Hot Spot Policing and Impact on African Americans
Introduction
Hot spot policing involves concentrating police resources where crime is most prevalent. The method is predicated on the concept that disorder and crime tend to cluster in particular locations as opposed to being evenly spread throughout neighborhoods (Baumgartner et al., 2018). It is determined that crime can be prevented in these areas by focusing resources and activities on crime hotspots and, theoretically. As a result, it reduces the overall city crime rates. The essay explores the origins of hot spot policing practices, their impact on African-American communities, and recommendations to improve policy implementation.
Origins of Hot Spot Policing
Modern American policing has developed in response to criticism of police effectiveness in deterring crime and empirical findings that crime is disproportionately concentrated in metropolitan areas. According to Koper et al. (2021), the police should emphasize their efforts by directing more resources to high-crime regions to reduce crime. Since crime is more prevalent in cities, law enforcement organizations must expand their surveillance in these areas. As stated by Baumgartner et al. (2018), criminal activity tends to congregate in specific spots while other parts of the neighborhood remain relatively safe. This demonstrates that if police officers concentrated on these consistent high-activity crime sites, this criminal behavior might be decreased. The rationale behind introducing hot spot policing is that if police can deter crime in particular crime-ridden places, they will be able to manage the overall crime rate in the area.
Impact Towards Minority Groups
Hotspot policing has drawn criticism since it can result in discriminatory practices and increased police brutality. By saturating high-crime neighborhoods with officers, officials hope to interrupt the unregulated cycle of violence and prevent the escalation of crime. However, it can lead to significant animosity between the police and the locals in underprivileged minority groups (Braga et al., 2019). Discriminatory policing can further erode the already shattered relationship of confidence between the authorities and minority groups.
The proactive hot spot police approach uses misdemeanor prosecutions to make an effort to disrupt erratic social conduct to stop crime. Residents find this practice invasive and inappropriate, thus questioning the police’s commitment to upholding their liberties and citizens’ well-being. Many people of color view current policing methods against the backdrop of past enforcement atrocities, holding the lingering effects of terrible wrongdoings liable for the ongoing tensions within minority communities (Hagan et al., 2018). Early law enforcement officials participated in a variety of criminal behaviors, according to historical sources, including acting as slave patrols, monitoring and restricting the movement of black people, and killing countless freed people of color.
Disparate victimization and offending rates give the false impression that crime and disorder are rampant in black communities. Communities of color, especially those of African descent, are often stereotyped as dangerous and subject to heightened police patrols. Violent crime is portrayed as being prevalent in places with high socio-economic disparities, where racial and ethnic minorities are concentrated due to historical and current segregation (Hagan et al., 2018). There is a distrust of law enforcement agencies emanating from the aggressive methods used by the police that undermine public confidence. Communities with limited resources experience a higher rate of documented policing than affluent neighborhoods; thus, there is no equity in the criminal justice system. The increased policing is due to the belief that poverty creates criminals.
African Americans have significantly more interactions with law enforcement than whites. The likelihood of being stopped, searched, frisked, and arrested by police is far higher for blacks than whites living in the same area. Police departments primarily employ policing practices, including stop, question, and frisk (SQF) strategies concentrating on minority neighborhoods (Braga et al., 2019). Hot spot policing has resulted in an overrepresentation of African Americans in all phases of engagement with the criminal justice system, including arrest, sentencing, probation, imprisonment, and execution (Koper et al., 2021). Furthermore, disproportionate enforcement and surveillance tactics used by metropolitan police forces contribute to racial inequities in the criminal justice system and mass incarceration.
Some people contend that minorities’ increasing involvement in criminal activity is due to disproportionate police contact with them. However, racial disparities in criminal behavior do not exist for most offenses. Despite research showing that checks involving white people are more likely to turn up contraband or lead to an arrest, black people are nevertheless the target of a higher percentage of searches (Baumgartner et al., 2018). These methods are combined with the administrative notion known as the crime statistics game, which encourages annual increases in arrests, summonses, and investigative stops in minority areas as key performance indicators.
Recommendations
Police agencies should conduct extensive evaluations of crime problems to ensure that crime-control measures are not indiscriminate, involve community members in their attempts to reduce crime, and use problem-solving tactics to prevent crimes beyond monitoring and enforcement. Discriminatory practices in the criminal justice system can be exacerbated by poor police practices, which can erode public trust in government entities (Koper et al., 2021). This is because urban violent crime statistics have been poorly assessed and misrepresented. A critical step in strengthening society’s ability to recognize, understand, and redress racial disparities in crime and policing is improved data collection.
Effective policing necessitates concentrating on certain persons and locations; therefore, law enforcement should pursue techniques skillfully adapted to unique threats like repeat offenders and gang conflicts. Police agencies can implement crime prevention techniques to involve the public in modifying the underlying factors, circumstances, and dynamics that lead to repeated acts of violence (Braga et al., 2019). The genuine nature of major violent gang problems can be effectively framed and communicated to constituents by law enforcement authorities.
Police departments should adopt a problem-oriented strategy that requires officers to determine the underlying causes of issues that lead to a pattern of criminal episodes. Police officers create and put into action the proper reactions once they are aware of the underlying circumstances. Importantly, problem-oriented enforcement pushes police to consider other ways to reduce crime rather than just depending on more monitoring, seizures, and legal action against offenders.
By enhancing the physical environment and implementing informal social controls on high-risk individuals, community members can assist with developing appropriate strategies catered to specific challenges. In this sense, police tactics concentrating on specific persons and locations would stop profiling and serve as a springboard for community involvement initiatives (Braga et al., 2019). When people trust the police, they are more inclined to support them, giving them more discretion, submitting to their authority, and cooperating with directives.
Conclusion
Hot spot policing entails focusing police resources on regions with high crime rates. The types of activities used must be considered, and they should change based on the nature of the issue within the hot spot. Deterrence and criminal opportunity reduction must be constant to duplicate results across crime hot spots. Law enforcement should lead the way toward establishing a utilitarian criminal justice system. Contemporary police forces should step up their efforts to adopt community policing practices to lessen bias and instances of racial profiling against minorities.
References
Baumgartner, F. R., Epp, D. A., & Shoub, K. (2018). Suspect citizens: What 20 million traffic stops tell us about policing and race. Cambridge University Press.
Braga, A. A., Turchan, B., Papachristos, A. V., & Hureau, D. M. (2019). Hot spot policing of small geographic areas affects crime. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 15(3). Web.
Hagan, J., McCarthy, B., Herda, D., & Cann Chandrasekher, A. (2018). Dual-process theory of racial isolation, legal cynicism, and reported crime. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(28), 7190–7199. Web.
Koper, C. S., Wu, X., & Lum, C. (2021). Calibrating police activity across hot spot and non-hot spot areas. Police Quarterly, 69(2), 109861112199580. Web.