Hot Spots of Crime

Policing has learned to target the small number of streets where crime concentrates, yet remarkably little is known about the people who live on them. David Weisburd and his co-authors set out to change that, drawing on more than 7,000 surveys of residents on crime hot spot and non-hot spot streets, alongside systematic physical and social observation and structured qualitative fieldwork. They ask who lives in these places, what makes them hot spots in the first place, and which other problems gather there.

The answer is that these streets concentrate far more than crime, carrying a wider burden of social and health problems. The study makes a careful case for the role of informal social controls in explaining and preventing crime at the street level. A clear, evidence-led study for criminologists, policymakers and anyone thinking seriously about where crime prevention should begin.