Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Evaluating Policing Approaches and Institutionalizing Smart Policing
Project Overview
The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) and researchers from Temple University’s Department of Criminal Justice set out to test the effectiveness of several violence reduction policing strategies, including foot patrol, problem-solving, and an offender-focused strategy. They sought to better understand the impacts of these strategies, and identify where and when they were most effective as violence reduction tactics. The Philadelphia SPI team examined the city’s 2009 incident database. Using advanced spatial analysis, they identified 81 mutually exclusive violent crime hot spots. These hotspots were divided into three groups of 27 hot spots each to test the effectiveness of foot patrol, problem-oriented policing, and offender-focused strategy using 20 treatment and 7 control spots within each site. This method allowed officers to achieve significant crime reductions while avoiding negative community perceptions of their actions.
Methods and Findings
Research Design
Process and outcome evaluation of a randomized control design.
Findings
- Offender-focused strategy outperformed foot patrol and problem-solving strategies.
- Compared to the control areas, the treatment areas that received the offender-focused strategy experienced a 22% decrease in violent crime, and a 31% decrease in violent street felonies.
