Crime And Catch Fenders - 1321 Words

Crime is all around us, but, unlike the general public, we encounter it daily as members of the law enforcement community. Our job is to do our best in preventing crime and catching the offenders that slip through our crime prevention methods. The following questions often come up: Are our current methods the best? If not, how can we better improve our practices to eradicate crime and catch the offenders? Police strategies are, inherently, reactive, but, recently, the law enforcement community has started to develop more proactive strategies to more efficiently eradicate crime (Groff et al. 2014, pg.23). Among these proactive police strategies is a rather recent practice called hot-spot policing (Groff et al. 2014, pg.23). There are many†¦show more content†¦In this report I will define hot-spot policing and dissect what researchers have studied in regards to hot-spot policing. The logical place to start when discussing hot-spot policing is simply what hot-spot policing real ly is and how it is used. Hot-spot policing encompasses a couple types of direct patrol practices that narrow in on places of high crime so that law enforcement can concentrate on places that have increasingly elevated criminal activity reports (Telep, Mitchell, Weisburd 2012, pg. 906). While the term hot-spot policing, as well as, the systematic approach to crime-concentrated areas is relatively new, officers often know their patrol routes well enough that they already knew where the high crime areas were (Braga 2008, pg.6). The systematic approach is, supposedly, what really helps the officers get results in eradicating crime in areas (Braga 2008, pg.6). These practices, supposedly, allow officers to vigorously reduce crime in order to create better, safer neighborhoods and communities (Telep, Mitchell, Weisburd 2012, pg.906). Generally speaking, there are three major types of hot-spot policing practices: foot patrol, problem-oriented policing, and offender-focused policing (Gro ff et al. 2014, pg.23). Other hot-spot policing methods could be upping the amount of arrests for certain crimes or being aggressive in maintaining order in rough neighborhoods (Kochel 2011, pg.351). All of these