What Has Place Got to Do With It? Hot Spots Policing to Address Physical and Mental Health

• Author: Rachel H. Jensen
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Date: 01 May 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/1043986219836579
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986219836579

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2019, Vol. 35(2) 124 –141

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/1043986219836579

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Article

What Has Place Got to Do

With It? Hot Spots Policing to

Address Physical and Mental

Health

Rachel H. Jensen1

Abstract

In the last few decades of criminological research, the contextual concept of place

has become a widely discussed and studied topic. Currently, one of the most studied

and discussed place-based strategies is hot spots policing, the study of crime patterns

at micro-geographic places. Since the 1980s, hot spots policing has become an

important and empirically validated law enforcement intervention. One of the most

novel questions about hot spots policing is whether it can be used to address other

issues such as the intersection of crime, place, and health. Do concentrated patterns

of physical and mental health issues mirror the patterns of crime at places? If so, can

hot spots policing guide police interventions? This article reviews the current state

of public health and place-based crime patterns to synthesize the concept of place-

based interventions for health and crime. The article concludes with implications for

the scholars and practitioners.

Keywords

hot spots policing, mental health, physical health, place-based interventions

Criminologists, sociologists and other social scientists have always maintained that

context matters (Cummins, Curtis, Diez-Roux, & Macintyre, 2007). In recent decades,

the concept of place has become an important contextual factor for various social sci-

ence interests such as crime and health. Places can be either health damaging (patho-

genic; see Weisburd et al., 2018) or health promoting (salutogenic; see Pearce, Cherrie,

1George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Rachel H. Jensen, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, 4400

University Drive, MS 6D12, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA.

Email: rjensen5@masonlive.gmu.edu

836579CCJXXX10.1177/1043986219836579Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeJensen

research-article2019

Jensen 125

Shortt, Deary, & Ward Thompson, 2018). Places can also be criminogenic (Sherman,

Gartin, & Buerger, 1989; Weisburd, Groff, & Yang, 2012). Health is also a factor that

many criminologists take into account when studying communities and how it con-

nects to criminal incidents or victimization. Only recently have criminologists focused

on place-based approaches for studying the direct connection between crime and

health. In other disciplines, such as public health, for over a decade, there has been a

focus on how health and mental health relate to geography (Latkin & Curry, 2003;

Mair, Roux, & Galea, 2008; World Health Organization [WHO], 2002). The general

question examined in this review is whether health issues follow a similar pattern to

crime and concentrates in micro-geographic places, and whether these health concen-

trations overlap with crime. If so, why? How can criminologists and criminal justice

policies work hand-in-hand with public health research to intervene at places where

health and crime concentrate?

Hot Spots

Within the last few decades, a place-based approach to crime solving has moved to the

forefront of criminological theory and testing. This approach goes beyond the theoreti-

cal notion that crime clusters in specific geographic patterns, but these patterns can be

micro-geographic places in nature such as household addresses, street segments, and

small neighborhoods (Weisburd, Eck, Braga, & Cave, 2016). Although the modern

roots of crime and place theory can be traced to the early 19th century (Weisburd,

Bernasco, & Bruinsma, 2008), interest again emerged in the 1980s and has grown to

be a key criminological perspective in recent years (Eck &Weisburd, 1995; White &

Goldberg, 2018). In the seminal 1989 publication in Criminology, Sherman, Gartin,

and Buerger coined the term criminology of place to capture the concept of studying

crime at micro-geographical units. “Criminology of place” or “crime and place” stud-

ies (Eck &Weisburd, 1995) focus on small geographical areas, typically conceptual-

ized as addresses or street segments (Weisburd et al., 2012).

Other criminological theorists support the notion of using place characteristics as

references for studying behavior. Sampson (2013)—a pioneer of using the concept

of collective efficacy to address community crime issues—argues that neighborhood

contexts are invaluable metrics to measure the quantity and quality of human behav-

ior. Criminology of place challenges scholars to study why crime occurs at places

rather than what causes people to commit offenses. As the collaboration between

police agencies and researchers has grown, advancements in evidence-based place

policies and practices have made leaps and bounds over the last few decades. One of

the most widely adopted techniques for studying crime locations is geospatial tech-

nology that allows law enforcement agencies to map various data points, such as

calls for service. Gathering and mapping these data has allowed both practitioners

and researchers to identify concentrations of crime in locations. Typically, most of

these areas are micro-geographic places (Weisburd, 2015; Weisburd et al., 2012).

The application of this knowledge to police practices is commonly known as hot

spot policing (Sherman & Weisburd, 1995). Hot spots policing, however, is not