Hot Spots

A hot spot is a place or geographic location that generates large volumes or high intensities of repeated and predictable crimes or calls for police services. The essence of a hot spot pertains to examining crimes, calls, or problems within a framework defined by their spatial and temporal dimensions. The former reveals that crimes, calls, or problems are distributed randomly, uniformly, or clustered across space, whereas the latter reveals that the timing of such events is random, cyclical (occurring at particular times), or incessant (occurring all the time).

Research during the 1970s seriously questioned the effectiveness and wisdom of the widespread practice of police preventive patrol. Therefore, improving the management and efficacy of the patrol function was sought through the use of novel tactics and programs. Two of these were crime analysis and directed patrol, which involved identifying, describing, and analyzing crimes and problems during particular times at specific places, and, in the case of directed patrol, recommending particular tactics for apprehending offenders or reducing problems. Therefore, paying closer attention to the time and location of events was becoming paramount in police operations.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, two developments met that propelled hot spots into becoming a central focus for policing. First, evolving computer technology for enhancing police communications and records systems interfaced with and became the input for other evolving information systems, such as geographic information systems, for analyzing and visualizing crime and calls-for-service patterns. The second was the sponsorship of two projects by the National Institute of Justice that became showcases for analyzing hot spots. The first, a study in Minneapolis of predatory crimes and calls for service, measured how a few places or addresses generate a majority of the crimes or calls for service. The second, known as The Drug Market Analysis project, was a series of studies across five cities focusing on identifying, differentiating, analyzing, and evaluating the impact of interdicting drug market hot spots through the use of improved information systems, multiple data sources, spatial analysis, and crime mapping. This project epitomized the benefits of a collaborative partnership between the police operational and academic research communities. Both projects stimulated a widespread diffusion of interest in hot spots as a research concern and a focus for police operations. This diffusion was augmented by the development and distribution of the Spatial Temporal Analysis of Crime (STAC) software by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. This software was a simple and portable technique for identifying hotspots. The showcase projects demonstrated the rationale and methods for, and the utility of, policing hot spots, whereas STAC gave many practitioners and academics alike the ability to investigate hot spots.

The fundamental advantage gained from identifying and policing places that are hot spots is that the spatial variation and temporal oscillation of activities in places are more predictable than the behavior of an individual. Therefore, identifying and assessing the spatial variation and temporal oscillation of hot spots promotes the implementation and evaluation of customized policies, strategies, tactics, and remedies for minimizing the behavior and/or manipulating the situational context that makes a particular place hot.

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