial investment of resources, there is no substitute for a single coordinated court action. In the spectrum of responses, litigation tends to be a long-term response. But where the problem has persisted, investing the time and resources for litigation is often the option most likely to achieve its goals.
Integrating Place-Oriented Tools in Policing
Cincinnati’s Police Department (CPD) in Ohio works closely with the city’s law department to apply these tools in crime prevention via two specific strategies. The first is a problem-oriented approach. Second, CPD’s Place-Based Investigations of Violent Offender Territories (PIVOT), now referred to as Place-Network Investigations (PNI) in agencies across the United States, is a complex place-oriented approach aimed at disrupting systemic violence.
Problem Solving/Problem-Oriented Policing (POP)
CPD was committed to Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) as the primary strategy to address crime and disorder in the early 2000s. The commitment to POP has been sustained, despite numerous leadership changes and the passage of time. POP encourages police to move beyond incident-based responses alone to analyze conditions and comprehensively understand where crime patterns exist. As suggested before, where similar crimes concentrate and repeat over time, despite traditional police strategies including arrests, police may benefit from closely studying the nature of the problem, the reasons crimes perpetuate, and the opportunities to disrupt patterned offending.
The hallmark SARA (scan, analyze, respond, assess) problem-solving methodology simplifies the steps of the scientific method, while preserving the value of a thoughtful, data-driven, and informed approach.4 Scanning closely to properly identify and learn about a problem, analyzing all available information in search of potentially effective responses, responding in ways that are most likely to be effective rather than in ways that are simplest, and assessing the impact of responses helps the police to be the most effective and to continue to learn what works and what doesn’t.
This approach highlights the important role of property owners and place managers, and it uncovers opportunities for them to act differently. Place-based enforcement opportunities become important options, should representatives refuse voluntary changes recommended by police. POP has been misunderstood as a quality-of-life strategy, unsuitable for addressing violent crime problems. This is false.
In fact, the POP framework can be applied to all problem types. In 2024, CPD led at least 25 distinct problem-solving projects throughout Cincinnati addressing a wide variety of problems. Ten of these projects are aimed at reducing violence. Many of these projects included administrative, regulatory, and civil actions, in addition to more traditional police responses, such as high-visibility patrols and arrests. Although results are wide ranging, problem-solving projects aimed at violence continue to show promise. Several projects have produced demonstrable reductions in violent crime.
Cincinnati’s PIVOT is the most complex place-based problem-solving strategy underway in the city. Aimed squarely at shooting and violence reduction, PIVOT focuses on small areas of the city where shootings have concentrated and sustained. Theorizing that a network of places underlies and supports violence in these places, the PIVOT team’s work includes uncovering the place network, then disrupting it.
Conceptually, PIVOT may be understood as a series of problem-solving projects, closely coordinated across the place network and aimed at making the environment less suitable for criminal activity that leads to violence and more suitable for prosocial behaviors. Administrative, regulatory, and civil options are often used across the place network in support of the goal of sustained violence reduction. Underway since 2016, an evaluation of the first five Cincinnati PIVOT sites revealed a greater than 50 percent reduction in shooting victims, on average, in project sites.
Conclusion
Agencies looking to strengthen and broaden their approach to crime and violence should build problem-solving capacity, and they should prioritize this approach particularly where violence and shootings concentrate and repeat. Where possible, they should consider creating specialized teams of officers who can be trained in techniques that increase the tools available to them as they work to prevent crime. Agencies should also partner with their local attorneys to maximize the impact of place-based enforcement tools.
Violent crime and shootings continue to present serious challenges that test the police’s ability to improve public safety. With so much at stake, public safety practitioners must consider all reasonable response options. Evidence-based and data-informed strategies should be considered when developing new approaches. Place-based responses and problem-oriented frameworks, supported by litigators willing to work closely with police, provide the necessary tools to achieve positive outcomes and are critical to strategically improving agencies’ capacity to prevent crime and violence. d
Notes:
1 Martha J. Smith and Ronald V. Clarke, “Situational Crimes Prevention: Classifying Techniques Using ‘Good Enough’ Theory,” in The Oxford Handbook of Crime Prevention, eds. Brandon C. Welsh and David P. Farrington (Oxford University Press, 2012), 291–315; Marcus Felson, “Routine Activities and Crime Prevention in the Developing Metropolis,” Criminology 25 (1986): 911–932; Derek Cornish and Ron Clarke, The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending, (Springer-Verlag, 1986); Tamara Madensen, “Bar Management and Crime: Toward a Dynamic Theory of Place Management and Crime Hot Spots” (PhD diss., University of Cincinnati, 2007).
2Marcus Felson and Lawrence Cohen, “Human Ecology and Crime: A Routine Activity Approach”, Human Ecology 8 (1980): 389–405.
3Herman Goldstein, Problem-Oriented Policing (McGraw-Hill Inc., 1979).
4 John Eck, “Police Problems: The Complexity of Problem Theory, Research and Evaluation,” in Problem-Oriented Policing: From Innovation to Mainstream, ed. Johannes Knutsson (Criminal Justice Press, 2003), 67–102.
Please cite as
Mark Manning and Matthew Hammer, “A Framework for Collaborative Crime Prevention: Expanding the Violence Reduction Toolkit,” Police Chief Online, November 26, 2025.
