Hot Spots of Crime and Place-Based Prevention

The August Vollmer Award Address is intended to focus on contributions to justice and on the recipient's research and policy experiences. This contribution begins with the recipient recapping his personal journey to recognizing hot spots of crime and their importance for prevention. He then goes on to summarize the “law of crime concentration” and its importance for the logic model underlying this approach. He describes the seminal Minneapolis Hot Spots Patrol Experiment and the subsequent evaluation research in hot-spots policing and place-based prevention more generally that led to its broad acceptance as an effective crime prevention strategy. Finally, the author turns to key unanswered questions in place-based prevention, focusing on police legitimacy, identifying jurisdictional effects, and emphasizing the importance of harnessing informal social controls.