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Displacement of crime and diffusion of crime control benefits in large-scale geographic areas: a systematic review

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Abstract

Objectives

To conduct a systematic review examining the extent to which there is crime displacement or a diffusion of crime control benefits in social control interventions implemented in medium sized or large geographic areas.

Methods

A number of search strategies were used to identify and code eligible experimental or quasi-experimental studies that measured displacement in areas larger than crime hot spots. A total of 33 publications covering 43 quasi-experimental studies were identified as eligible. Nineteen of these publications covering 20 studies were included in a meta-analysis.

Results

The narrative results overall suggest that displacement is not a common occurrence in interventions implemented at larger units of geography and a diffusion of crime control benefits is somewhat more likely to occur. The effect sizes from the meta-analyses suggest that, while the interventions, on average, were associated with a significant decline in crime, displacement was not likely to occur. The meta-analyses found no significant overall evidence of displacement or a diffusion of benefits.

Conclusions

These findings are in line with previous reviews that have focused on displacement at smaller geographic units. When examining larger geographic scales and a broader array of interventions, spatial displacement is still a fairly unlikely occurrence.

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Notes

  1. Their specific definition of a place was “a specifically defined area that is smaller than a city or region,” including census blocks, police areas, housing estates, districts, suburbs, block areas, series of roads, neighborhoods, or hot spots (Bowers et al. 2011a: 16).

  2. These same levels of motivation likely do not exist for crimes with less potential rewards. As one anonymous reviewer noted, “it seems unlikely that a bag thief will travel 100 miles to commit a crime denied to them.”

  3. See Telep et al. (2014) for a list of databases searched and keywords used.

  4. The seminal pieces used were: Clarke (1995), Clarke and Weisburd (1994), Cornish and Clarke (1987), McIver (1981), Reppetto (1976), and Teichman (2005).

  5. See Telep et al. (2014) for a list of these journals.

  6. While we coded any type of displacement noted by study authors, we focus here only on spatial displacement as this was the most common type of displacement examined and often the only type examined quantitatively.

  7. The WDQ is given by (D a /C a – D b /C b )/(R a /C a – R b /C b ), where R a is the crime count in the treatment area post-intervention, R b is the crime count in the treatment area pre-intervention, C a is the post-intervention crime count in the comparison area, C b is the pre-intervention crime count in the comparison area, D a is the post-intervention crime count in the catchment area, and D b is the pre-intervention crime count in the catchment area (Bowers et al. 2011a).

  8. As noted earlier, we did not include these pre-post studies in our main analysis. To avoid distracting from our main findings, we do not discuss these studies here, but briefly describe these studies in our Campbell Collaboration final report for this review (Telep et al. 2014).

  9. A single study could fall into more than one category in the types of interventions listed in Table 1.

  10. We also make use of data from Gonzalez-Navarro (2013) in our effect size calculations.

  11. Cummings (2006) reports on two separate interventions in Australia but uses the same comparison group for both studies.

  12. We felt the outcome measure in this study (opium cultivation) was too dissimilar from the other studies to be included. The main effect size was also massive (an odds ratio of greater than 85), which skewed our results.

  13. While it is certainly the case that spatial displacement is most relevant to consider when intervention are associated with reduction in crime, we think it is possible that interventions could fail to have the desired impacts in a target site, but still have negative consequences (i.e. displacement) for surrounding areas. For our purposes this issue is not as relevant because just one of our studies (Bennett 1988) has an odds ratio of less than 1.000 in Fig. 1, suggesting that most of our studies had some impact on crime (although only five of these effect sizes are statistically significant).

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by a grant from the National Policing Improvement Agency (UK) to the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University. The opinions, findings and conclusions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agency. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions. Thanks also to David B. Wilson for his statistical advice on this review and to Breanne Cave, Lisa Dario, Jacqueline Davis, Chantal Fahmy, and Julie Hibdon for their research assistance on this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, 411 N. Central Ave. Mail Code 4420, Phoenix, AZ, 85004, USA

    Cody W. Telep

  2. Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    David Weisburd, Charlotte E. Gill & Zoe Vitter

  3. Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    David Weisburd

  4. Faculty of Law, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Doron Teichman

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  1. Cody W. Telep
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Correspondence to Cody W. Telep.

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Telep, C.W., Weisburd, D., Gill, C.E. et al. Displacement of crime and diffusion of crime control benefits in large-scale geographic areas: a systematic review. J Exp Criminol 10, 515–548 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-014-9208-5

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