Abstract

Less than five percent of the land in any city attracts well over half of all serious crimes. Since we first discovered this pattern in Minneapolis in 1987, it has been replicated on five continents in uncounted cities, and is now mapped daily by a wide range of commercial software. It has led to substantial changes in police and crime prevention strategies, and may have contributed to a cross-national drop in crime over the past two decades. But many questions remain about whether targeting hot spots merely displaces it to other locations, or whether recent crime patterns are better predictors than multi-year patterns. Darwin PhD student Cristobal Weinborn will report his analyses of 12 years of hot spots data from nearby Peterborough. Darwin Fellow Lawrence Sherman will review the effects of experiments targeting hot spots in the US, UK and the Caribbean. Warning: this seminar may make you less afraid of crime—as long as you stay out of hot spots.