Quantitative School Bus Stop Risk Assessment of Redlands, California

This was a Major Individual Project for the University of Redlands working with Claiborn Lewis Phillips in 2005.


















The purpose of this Major Individual Project (MIP) was to identify public school bus
stops in the city of Redlands with certain risks. Those risks being violent crimes, drug
related crimes and the homes of convicted sex offenders. The MIP made use of the
Kernel density function along with the Getis-Ord Hotspot function in ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.1
software. These functions were both used alone and combined. The Kernel Density
function was used alone to derive a density surface that would be reclassified to produce
a risk surface that would identify the risk of the school bus stops. The Hot Spot Analysis
(Getis-Ord Gi*) with and without (z-score) Rendering were use in combination with the
Kernel Density function. The pairing of these two functions, Kernel density and Hot
Spot Analysis, was utilized to produce surfaces that would act as visual aids to better
identify hot and cold spots. These surfaces were generated by using the Hot Spot
Analysis functions to compute the Getis-Ord Gi* (with and without rendering) values.
Those values were then used as the Population field for the Kernel density function that
produced Hot Spot/Kernel density surface. These results were used to produce maps to
aid police officers, and school officials and produce an IMS site to inform the parents of
the community.

The project paper can be found here...

UMD PhD Research: Broken Windows Policing: A Randomized Experimental Evaluation of its Impacts on Disorder, Fear and Crime in Three Cities

The RPD is providing Crime data and committing to this GIS-centric Criminology study with the University of Maryland. This is Josh Hinkle's PhD project.



David Weisburd, Josh Hinkle, Christine Famega, and Justin Ready
Over the last two decades, "Broken Windows Policing" has become a central component of police strategies to combat crime and disorder. But surprisingly, Broken Windows Policing itself has not been subject to sustained empirical examination. In this project, we address this knowledge gap by conducting a randomized, experimental evaluation of Broken Windows Policing in three cities in the San Bernardino Valley area of California. Questions addressed in this study will be whether broken windows policing reduced fear, made residents feel safer, and increased collective community efficacy. This project is being funded by the National Institute of Justice and is conducted in conjunction with researchers at the University of Maryland and California State University, San Bernardino.

Over the last two decades, "Broken Windows Policing" has become a central component of
police strategies to combat crime and disorder. But surprisingly, Broken Windows Policing itself
has not been subject to sustained empirical examination. We propose to develop a block
randomized experimental evaluation of Broken Windows Policing in three cities in the San
Bernardino Valley area of California. Specifically, we would test the impact of a Broken
Windows Policing approach upon approximately 180 street segments (divided equally into
treatment and control locations) that evidence relatively high levels of disorder at the outset of
the study. Our study would examine the impacts of Broken Windows Policing on the actual
and perceived level of minor offenses and disorder at targeted locations; its effects on fear of
crime and perceptions of police legitimacy in the areas that are targeted; and possible impacts on
crime during the study period. The experimental treatment would be delivered over a 6-month
period by special units formed within each of the three police departments. At the outset of the
study, site visits will be made by the Broken Windows Policing Unit of each department to the
"treatment" segments in their jurisdiction to assess the levels and types of disorder problems
present. After this assessment, the unit will meet and develop treatments to deliver to each
segment. The treatments available will include issuance of citations and arrests for disorderly
behaviors and minor crimes; repairs to sidewalks, streetlights and other state maintained items in the treatment segments; issuance of citations for code violations in an effort to induce repairs and clean ups; and general clean-up efforts in the treatment street segments. Our study would rely on two main types of data collection: official data on disorder and crime drawn from the police, and measures of fear of crime, perceptions of disorder and crime, and related features of citizen attitudes toward police legitimacy and community drawn from a panel survey of residents in the study area. Official data on disorder and crime would be provided by the police departments participating in the study. The panel survey will be conducted via telephone at two waves by selecting 10 households from each street segment in the study prior to the intervention, and then re-interviewing the same respondents after the intervention period.

Thanks Josh!