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Disorder policing to reduce crime: A systematic review

2019; The Campbell Collaboration; Volume: 15; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/cl2.1050

1891-1803

Anthony A. Braga, Brandon C. Welsh, Cory Schnell,

Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis

Policing disorder through community policing and problem-solving policing is associated with reductions in crime, but aggressive, order maintenance approaches do not seem to generate crime reductions. What is the aim of this review? This Campbell systematic review examines the effects of disorder policing interventions on crime. The review summarizes evidence from 28 high-quality studies (representing 30 independent tests), including nine randomized controlled trials. Most the studies come from the United States. Disorderly conditions are seen as a precursor to more serious crime, fear of crime, and neighborhood decline. Policing disorder is associated with reductions in crime, but only when community and problem-solving tactics are used. Aggressive, order maintenance based approaches do not seem to be effective. Policing social and physical disorderly conditions is rooted in the broken windows approach: disorder is a precursor to more serious crime, fear of crime, and neighborhood decline. Addressing disorder has become a central fixture of policing, especially in the United States. Yet, evaluations of the effectiveness of disorder policing strategies in controlling crime yield conflicting results. Policing disorderly conditions can be divided into two main strategies: (a) order maintenance or zero tolerance policing, where police attempt to impose order through strict enforcement and (b) community policing and problem-solving policing, where police attempt to produce order and reduce crime through cooperation with community members and by addressing specific recurring problems. This review examined the effects of disorder policing strategies compared to traditional law enforcement actions (e.g., regular levels of patrol) on the rates of crime, including property crime, violent crime, and disorder/drug crime. This review also examined whether policing disorder actions at specific locations result in crime displacement (i.e., crime moving around the corner) or diffusion of crime control benefits (i.e., crime reduction in surrounding areas). A total of 28 disorder policing studies (representing 30 independent tests) met the criteria to be included in this review. The studies spanned the period from 1985 to 2012, and were mostly carried out in the United States. All of the studies used high-quality designs to evaluate the impact of the intervention; nine were randomized controlled trials. Twelve tests were completed in large cities with more than 500,000 residents, nine tests were completed in medium-sized cities with between 200,000 and 500,000 residents, and the other nine tests were completed in smaller cities with <200,000 residents. All of the tests were carried out in specific geographical settings, including small places (e.g., crime hot spots and problem buildings), smaller police-defined areas (e.g., patrol beats), neighborhoods and selected stretches of highways, and larger police-defined areas (e.g., precincts and divisions). Do policing interventions focused on disorderly conditions reduce crime? Yes, in addition to an overall reduction in crime, there is a reduction in property crime, violent crime, and disorder/drug crime when disorder policing interventions are implemented. Do policing interventions focused on disorder result in crime being displaced or crime control benefits being diffused to surrounding areas? Disorder policing interventions are associated with diffusion of crime control benefits in areas surrounding targeted locations. This conclusion is based on 15 tests that measured displacement or diffusion effects. Of the two main strategies used in policing disorder, is one more effective than the other? Yes, policing disorder through community and problem-solving is associated with reductions in crime. Aggressive, order maintenance approaches do not seem to generate crime reductions. The types of strategies used by police departments to address disorderly conditions seem to matter in controlling crime, and this holds important implications for police–community relations, justice, and crime prevention. Further research is needed to understand the key programmatic elements that maximize the capacity of these strategies to prevent crime. This review includes studies completed before 2013. This Campbell review was published in September 2019. Crime policy scholars and practitioners have argued for years that when police address social and physical disorder in neighborhoods they can prevent serious crime, yet evaluations of the crime control effectiveness of disorder policing strategies yield conflicting results. This review reports the results of a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of disorder policing on crime. To assess the effects of disorder policing interventions on crime. Multiple search strategies were used to identify eligible studies. These strategies included a keyword search of online abstract databases, hand searches of relevant journals, consultation with policing experts, and searches of bibliographies of past narrative, empirical, and systematic reviews of police crime prevention efforts. Suitable interventions included tactics such as aggressive disorder enforcement as well as community and problem-oriented policing explicitly designed to control crime by addressing disorder. Studies that used randomized experimental or quasiexperimental designs were selected. Twenty-eight studies containing 30 tests of disorder policing interventions were identified. A formal meta-analysis was conducted to determine the crime prevention effects of the eligible studies. Policing disorder strategies are associated with an overall statistically significant, modest crime reduction effect. Community