By Brandon Tregle, Michael R. Smith, Chantal Fahmy & Rob Tillyer

Hot spots policing is an effective, evidence-based strategy that reduces violent crime within small geographic units, or “hot spots,” in urban areas. A strong body of research demonstrates that these hot spots disproportionately contribute to cities’ overall crime rates. However, the existing literature has yet to answer a critical question: Can the localized crime reductions achieved through hot spots policing make a significant enough contribution to lower overall crime rates across an entire city? To address this gap, we examined seven years of violent crime data from three major Texas cities. One city underwent a two-year targeted hot spots policing intervention, while the other two cities served as counter-factual, similarly situated jurisdictions. We used interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) to examine longitudinal crime patterns in all three cities. The findings indicate that, compared to the control cities, the treatment city experienced a significant and substantial reduction in overall violent crime at the point of intervention. This decrease suggests that the hot spots intervention directly contributed to city-wide crime reduction, extending its impact beyond the designated hot spots.

Crime Sci 14, 3 (2025).

By M. Dylan Spencer, Cory Schnell, Samuel E. DeWitt

Objectives: Public transportation systems experience dynamic changes over time to accommodate growing cities, yet evaluations of their impact on crime often focus on shorter, static periods. This study examines the long-term relationship between light rail expansion and crime, using a 20-year observation period in Charlotte, NC. We analyze changes in crime patterns near original, expanded, and planned light rail station locations. Methods: We conducted a quasi-experimental program evaluation of the opening of light rail stations on crime at place. We estimated Poisson regression models with fixed effects and difference in difference models to analyze crime incidents at street intersections surrounding light rail stations across varying spatial distances. Results: Our findings suggest that the expansion of the light rail system led to an increase in crime around train stations. We observe a significant intervention effect across multiple crime categories and spatial distances. These analyses suggest the effect appears stronger after the expansion of light rail service to additional train stations. Conclusions: These results have implications for a wide range of community stakeholders involved with the planning of public transportation. Given the evolving demand for transit systems, our findings highlight the need for crime prevention policies to accompany infrastructure expansion and mitigate crime.

J Exp Criminol (2025), 39p.

By Min Xie, Preeti Chauhan, Michael Rempel, and Jeremy Travis

This study relies on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and presents trends from 1996 to 2022 in crime victimization, rates at which victims report crimes to the police, confidence in the police, and victims’ use of services in New York City. This is one of two studies falling under the umbrella of the Crossroads Project. Its goal is to trace New York City’s trends in crime victimization, enforcement, incarceration, and racial disparities from the 1990s to the early 2020s in the hopes that empirical data over a long timeframe might provide a much-needed perspective capable of informing future policy. Both of the two resulting reports and a joint executive summary may be found at the project landing page. How was the NCVS used in the present study? Although the NCVS is typically used to assess victimization patterns for the nation as a whole, the data can be used to study New York City victimization trends. This is because the New York City’s population base is greater than 5 million and there are fewer concerns regarding identification of victims within the data and unstable estimates (too small of a population may provide volatile estimates). A small body of research has used the NCVS data for local crime analysis including for Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston (Rezey & Lauritsen, 2023; Xie, Ortiz Solis, & Chauhan, 2024). Other research has examined New York City data (Langan & Durose, 2009; Xie, Ortiz Solis, & Chauhan, 2024) but the analyses was more limited in the scope and did not extend to 2022. Our study examines the NCVS data in New York City from 1996 to 2022 by nonfatal violence and property crimes. We also assess whether these crimes were reported to the police and, if not, what proportion were not reported because the victims believed the police would not help (a proxy for public confidence in the police). Next, we examine what proportion of victims of violence used victim services, regardless of whether the crime was reported to the police or not. Lastly, we compare New York City to the nation as a whole and to other cities with a population over one million. The analyses are also conducted by race/ethnicity with the caution that the sample size may be too small for reliable estimates. This is the first study to unpack New York City victimization data in this way. Table 1 presents the average number of interviews conducted in New York City annually from 1996 to 2022, compared to the number of interviews for the United States and other cities with populations exceeding one million. The sample size decreases when the data is disaggregated by race/ethnicity, which is a limitation of the NCVS as smaller sample sizes result in larger standard errors of estimates, reducing the results’ precision. To further assist with this issue, a data point in this report for a specific year is a three-year moving average. Three-year moving averages produce more reliable estimates because the annual count of violent incidents in a single city tends to be small. The three-year average violence rate in 1997 is the average violence rate from 1996 to 1998, and so on.

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice, at John Jay College, 2025. 18p.

