A small proportion of street segments accounts for a large and stable share of a city's crime, across cities and across decades.
Weisburd's 2015 address drew together studies across many cities finding that around half of crime occurs at a few per cent of street segments, and that the same segments stay hot over long periods while the city around them changes. The unit that predicts is the block face rather than the neighbourhood, which is finer than most policing and most research had assumed.
In practice
- A borough's crime map is a few hundred metres of street repeated, not a shaded district.
- A retailer's losses concentrate in three stores that stay the same three across a decade of staff turnover.
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- Law & Politics
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- What can be proved and measured about power