Crime Displacement

In Detail

Crime displacement is the hypothesis that when law enforcement or crime prevention measures are applied in one area, offenders simply move their criminal activity to nearby locations, different times, different targets, or different methods — rather than ceasing criminal behavior altogether. If displacement is total, then localized crime reduction efforts would produce no net benefit to a community, merely shifting the problem. However, extensive research has found that total displacement is rare. A comprehensive review of over 100 crime prevention evaluations found that displacement, when it occurred, was typically partial — meaning that some crime moved but the net effect was still a reduction in total crime. Moreover, many studies found a "diffusion of benefits" effect, where crime reductions in the targeted area spread to adjacent areas rather than crime increasing there. There are several types of displacement that researchers track: spatial (crime moves to a nearby location), temporal (crime shifts to a different time), target (offenders choose different victims or properties), tactical (offenders change their methods), offense (offenders switch to different types of crime), and perpetrator (new offenders fill the void left by arrested ones). Understanding displacement is important for CrimeContext users because a city's crime reduction efforts, even if successful at the city level, may not be purely the result of fewer crimes occurring. Additionally, crime patterns in one city can influence patterns in neighboring jurisdictions. Hot-spot policing studies have been particularly encouraging in showing that well-designed interventions reduce crime without significant displacement.