George Mason University's Center for the Arts

Location, Location, Location: Hot Spots of Crime and Crime Prevention

David L. Weisburd
Distinguished Professor, Administration of Justice

Each year in a typical city only four percent of the street segments are home to 50 percent of the crimes. About a third of all officially recorded juvenile crimes in a city occur within 86 street segments. Crime at place is relatively stable across time. Good neighborhoods have crime hot spots, and problematic areas have many streets mostly free of crime. Focusing crime prevention on specific places does not cause crime to simply “move around the corner.” These are some of the empirical findings that have led Professor David Weisburd to focus on the concept of hot spots of crime. This lecture will focus on the implications of this research about decreasing crime in American communities. In particular, Weisburd will argue that place-based crime prevention is a good investment, and that it is likely to lead to more crime control with fewer people being processed by the criminal justice system.