2010
David L. Weisburd
Anti-crime measures in micro-places.
Weisburd was lauded for his research that led to his subsequent ‘law of crime concentration’. That research demonstrated the importance of prioritising crime prevention in a small fraction of all geographic micro-places in any community, since most locations usually have no serious crime at all.David L. Weisburd
Born 1954 in Israel. David L. Weisburd was professor at George Mason University (United States) and Hebrew University (Israel) at the time of the award.
Showed that ‘hotspot policing’ of small crime-prone areas reduces crime in neighbouring areas, as well as the central areas.Showed that ‘hotspot policing’ of small crime-prone areas reduces crime in neighbouring areas, as well as the central areas.
Policing with precision
David L. Weisburd was awarded the 2010 Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his research on how policing can be made more effective by concentrating efforts in a small number of high-crime micro-places, such as a street segment from one corner to the next.
The jury recognized the most crucial breakthrough of Weisburd’s research was his falsification of the ‘spatial displacement’ hypothesis: that increasing resources in high-crime places merely pushes crime to other locations. His finding of the effects of police operations on preventing crime without displacement has been instrumental in bridging the gap between criminology and practical policing. Weisburd is a leading figure among the growing number of criminologists who are demonstrating how the application of research findings can help reduce not only crime, but also unnecessary interference with the public’s freedom from intensive policing where it is not needed.
Effective to deploy more police to ’hotspots’
Weisburd’s work builds on, and complements, prior research showing the effectiveness of adding police resources to high-crime ‘hot spots’. These places show substantial reductions of high rates of robberies, purse snatchings, street fights, or illegal drug trafficking, but without evidence of ‘pushing crime around the corner‘. With strategic insight, he designed systematic observations by trained observers to measure displacement during a massive reduction of observed drug-dealing and public prostitution encounters.
Crime reduction with no displacement
Evidence from these tests conducted by Weisburd and his colleagues in Jersey City (New Jersey) and Seattle (Washington state) showed that criminal activity can be significantly reduced in places where policing is done, with no increase of crime in other areas. He also presented evidence that the introduction of a crime prevention strategy to a small, high-crime area often creates a spillover of benefits to neighbouring areas, reducing crime rather than increasing it around the targeted location.
These findings encourage police forces to increase their focus on patrolling a small percentage of any city, in small, high-crime areas. Based on this research and its replications, police have adopted this strategy from the US to Sweden to Latin America, Australia and beyond.