By Gregorio Gimenez, Liubov Tkacheva, Katarína Svitková and Beatriz Barrado

The world’s urban population is booming; by 2050, six and a half billion people will be living in urban areas (World Bank, 2011a). On the one hand cities are significant population, infrastructure and economy hubs, as well as centers of political power; on the other hand, according to a time-proved assumption provided by the social sciences, the growth of cities tends to lead to disruption and crime (Shaw and McKay, 1942). The focus of this study on the city level is in line with the gradual transformation of governance and the growing importance of urban political economies (Sassen, 2006). In a public policy domain, the urban lens is useful for addressing site-specific issues – especially in the field of security (UN-Habitat, 2012; Jaitman and Guerrero, 2015). Crime rates tend to reveal geographic patterns, with higher concentration in urban areas (Eck and Weisburd, 2015; Johnson et al., 2007; Curman, Andersen and Brantingham, 2015; Gill, Wooditch and Weisburd, 2017). Understanding the degree to which urban concentration affects crime incidents is a fundamental issue to better plan crime prevention strategies and reduce violence. Focusing on the urban dimension of violent crime, the main aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the degree of urban concentration and the number of serious offenses, particularly homicides. Most existing research is focused on developed countries1 and often has methodological problems, mostly due to the use of databases with poor data quality. This problem is especially acute in developing countries, where crime statistics are usually fragmented, inconsistent, and aggregated only to the most macro levels. The lack of information and the weak national statistical systems are an important challenge for conducting rigorous research. It is important to emphasize that our contribution is not only in terms of providing additional evidence, but also in terms of the type of context that we analyze. As Ajzenman and Jaitman (2016:9) remark, providing empirical evidence from developing countries is crucial, given that “developing and developed countries are different in many dimensions, and also because crime levels tend to be much higher in the developing world and, in particular, in Latin America”. Specifically in Latin America, one of the main characteristics of the phenomenon of crime and violence is the degree of geographic concentration. Urban homicide rates are much higher than the average homicide rate, and almost half of all homicides are concentrated in 10% of municipalities (IDB, 2017). Violence in cities is not only homicidal and includes all types of crimes. Among the main causes associated with the concentration of crimes in urban areas, Alvarado and Muggah (2018) highlight those linked to the existence of large poor and peripheral neighbourhoods, the presence of disorderly urbanization and youth unemployment. Regarding our case study, Costa Rica, Vilalta Perdomo, Castillo and Torres (2016) highlight a series of specificities in the link between urbanization and delinquency. They point out that the Costa Rican population is largely concentrated around so-called Gran Área Metropolitana (GAM). They remark that, according to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC), in 2011 this area occupied 4% of the national territory and concentrated 53% of the population. Most of the country’s crimes take place in this area, which is characterized by higher unemployment, but also higher education and income levels. Higher education is related to higher earnings, which means that there are more potential victims for crimes against property. The authors also indicate that, within the GAM, San Jose is considered the most important zone of the country for the cocaine trade. Consequently, the GAM as a whole, and San Jose in particular, present the greatest challenges for public policies, especially in relation to urban development and public safety. Our in-depth econometric analysis of Costa Rica – a country of the Global South with significant urbanization and inequality rates – uses highly disaggregated socioeconomic data. It focuses on a wide range of types of crimes, in combination with econometric techniques which test for the presence of endogeineity, which constitutes a significant empirical contribution to the existing literature. The article is organized as follows. The next section presents a literature review in the field of urban violence in Latin America and Costa Rica. Its main objective is to provide a general context of citizen insecurity in the region and, particularly, the country, before presenting the case study in the third section. This empirical part develops an econometric model in order to demonstrate the connection between urban concentration and crime, particularly homicides.

DADOS, Rio de Janeiro, vol.64 (1): e20190127, 2021, 35p.

By B. Boxerman and K. Cundiff

This report focuses on reported shoplifting in Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA, from 2018 through 2023. It uses incident location data to examine reported shoplifting prevalence and concentration in both cities and how these have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also examines how patterns in reported shoplifting may be related to the concentration of retail establishments. The pandemic is central to this analysis because property crime patterns, especially for larceny and shoplifting, are sensitive to changes in patterns of activity, such as the major shifts in public life that occurred under stay-at-home orders in response to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report is focused on the periods directly before, during, and after the pandemic to lend context to the increased interest and attention related to shoplifting at the national level.

Key Takeaways

In Chicago, the year-end rate of reported shoplifting was 11.6% lower for 2023 than it was for 2018. In Los Angeles, the rate for 2023 was 77% higher than it was for 2018.