and problem-solving interventions generated crime reductions while aggressive order maintenance strategies did not. The types of strategies used by police departments to address disorder seem to matter in controlling crime, and this holds important implications for police–community relations, justice, and crime prevention. Crime policy scholars and practitioners have argued for years that when police address social and physical disorder in neighborhoods they can prevent serious crime, yet evaluations of the crime control effectiveness of disorder policing strategies yield conflicting results. This review reports on the results of the first systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of disorder policing on crime. To assess the effects of disorder policing interventions on crime. The review also examined whether policing disorder actions at specific locations result in crime displacement (i.e., crime moving around the corner) or diffusion of crime control benefits (i.e., crime reduction in surrounding areas). A keyword search was performed on 15 online abstract databases. Bibliographies of past narrative and empirical reviews of literature that examined the effectiveness of police crime control programs were reviewed and forward searches for works that cited seminal disorder policing studies were performed. Bibliographies of past completed Campbell systematic reviews of police crime prevention efforts and hand searches of leading journals in the field were performed. Experts in the field were consulted and relevant citations were obtained. This review includes eligible studies completed before 2013. To be eligible for this review, interventions used to control disorder were limited to police enforcement efforts. Suitable police enforcement efforts included tactics such as directed patrol aggressive disorder enforcement as well as community and problem-oriented policing explicitly designed to control crime by addressing disorder. Studies that used randomized controlled experimental or quasiexperimental designs were selected. The control group in each study received routine levels of traditional police enforcement tactics. Twenty-eight studies containing 30 tests of disorder policing interventions were identified and full narratives of these studies were reported. Nine of the selected studies used randomized experimental designs and 21 used quasiexperimental designs. A formal meta-analysis was conducted to determine the crime prevention effects of the eligible studies. Random effects models were used to calculate mean effect sizes. Nineteen of 30 tests of disorder policing interventions reported noteworthy crime reductions. Our meta-analysis suggests that policing disorder strategies are associated with an overall statistically significant, modest crime reduction effect. The strongest program effect sizes were generated by community and problem-solving interventions designed to change social and physical disorder conditions at particular places. Conversely, aggressive order maintenance strategies that target disorderly behaviors by individuals in specific areas did not generate significant crime reductions. Crime displacement and diffusion effects were measured in 15 policing disorder tests. Our meta-analysis suggests disorder policing interventions are associated with diffusion of crime control benefits in areas surrounding targeted locations. The types of strategies used by police departments to address disorder seem to matter in controlling crime, and this holds important implications for police–community relations, justice, and crime prevention. Further research is needed to understand the key programmatic elements that maximize the capacity of these strategies to prevent crime. Dealing with physical and social disorder, or "fixing broken windows," has become a central element of crime prevention strategies adopted by many American police departments (Kelling & Coles, 1996; Sousa & Kelling, 2006). The general idea of dealing with disorderly conditions to prevent crime is present in myriad police strategies. These range from "order maintenance" and "zero-tolerance" policing, where the police attempt to impose order through strict enforcement, to "community" and "problem-oriented policing," where police attempt to produce order and reduce crime through cooperation with community members and by addressing specific recurring problems (Cordner, 1998; Eck & Maguire, 2006; Skogan, 2006). While its application can vary within and across police departments, disorder policing is now a common crime control strategy. Most narrative reviews of the crime control effectiveness of policing disorder strategies suggest that the results are mixed (see, e.g., Harcourt & Ludwig, 2006; Kelling & Sousa, 2001). For instance, after reviewing a series of evaluations on the role disorder policing may have played in New York City's crime drop during the 1990s, the National Research Council's Committee to Review Police Policy and Practices concluded that these studies did not provide clear evidence of effectiveness (Skogan & Frydl, 2004). Given the mixed policy evaluation findings, and the popularity of policing disorder, a systematic review of the existing empirical evidence seems warranted. In this review, we synthesize the existing published and unpublished empirical evidence on the effects of disorder policing interventions and provide a systematic assessment of the crime reduction potential of these strategies. New York City has been center stage in policy and scholarly debates about policing disorder and the broken windows perspective (most recently, see Rosenfeld, Terry, & Chauhan, 2014; Zimring, 2012). While local officials and national observers attribute the city's violent crime drop in the 1990s to the adoption of a disorder policing strategy, many academics argue that it is difficult to credit this specific strategy with the surprising reduction in violent crime. The New York Police Department (NYPD) implemented the disorder policing strategy within a larger set