On the Deterrent Effect of Stop, Question, and Frisk

• Date: 01 February 2016
• Published date: 01 February 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12175

POLICY ESSAY

STOP, QUESTION, AND FRISK

PRACTICES

On the Deterrent Effect of Stop, Question,

and Frisk

Robert Apel

Rutgers University

The study by David Weisburd, Alese Wooditch, Sarit Weisburd, and Sue-Ming

Yang (2016, this issue) on the effects of the New York City Police Department’s

(NYPD’s) policy of stop, question, and frisk (SQF) is a most timely one. Their

sophisticated analysis of the relationship between SQF and crime will be a model for

future evaluation efforts exploiting the spatiotemporal aspect of police interventions. The

approach seems well suited to the study of highly focused interventions that are thought to

yield effects that are isolated in space or time (Sherman, 1990).

The use of SQF in New York City, not without a good deal of controversy, has been

credited with sustained crime reductions that outpaced those of other large cities in the

United States.1The claim considered by Weisburd and colleagues (2016) is whether the

volume of SQF is a significant deterrent to serious crime. Their study provides strong

evidence to support that contention. For example, they report that one additional SQF

reduces the probability of crime by approximately 0.02. In an analysis specific to the Bronx,

they also report that, in addition to the deterrent effect of SQF on crime in the targeted hot

spot, there is a short-lived “diffusion of benefits” (Clarke and Weisburd, 1994). Namely,

the SQF tactic exhibits crime prevention effects that extend for a short distance beyond the

hot spot, as well as extend for several days afterward within the hot spot itself.

The author is grateful for insightful comments provided by Anthony Braga, Rod Brunson, Richard Rosenfeld,

and Sara Wakefield. All errors of omission or commission are his alone. Direct correspondence to Robert Apel,

School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07102 (e-mail: robert.apel@rutgers.edu).

1. Implicit to this claim is that the “backing off” from SQF that has transpired in the last year by the NYPD

could presage a modest increase (or slowed decline) in crime.

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12175 C2015 American Society of Criminology 57

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 1