Prior to the pandemic, the shoplifting rate in Los Angeles was less than half that of Chicago. By the end of 2023, the difference between the two cities had narrowed and the Los Angeles rate was 17.7% lower than that of Chicago.

In Chicago, the top 5% of all reported shoplifting locations by address had 68.5% of all reported shoplifting from 2018 to 2023. In Los Angeles, the top 5% of addresses had 62.8% of all reported shoplifting during this period.

Shoplifting patterns between the cities differed greatly. Chicago shoplifting clustered in two geographically close areas, while shoplifting in Los Angeles was distributed across multiple smaller areas that were less concentrated than in Chicago.

In Chicago, areas with substantial concentrations of retail outlets did not consistently experience concentrated amounts of shoplifting. In Los Angeles, however, there was considerable overlap between retail and shoplifting clusters.

Both cities saw large drops in reported shoplifting in 2020, likely due to store closures at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For both cities, in 2020 and 2021, shoplifting was less prevalent and concentrated in fewer areas.

Portions of both cities that were not high-shoplifting areas before and during the pandemic began to experience increases in shoplifting after the pandemic (2022 and 2023).

Shoplifting in both cities was often highly concentrated in places with high concentrations of other crimes, such as other types of theft and violent offense

Washington DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2024.

By Ernesto Lopez, Bobby Boxerman

Key Takeaways This study updates and supplements previous U.S. crime trends reports by the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) with data through December 2024. It examines yearly and monthly rates of reported crime for 13 violent, property, and drug offenses in 40 American cities that have consistently reported monthly data over the past six years. The 40 cities are not necessarily representative of all jurisdictions in the United States. Not all cities published data for each offense (see the Appendix for which cities reported which offenses); trends in offenses with fewer reporting cities should be viewed with caution. Not all crimes are reported to law enforcement. In addition, the data collected for this report are subject to revision by local jurisdictions. Reported levels of 12 of the 13 offenses covered in this report were lower in 2024 than in 2023; shoplifting was the only offense higher in 2024 compared to 2023. Looking at changes in violent offenses from 2023 to 2024, the number of homicides in the 29 study cities providing data for that crime was 16% lower, representing 631 fewer homicides. There were 4% fewer reported aggravated assaults, 15% fewer gun assaults, 6% fewer sexual assaults, and 4% fewer domestic violence incidents last year than in 2023. Robbery fell by 10% while carjackings (a type of robbery) decreased by 32%. Motor vehicle theft had been on the rise from the summer of 2020 through 2023, but that trend reversed last year; there were 24% fewer motor vehicle thefts in 2024 than in 2023. Reports of residential burglaries (-13%), nonresidential burglaries (-6%), larcenies (-5%), and drug offenses (-3%) all decreased in 2024 compared to 2023. But rates of reported shoplifting, a crime that has received extensive attention from the media and policymakers, increased by 14% over the same period. Examining trends over a longer timeframe, most violent crimes are at or below levels seen in 2019, the year prior to the onset of the COVID pandemic and racial justice protests of 2020. There were 6% fewer homicides in the study cities in 2024 than in 2019. Similarly, sexual assault (-26%), domestic violence (-11%), and robbery (-19%) were lower in 2024 than in 2019. In contrast, aggravated assaults (+4%), gun assaults (+5%), and carjackings (+25%) were higher in 2024 than in 2019. Homicide rates in some high-homicide cities, including Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis, have dropped even further, returning to the levels of 2014, when national homicide rates were at historic lows. Rates in other cities have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels. Property crime trends have been mixed over the last five years. There were fewer residential burglaries (-38%) and larcenies (-12%) in 2024 than in 2019, but more nonresidential burglaries (+12%) and shoplifting (+1%). Motor vehicle thefts were higher by half (+53%) during the timeframe. Drug offenses in 2024 were 28% below 2019 levels. While these crime reductions are promising, the United States still experiences high levels of homicide compared to other industrialized nations, and progress should not slow local, state, federal, and community efforts to adopt comprehensive, evidencebased strategies to reduce violence. Furthermore, researchers should redouble their efforts to identify how broad behavioral shifts and other societal dynamics may affect trends.

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2025. 39p.

