Recent systematic reviews on proactive policing interventions illustrate the potential effectiveness of these strategies for reducing crime and disorder. However, many proactive strategies are often confounded with the impacts of focused place-based interventions – or hot spots policing – which have also been associated with significant crime reductions. In this article, we combine data from recent systematic reviews on problem-oriented policing, police stops, and preventive police patrol to investigate whether the deterrent effects of these interventions are moderated by the level of geography targeted. Using meta-regression models to assess the impact of geography while controlling for the impact of policing strategy and other relevant study characteristics, we find that level of geography is the most important predictor of crime prevention outcomes. Specifically, focused micro-geographic interventions are associated with the largest relative crime reductions, regardless of the policing strategy employed. Our estimates also suggest, however, that problem-oriented policing strategies produce larger general crime reduction effects than police patrol and police stop interventions across all levels of geography. We conclude that geography should play a major role in evidence-based crime prevention efforts, but that police agencies should also carefully consider the strategies that they employ and their impacts on both crime and the community.

中文翻译：

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地理水平是否会影响主动警务对犯罪的影响？对三种循证警务策略的系统评价综合


最近对主动警务干预措施的系统审查表明了这些策略对于减少犯罪和骚乱的潜在有效性。然而，许多积极主动的战略常常与集中的地方干预措施（或热点警务）的影响相混淆，而这些干预措施也与显着减少犯罪有关。在本文中，我们结合了最近对问题导向的警务、警察拦截和预防性警察巡逻的系统回顾的数据，以调查这些干预措施的威慑作用是否受到目标地理水平的调节。使用元回归模型评估地理的影响，同时控制警务策略和其他相关研究特征的影响，我们发现地理水平是犯罪预防结果最重要的预测因素。具体而言，无论采用何种警务策略，有针对性的微观地理干预措施都可以最大程度地相对减少犯罪。然而，我们的估计还表明，以问题为导向的警务策略比各个地区的警察巡逻和警察制止干预措施产生的总体犯罪减少效果更大。我们的结论是，地理因素应在基于证据的犯罪预防工作中发挥重要作用，但警察机构也应仔细考虑他们采用的策略及其对犯罪和社区的影响。