Tackling Crime Requires Local, Data-Driven Solutions | Opinion

According to a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, voters rank “crime and drugs” as one of the most important issues facing the country. It’s no wonder, then, that candidates from both parties are fighting to appeal to Americans on crime. “Make America Safe Again” was the theme of day two of the Republican National Convention, and Democrats have touted the recent drop in violent crime as a win for the Biden-Harris administration.
Unfortunately, these national conversations tend to omit a critical factor for crime reduction: local evidence- and community-informed solutions.
Public safety is greatly influenced by local policies, history, economy, culture, and people. That means we need locally tailored solutions that work from the bottom up. Fortunately, several overarching principles, stemming from reliable research and data, can guide local actors in developing and employing solutions that will be most effective for their own communities.
For example, in most U.S. cities, 50 percent of homicides happen in small geographic areas that take up 3 percent or less of city streets. Similarly, 50 percent of homicides involve networks of individuals and groups that contain less than 1 percent of a city’s population. By engaging these dangerous places and people, local leaders can concentrate their resources where violence occurs most to prevent it more effectively.
An example of this principle in action is “hotspot policing.” This evidence-informed strategy focuses police resources on city areas that experience the most crime. A 2019 meta-analysis of 65 studies on hotspot policing found that it was an effective crime prevention strategy, and that it did not diffuse crime into nearby areas.
Low-income and minority communities are consistently open to maintaining or increasing police presence but, at the same time, are less confident the police will treat them fairly. Critically, police departments must be careful that hotspot policing does not devolve into stereotyping or harassment of community members, which will only undermine community trust in the police. Without that trust, community members will be much less likely to collaborate with police to prevent and solve crimes.
Collaboration is critical for reducing crime and should be considered another key principle.
Another evidence-informed strategy—known as “focused deterrence”—aims to reduce crime among high-risk individuals and groups through focused collaboration. Police and community groups meet with high-risk community members and confront them with a choice: continue down a path of violence and face severe consequences from the police, or reject violence and receive support from the community.
The strategy has repeatedly proven successful. Boston’s Operation Ceasefire, implemented in the 1990s, reduced monthly youth homicides by 63 percent. A similar program in Cincinnati reduced group-related homicides by 41 percent, while a New Orleans program resulted in a 32 percent reduction in gang-related homicides.
Community members can also play a role in crime prevention through street outreach programs. There is mixed but promising evidence that outreach workers can help reduce violence by encouraging pro-social bonds between community members and establishing anti-violence norms through credible messengers. In New York, outreach programs reduced gun injuries in two neighborhoods by 50 percent and 37 percent. In Los Angeles, the comprehensive Gang Reduction and Youth Development strategy, which featured outreach workers, reduced violent crime in target areas by 18 percent.
Dallas, Texas, offers a good example of how to apply these principles and programs in a specific local community. In 2021, Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia partnered with criminologists at the University of Texas at San Antonio to create a Violent Crime Reduction Plan specific to the city. Criminologists determined the exact “microgrids” in the city that saw the most crime, enabling police to employ hotspot policing tactics. Research shows that after one year of implementation, violent crime had decreased by an average of about 11 percent in designated hotspots.
As part of its overall plan, Dallas police is also implementing focused deterrence, partnering with street outreach groups like Urban Specialists, and making efforts towards “urban blight abatement”—rejuvenating run-down areas of the city and increasing green space. As of June, violent crime in the city was at a six-year low.
The common denominator is that all these solutions were implemented by local actors who understood the needs of the surrounding community.
It is tempting, especially in an election year, for federal and state politicians to double down on blanket “tough-on-crime” policies that call for harsher sentences for low-level crimes or mandatory minimums. But the data tell us that these policies have little effect on crime, and may actually increase recidivism in the long run. Not only that, but they waste system resources that could be better put towards evidence-informed programs.
Voters are sick of empty promises on crime. They want real, proven solutions. It’s time to spotlight research-backed, community-focused local strategies.
Thomas Abt is the Founding Director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction, an Associate Research Professor at the University of Maryland, and the author of “Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence – And a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets.”
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.