By Ella Cockbain, Patricio Estévez-Soto, and Felia Allum

Organised crime – and the people, processes and structures involved – do not exist in a geographical vacuum. They have an inherent spatiality: shaped by and shaping the places they occupy in physical, virtual and hybrid spaces. Although the ‘social embeddedness’ of organised crime is relatively well-recognised, its spatiality – or ‘spatial embeddedness’ – has been neglected. This article contextualises and introduces our special issue on the new geographies of organised crime. We put forward a central argument that geographical lenses can advance and enrich understanding of organised crime, briefly review relevant literature and explain some of the foundational concepts in geographical thinking. We discuss the rationale for this special issue and highlight its papers’ main contributions. Since the geographies of the illicit are full of complexities, heterogeneities and subjectivities, we do not propose any singular approach, but rather see a plurality of possibilities for better incorporating geography into organised crime scholarship. Accordingly, the papers are theoretically and methodologically diverse, as well as covering varied topics and locations

Criminology & Criminal Justice, 25(1). 2025, 3-20 pages

By Amy E. Nivette, Renee Zahnow, Raul Aguilar, Andri Ahven, et al.

The stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime but with substantial variation across cities and types of crime. Meta-regression results showed that more stringent restrictions over movement in public spaces were predictive of larger declines in crime.

Nature Human Behaviour.2021.

By Marco De Nadai, Yanyan Xu, Emmanuel Letouzé, Marta C. González & Bruno Lepri

Nowadays, 23% of the world population lives in multi-million cities. In these metropolises, criminal activity is much higher and violent than in either small cities or rural areas. Thus, understanding what factors infuence urban crime in big cities is a pressing need. Seminal studies analyse crime records through historical panel data or analysis of historical patterns combined with ecological factor and exploratory mapping. More recently, machine learning methods have provided informed crime prediction over time. However, previous studies have focused on a single city at a time, considering only a limited number of factors (such as socio-economic characteristics) and often at large in a single city. Hence, our understanding of the factors influencing crime across cultures and cities is very limited. Here we propose a Bayesian model to explore how violent and property crimes are related not only to socio-economic factors but also to the built environment (e.g. land use) and mobility characteristics of neighbourhoods. To that end, we analyse crime at small areas and integrate multiple open data sources with mobile phone traces to compare how the different factors correlate with crime in diverse cities, namely Boston, Bogotá, Los Angeles and Chicago. We fnd that the combined use of socio-economic conditions, mobility information and physical characteristics of the neighbourhood effectively explain the emergence of crime, and improve the performance of the traditional approaches. However, we show that the socio-ecological factors of neighbourhoods relate to crime very differently from one city to another. Thus there is clearly no “one fits all” model.

Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 13871 (2020).

By William Perry and Others

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London. J. Bumpus et al. 1819. 259p.

By Rosenfeld, Richard; Boxerman, Bobby; Lopez, Ernesto, Jr.

From the Introduction: "This report updates CCJ's [Council on Criminal Justice's] previous studies [hyperlink] of crime changes during the coronavirus pandemic, extending the analyses with data through December of 2022. The current study finds a drop in homicide, aggravated assaults, and gun assaults and a rise in robbery and most property crimes. The authors' conclusions have not changed: to achieve substantial and sustainable reductions in violence and crime, cities should adopt evidence-based crime-control strategies and long-needed reforms to policing. The 35 cities included in this study were selected based on data availability [...] and range from Richmond, VA, the smallest, with 227,000 residents, to New York, the largest, with more than 8.4 million residents. The mean population of the cities for which crime data were available is approximately 1.1 million, while the median population is roughly 652,000. This report assesses monthly changes between January of 2018 and December of 2022 for the following 10 crimes: homicide, aggravated assault, gun assault, domestic violence, robbery, residential burglary, nonresidential burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and drug offenses. As in the previous reports, this analysis focuses special attention on the trend in homicides. It also examines in greater detail than in prior reports the substantial increase in motor vehicle thefts and carjacking since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020."

Council On Criminal Justice. 2023. 29p.

By Reynolds, John, active 1621-1650

The triumphs of Gods revenge against the crying and execrable sinne of (wilful and premeditated) murther : with his miraculous discoveries, and severe punishment thereof : in thirty several tragical histories, (digested into six books) committed in divers countreys beyond the seas : never published or imprinted in any other language.

London : Printed by A.M. for William Lee, and are to be sold by George Sawbridg, Francis Tyton, John Martin ... [and 9 others]. 1670. 508p.

By Lesley Williams Reid

By exploring the political and economic histories of Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and New Orleans, Reid documents how each city experienced the demise of the industrial, welfare-state political economy and the rise of the post-industrial, absentee-state political economy and how these transformations have affected urban crime rates. Crime rates increased as manufacturing employment decreased. By contrast, high-skill service-sector growth led to less crime in Boston, while low-skill service-sector growth led to more crime in Atlanta. In addition, those cities emphasizing criminal justice expenditures at the expense of social welfare expenditures have had more crime than those cities that did not. Political and economic conditions have influenced crime rates, in sometimes surprising ways, across the post-World War II urban landscape.

New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2003. 269p.