Practice-Based Research: Ex Post Facto Evaluation of Evidence-Based Police Practices Implemented in Residential Burglary Micro-Time Hot Spots.
BACKGROUND
Police agencies around the country are implementing various strategies to reduce crime in their communities that need to be evaluated. These strategies are often based on systematic crime analysis and are focused on crime occurring in hot spots, which are areas of disproportionate amounts of crime.


OBJECTIVE
This article takes a practice-based research approach to evaluate whether evidence-based police strategies implemented by one police agency as its normal everyday crime reduction practice are effective in reducing residential burglary incidents in micro-time hot spots.


METHODS
A quasi-experimental ex post facto design is employed using 5 years of data from one police agency that has institutionalized the identification and response to micro-time hot spots into its day-to-day practices. Propensity score matching is used to match 54 pairs of micro-time hot spots using logistic regression to compute the propensity scores and greedy 1 to 1 matching with a caliper width of 0.5 of the standard deviation of the logit to match the cases.


RESULTS
Independent t-tests show that tactical police response to micro-time hot spots can lead to significant reductions in residential burglary incidents without the spatial displacement of crime.


CONCLUSIONS
Tactical police responses that seek to achieve short-term reductions in crime appear to be well suited for micro-time hot spots since they are, by nature, short term. Importantly, the conclusions are based on the evaluation of an agency's systematic implementation of the evidence-based practices as its normal practices and not for the sake of research.
Port St. Lucie Police Department, Port St. Lucie, FL, USA rgsantos39@yahoo.com.
Roberto G
RG
Santos
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA.
Rachel Boba
RB
Santos
D055317:Evidence-Based Practice; D006801:Humans; D035846:Law Enforcement / Q000379:methods*; D016015:Logistic Models; D016495:Police / Q000592:standards*; D057216:Propensity Score; D012107:Research Design; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis; D013800:Theft / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
crime reduction; evidence-based; micro-time hot spots; police; practice-based research; propensity scores; residential burglary