Policing & Crime Prevention researchers examine law enforcement strategies and crime prevention efforts, evaluating a wide range of proactive practices and partnerships aimed at reducing crime. Current projects are listed below.
Evaluation of North Miami Beach Weed and Seed Program
The Urban Institute evaluated the performance and effects of a community focused effort to suppress crime and improve community crime prevention in North Miami Beach, Florida. This Weed and Seed program is sponsored by the Community Capacity Development Office, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Results of the research suggested modest changes in crime in the target area when compared to the rest of the city.
Preventing Vehicle Crime in Metro’s Parking Facilities: A Randomized Controlled Design
Since its inception in 1976, the District of Columbia’s Metrorail transit system has developed and maintained its reputation as one of the safest light rail systems in the world. However, while Metro’s rail crime rates have historically been low, crime in Metro’s parking facilities is a more serious public safety concern. The Urban Institute, with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice, initiated a partnership with Metro Transit Police to study and prevent vehicle crime. The project involves: identifying the environmental characteristics and management practices of Metro’s parking facilities and how they create criminal opportunities; identifying promising strategies that could be employed to reduce car crime; implementing a crime prevention strategy in half of Metro’s parking facilities employing a blocked randomized experimental design; and analyzing the effectiveness of that intervention. Potential geographic, temporal, and tactical displacement of crime resulting from the intervention will also be explored.
Evaluation of Target’s Safe City Initiative: Implementing Public-Private Partnerships to Address Crime in Retail Settings
In 2006, the Urban Institute received a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice, along with seed funding from the Target Corporation, to engage in an action-research partnership to evaluate the implementation of Safe City. Launched by Target in 2003, Safe City is a crime prevention model that has been implemented in designated retail areas in jurisdictions across the United States. The UI evaluation of the Target Safe City program involved a process, impact, and cost-benefit analysis of the program’s implementation in four jurisdictions: Chula Vista, California; Cincinnati, Ohio; Hyattsville, Maryland; and Tucson, Arizona. The findings on implementation of the Safe City model varied significantly by study site, with observed increases in perceptions of safety among businesses in designated Safe City areas for the two sites that fully implemented the model. In addition, these two sites achieved significant and cost-effective reductions in crime, although the reductions were limited to certain crime types.
Crime Displacement and HUD’s HOPE VI Project
HUD’s HOPE VI is a federally funded initiative that aims to eradicate severely distressed public housing and reduce concentrated poverty by redesigning the physical features of public housing, encouraging resident self-sufficiency, and creating mixed-income neighborhoods. The purpose of the current project is to evaluate the impact of the process of public housing redevelopment under HOPE VI has on crime. This is accomplished through an examination of crime in and around HOPE VI redevelopment sites in Milwaukee, WI and Washington, D.C.; this study is the first to consider the effects on crime of redevelopment of public housing under the HOPE VI initiative. Analysis consists of two central components: (1) a qualitative assessment of changes in the physical environment, resident demographics, and the spatial patterns of crime and (2) statistical tests for spatial displacement using three methods: time series analysis, the Weighted Displacement Quotient, and Ratcliffe’s (2005) point pattern analysis.
Norms and Networks of Latino Youth
The main goal of this study is to use personal social network data to assess the composition of Latino gang members’ friendship networks and derive the structural properties that influence the commission of crime. Researchers are eliciting information on both the individual and group dynamics that contribute to criminal behavior and group-related activity among Latino youth and young adults. Data are being collected via an in-depth survey of Latino youth in a small target area in Montgomery County, MD. The individual and group level survey data are being analyzed using network analysis methods to assess how those networks are related to at-risk and criminal behavior among youths. The project aims to determine the extent to which group-based criminal behavior is amenable to intervention, and inform policies regarding gang intervention and prevention in Latino communities. The research advances the small body of knowledge on Latino gang behavior.
The Evaluation of the Gang Reduction Program (GRP) in Four Cities
This project involved a comprehensive implementation process and outcome evaluation of OJJDP's Gang Reduction Program (GRP) in North Miami Beach, FL, Richmond, VA, Milwaukee, WI and Los Angeles, CA. GRP is a comprehensive community focused approach to preventing and reducing gang-related violence through primary prevention, secondary prevention, intervention, suppression and reentry components over a five-year period. Results suggested significant differences in outcomes across the four cities, the most positive of which were observed in Los Angeles and Richmond.
Evaluation of the Los Angeles Gang Reduction and Youth Development Program (GRYD)
In partnership with Harder+Company, the Justice Policy Center is conducting an evaluation of a large-scale gang prevention and intervention program in twelve distinct communities throughout the City of Los Angeles. This research includes documentation of implementation in each GRYD “zone,” individual level prevention and intervention case services outcomes and community level violence and gang crime effects over a four-year period.
Thurgood Marshall Academy Violence Prevention Research and Evaluation Support
The Urban Institute (UI) is providing research and evaluation support to the Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School in Washington, D.C. to study the school’s violence prevention activities. The research team utilizes data gathered from administrative and programmatic records, field observations, interviews, surveys, and focus groups to: 1) document the violence prevention activities being implemented at the school; 2) develop a comprehensive set of performance measures based on program inputs, outputs, and expected outcomes; 3) explore how the violence prevention activities are related to expected outcomes; and 4) compare the school’s violence prevention practices to national best practices. UI plans to disseminate the accomplishments of the school activities to national and local stakeholders through a final report, policy brief, and a conference. The lessons learned from the research will be useful to the Thurgood Marshall Academy and other schools looking to establish solutions to school violence.
Latest Research