of organizational changes framed by the Compstat management accountability structure for allocating police resources (Silverman, 1999). As such, it is difficult to disentangle the independent effects of disorder policing relative to other strategies implemented as part of the Compstat process (Weisburd, Mastrofski, McNally, Greenspan, & Willis, 2003). Other scholars suggest that a number of rival causal factors, such as the decline in the city's crack epidemic, played a more important role in the crime drop (Bowling, 1999). Some academics have argued that the crime rate was already declining in the city before the implementation of police reforms, and that the city's decline in homicide rates was not significantly different from declines experienced in surrounding states and in other large cities that did not implement aggressive enforcement policies during that time period (Baumer & Wolff, 2014; Eck & Maguire, 2006). Since the NYPD implemented its post-1993 changes as a city-wide crime control strategy, it was not possible for evaluators to utilize a rigorous evaluation design. However, a series of sophisticated statistical analyses have examined the effects of policing disorder on violent crime trends in New York City. These studies represent very careful attempts to determine whether disorder policing can be associated with the city's crime drop, by controlling statistically for rival causal factors, such as the decline in the city's crack epidemic and relevant sociodemographic, economic, and criminal justice changes over the course of the 1990s. These studies generally can be distinguished by differences in modeling techniques, dependent variables, time series length, extensiveness of control variables included in the analysis, the functional form of control variables, and measurement levels (e.g., precincts vs. boroughs). These studies commonly use increases in misdemeanor arrests, or combined ordinance-violation and misdemeanor arrests, as the key measures of the NYPD policing disorder strategy. These nonexperimental analyses have generally found statistically significant associations between the NYPD policing disorder strategy and decreased violent crime, with effects ranging from modest (Cerda et al., 2009; Chauhan et al., 2011; Messner et al., 2007; Rosenfeld, Fornango, & Rengifo, 2007) to large (Corman & Mocan, 2005; Kelling & Sousa, 2001). Harcourt and Ludwig (2006) and Greenberg (2014) report no statistically significant violence reduction impacts associated with the NYPD strategy. While this body of evidence seems to suggest that the NYPD policing disorder strategy may have generated violence reduction impacts, the magnitude of effects remains unclear. In their seminal "broken windows" article, Wilson and Kelling (1982) argue that social incivilities (e.g., loitering, public drinking, and prostitution) and physical incivilities (e.g., vacant lots, trash, and abandoned buildings) cause residents and workers in a neighborhood to be fearful. Fear causes many stable families to move out of the neighborhood and the remaining residents isolate themselves and avoid others. Anonymity increases and the level of informal social control decreases. The lack of control and escalating disorder attracts more potential offenders to the area and this increases serious criminal behavior. Wilson and Kelling (1982) argue that serious crime develops because the police and citizens do not work together to prevent urban decay and social disorder. Several scholars suggest a strong need to establish a clearer distinction between crime and disorder (e.g., see Gau and Pratt, 2000). This comes up in the context of observational studies as well as evaluation studies. Here, the matter is about trying to avoid confounding measures of disorder with measures of crime. This remains a salient critique of the broken windows perspective. Weisburd et al. (2015), for instance, propose that the focus should be on serious crime and violent crime in particular; less serious crime should not be measured. They also call for a greater focus on physical disorder and more direct measures, including loitering, disorderly conduct, and drinking or intoxication. The available research evidence on the theoretical connections between disorder and more serious crime is mixed. In the Netherlands, Keizer et al. (2008) conducted six field experiments examining the links between disorder and more serious crime and concluded that dealing with disorderly conditions was an important intervention to halt the spread of further crime and disorder. Skogan's (1990) survey research found disorder to be significantly correlated with perceived crime problems in a neighborhood even after controlling for the population's poverty, stability, and racial composition. Further, Skogan's (1990) analysis of robbery victimization data from 30 neighborhoods found that economic and social factors' links to crime were indirect and mediated through disorder. In his reanalysis of the Skogan data, Harcourt (2001, 2001) removed several neighborhoods with very strong disorder-crime connections from Newark, New Jersey, and reported no significant relationship between disorder and more serious crime in the remaining neighborhoods. Eck and Maguire (2006) suggest that Harcourt's analyses do not disprove Skogan's results; rather his analyses simply document that the data are sensitive to outliers. Indeed, the removal of different neighborhoods from Harcourt's analysis may have strengthened the disorder-crime connection (Eck & Maguire, 2006). In his longitudinal analysis of Baltimore neighborhoods, Taylor (2001) finds some support that disorderly conditions lead to more serious crime. However, these results varied according to types of disorder and types of crime. Taylor (2001) suggests that other indicators, such as initial neighborhood status, are more consistent predictors of later serious crimes. Using systematic social observation data to capture social and physical incivilities on the streets of Chicago, Sampson and Raudenbush (1999) found that, with the exception of robbery, public disorder was not significantly related to most forms of serious crime when neighborhood characteristics such as poverty, stability, race, and collective efficacy were considered. Sampson and Raudenbush's findings have been criticized because their social observation data on disorder were collected during the day rather than at night (Sousa & Kelling, 2006), as well as based on their decision to test a model in which disorder mediates the effects of neighborhood characteristics on crime rather than neighborhood characteristics mediating the effects of disorder on crime (Jang & Johnson, 2001). In another analysis, Xu et al. (2005) point out that Sampson and Raudenbush's (1999) results actually are supportive of broken windows theory. Research on high activity crime places reveals that disorder clusters in space and time with more serious crimes. In their closer look at crime in Minneapolis hot spots, Weisburd et al. (1992) found that assault calls for service and robbery of person calls for service were significantly correlated with "drunken person" calls for service. In Jersey City, New Jersey, Braga et al. (1999) found that high-activity violent crime places also suffered from serious disorder problems. The concentration of disorder in small places provides compelling opportunities for criminals. As Braga (2008) describes, abandoned buildings and vacant lots provide unguarded places for drug dealers selling their product and concealment for robbers looking to ambush an unsuspecting passerby. Disorder policing strategies that modify the crime opportunity structure at specific places by addressing social incivilities and physical incivilities could have important impacts on criminal behavior. The scientific research evidence on the crime control effectiveness of broad-based disorder policing strategies, such as quality-of-life programs and order maintenance enforcement practices, is mixed. While nonexperimental evidence seems to suggest that the NYPD policing disorder strategy may have generated violence reduction impacts, the magnitude of effects remains unclear. More rigorous policy evaluations implemented in other jurisdictions support the perspective that dealing with disorderly conditions generates crime control gains. Two separate randomized controlled trials of disorder policing strategies implemented within a problem-oriented policing framework found the strategy resulted in significant reductions in calls for service to the police in Jersey City, New Jersey (Braga et al., 1999), and Lowell, Massachusetts (Braga & Bond, 2008). A quasiexperimental evaluation of the Safer City Initiative, an intervention launched by the Los Angeles Police Department to reduce homeless-related crimes by addressing disorderly conditions associated with homeless encampments, generated modest reductions in violent, property, and nuisance street crimes (Berk & MacDonald, 2010). Other macro-level analyses have generated results supportive of broad-based policing disorder strategies. In California, controlling for demographic, economic, and deterrence variables, a county-level analysis revealed that increases in misdemeanor arrests was associated with significant decreases in felony property offenses (Worrall, 2002). Finally, an analysis of robbery rates in 156 American cities revealed that aggressive policing of disorderly conduct and driving under the influence reduces robbery (Sampson & Cohen, 1988). Other evaluations have not found significant crime prevention gains associated with broad-based policing disorder strategies. A recent reanalysis of the Kelling and Sousa (2001) data did not find that a generalized broken windows strategy, as measured by increased misdemeanor arrests, yielded significant reductions in serious crimes in New York City between 1989 and 1998 (Harcourt & Ludwig, 2006). An evaluation of a quality-of-life policing initiative focused on social and physical disorder in four target zones in Chandler, Arizona, did not find any significant reductions in serious crime associated with the strategy (Katz, Webb, & Schaefer, 2001). An evaluation of a 1-month police enforcement effort to reduce alcohol and traffic-related offenses in a community in a Midwestern city did not find any significant reductions in robbery or burglary in the targeted area (Novak, Hartman, Holsinger, & Turner, 1999). Similarly, a randomized controlled experiment of broken windows policing in three towns in California (Redlands, Colton, and Ontario) found no significant effects on fear of crime, police legitimacy, collective efficacy, or perceptions of crime and social disorder (Weisburd et al., 2012). Disorder policing strategies are common crime prevention interventions implemented by police departments across the world. Given the ubiquity of disorder policing and the mixed program evaluation findings presented here, a systematic review of the existing empirical evidence is warranted. This review synthesizes the existing published and nonpublished empirical evidence on the effects of disorder policing interventions and provides a systematic assessment of the crime reduction value of disorder policing in neighborhoods. The review also examines whether policing disorder strategies cause crime displacement or diffusion of crime control benefits in areas immediately surrounding targeted locations. It is anticipated that this review will help inform policy makers and police department decision makers regarding the continued use of disorder policing interventions to reduce crime in neighborhoods. Many police agencies in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and other nations currently use disorder policing as a core crime control strategy, and a critical examination of the existing evidence is warranted. This review synthesizes the existing published and nonpublished empirical evidence on the effects of disorder policing interventions and provides a systematic assessment of the crime reduction value of disorder policing in