Braga, A. A. (2001). The effects of hot spots policing on crime. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 578(1), 104-125.
The major concept involved in the study is directed patrolling for crime reduction. Directed patrolling is operationalized by increasing police patrolling in areas where crime rate is higher, otherwise known as hot spots or high crime zones. Thus, it analyzes the effects of hot spots policing on crime rate and crime displacement. That makes crime rate and crime displacement as the two dependent variables in the study for two questions while hot spot policing or directed patrolling as the independent variable. The data gathering strategy employed reviews published and non-published quantitative or empirical studies and evidences on the effects of high crime scene patrolling on crime rates. The hypothesis was that directed patrolling reduces the crime rate from the given place, significantly. However, for the second part of the study the hypothesis was that the directed patrolling often displaces the crime rather than reducing it.
In the first question, the internal threat is that the crime may not be reduced but displaced to another potentially criminal place, however, since the author deals with that in the second question of his study, so the internal validity threat then is whether a place inherently has germs for crime spread or are the germs created by humans and other factors. Similarly, all the states tested in this study are from North. Therefore, an external validity threat is whether its results are applicable in South, where demographics are quite different, deep and intense. The author analyzed evidences from seven states, out of which in six states it was concluded that directed patrolling significantly reduces crime rate from a given place and it may or may not be a crime displacement depending on whether the alternative place has the germs for crime nourishment.
The strength of this paper is that the author not only combined several studies’ results to analyze the broader effect of directed patrolling, but also took a step further to analyze whether the argument of crime displacement is valid or not. However, a weakness is clearly seen in choosing only the cities from North. Although, the crime in North is significant, but its nature is quite different than the nature of crime in South, so the results are not equally applicable as they are in North. Hence, to make it better, Braga (2001) could have taken a mixture of cities from both North and South.
Andrews, D. A., Zinger, I., Hoge, R. D., Bonta, J., Gendreau, P., & Cullen, F. T. (2006). DOES CORRECTIONAL TREATMENT WORK? A CLINICALLY RELEVANT AND PSYCHOLOGICALLY INFORMED META‐ANALYSIS*.Criminology, 28(3), 369-404.
The major concept in this paper is Risk-Need-Responsivity based rehabilitation for behavior modification of criminal offenders. Andrews et al. (2006) operationalize the concept through Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model which attempts to reduce recidivism via appropriate rehabilitation program based on the risk or intensity of criminal behavior. Independent variable here is RNR which is a combination of variables that tell the risk (level of criminal behavior), the need (the target behavior, and the strategies for reducing the criminal behavior. However, the dependent variable is recidivism or the rate of repetition of criminal behavior after the intervention or behavior modification program. The data gathering strategy employed was based on combining data already gathered in 80 studies done before. All the combined data was then analyzed. The hypothesis of the study was that the intervention program based on the three steps of RNR model would effectively reduce recidivism. Internal validity threat identified is of selection and maturation, which is when the participants for the study were limited to not answer the question in thoroughly and other possible developments may have been the actual influence in producing the obtained results, respectively. In this study, the authors do not include an analysis about those who do not choose the program or leave it in the middle, but it analyzes only those who successfully complete the program. Thus, there is a selection problem. Also, those who successfully complete the program, considering the selection problem, are usually those who have, probably, already made up their minds for turning their backs towards crime, which leads to a maturation problem in the study. Similarly, external validity threat is identified in the range of the program, i.e., although the model gives an outline for rehabilitation, but it does not mean it is applicable in various cultural and social contexts. The conclusion of the study RNR rehabilitation processes effectively reduces recidivism. The results were found to be statistically significant with reduction occurring to 35%.
The strength of the paper is that it combines a huge research material and forms an effective intervention method which gives statistically significant results. However, the weakness of the paper lies in its negligence of those who do not complete the program or choose such programs at all. Those are probably the real criminals with high criminal behavior intensity that need to be effectively intervened.
References
Andrews, D. A., Zinger, I., Hoge, R. D., Bonta, J., Gendreau, P., & Cullen, F. T. (2006). DOES CORRECTIONAL TREATMENT WORK? A CLINICALLY RELEVANT AND PSYCHOLOGICALLY INFORMED META‐ANALYSIS*.Criminology, 28(3), 369-404.
Braga, A. A. (2001). The effects of hot spots policing on crime. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 578(1), 104-125.