neighborhoods. In keeping with the conventions established by the Campbell Collaboration, the stages of this systematic review and the criteria used to select eligible studies are described below. Studies that use comparison group designs, such as randomized controlled trials and quasiexperimental designs (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002), were eligible for the main analyses of this review. Only the most rigorous quasiexperimental designs were included, with the minimum design involving before and after measures of crime in treatment and control areas. In many controlled policing disorder evaluations (e.g., Berk & MacDonald, 2010), the control group experiences routine modern police responses to crime. Control areas usually experience a blend of traditional police responses (e.g., random patrol, rapid response, and ad-hoc investigations) and opportunistic community problem-solving responses. While disorder interventions developed from community policing initiatives may be present in certain control areas, none of the control areas can engage disorder policing strategies as their main approach to address crime problems. Only area-level studies were included in our systematic review. Eligible areas can range from small places (such as hot spots comprised of clusters of street segments or addresses) to police defined areas (such as districts, precincts, sectors, or beats) to larger neighborhood units (such as census tracts or a researcher-defined area). On the basis of the the selected literature review, we expected that our research strategy would yield a diverse set of targeted areas across the identified policing disorder studies. For example, evaluations of disorder policing strategies in New York City analyzed the city-wide effects of the strategy at different units of analysis such as police precincts and police boroughs (Corman & Mocan, 2005; Harcourt & Ludwig, 2006; Kelling & Sousa, 2001; Messner et al., 2007; Rosenfeld et al., 2007). In Los Angeles, evaluators assessed the impact of a policing disorder strategy by comparing crime trends in one treatment police division area relative to crime trends in four adjacent comparison police division areas (Berk & MacDonald, 2010). In the Jersey City and Lowell randomized controlled trials, the units of analysis were crime "hot spots" comprising street block faces and street intersections (Braga et al., 1999; Braga & Bond, 2008). It is important to note that this heterogeneity in the units of analysis across studies could have varying and policy-relevant effects on crime prevention outcomes associated with the policing disorder strategies. As such, we classified the types of areas to ensure that the review is measuring similar findings across the potentially diverse set of locations subjected to treatment. We distinguished between small areas such as hot spots and buildings, smaller police-defined units (such as beats), larger police-defined units (such as districts and precincts), larger areas (such as neighborhoods and communities), and other spatial units. The general idea of dealing with disorderly conditions to prevent crime is present in myriad police strategies, ranging from "order maintenance" and "zero-tolerance," where the police attempt to impose order through strict enforcement, to "community" and "problem-oriented policing" strategies, where police attempt to produce order and reduce crime through cooperation with community members and by addressing specific recurring problems (Cordner, 1998; Eck & Maguire, 2006; Skogan, 2006; Skogan et al., 1999). Problem-oriented policing programs that did not attempt to control crime by reducing disorder were excluded from this review. We considered all policing programs that attempt to reduce crime through addressing physical disorder (vacant lots, abandoned buildings, graffiti, etc.) and social disorder (public drinking, prostitution, loitering, etc.) in neighborhood areas. These interventions were compared to other police crime reduction efforts that do not attempt to reduce crime through reducing disorderly conditions, such as traditional policing (i.e., regular levels of patrol, ad-hoc investigations, etc.). Eligible studies measured the effects of the disorder policing intervention on officially recorded levels of crime in areas such as crime incident reports, citizen emergency calls for service, and arrest data. Other outcome measures such as survey, interview, systematic observations of social disorder (such as loitering, public drinking, and the solicitation of prostitution), systematic observations of physical disorder (such as trash, broken windows, graffiti, abandoned homes, and vacant lots), and victimization measures used by eligible studies to measure program effectiveness were coded and analyzed. Since area-level studies were included in this review, particular attention was paid to studies that measured spatial crime displacement effects and diffusion of crime control effects. Policing strategies focused on specific locations have been criticized as resulting in displacement (see Reppetto, 1976). Academics have observed that crime prevention programs may result in the complete opposite of displacement—that crime control benefits were greater than expected and "spill over" into places beyond the target areas (Clarke & Weisburd, 1994). The quality of the methodologies used to measure displacement and diffusion effects, as well as the types of displacement examined (spatial, temporal, target, modus operandi), were assessed. To identify the studies meeting the criteria of this review, several search strategies were used. First, a keyword search was performed on an array of online abstract databases (see lists of keywords and databases below). Second, the bibliographies of past narrative and empirical reviews of literature that examined the effectiveness of police crime control programs were reviewed (e.g., Braga, 2008; Eck & Maguire, 2006; Sherman, 1997, 2002; Skogan & Frydl, 2004; Weisburd & Eck, 2004). Third, forward searches for wor