Cincinnati Police Department Problem Solving Guide PDF

Cincinnati Police Department Problem Solving Guide: A Practical Resource for Police Officers and Community Members Colonel Teresa A. Theetge Police Chief Revised: January, 2024  T...

Cincinnati Police Department Problem Solving Guide: A Practical Resource for Police Officers and Community Members Colonel Teresa A. Theetge Police Chief Revised: January, 2024  TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction................................................................................................................................... 5 Scanning......................................................................................................................................... 6 Scanning Objectives................................................................................................................... 6 What is a Problem?..................................................................................................................... 6 Identifying Neighborhood Problems.......................................................................................... 7 Defining and Quantifying Your Specific Problem..................................................................... 7 Progress Check-In..................................................................................................................... 10 Analysis........................................................................................................................................ 11 Analysis Objectives.................................................................................................................. 11 General Analysis Guidance...................................................................................................... 11 5W1H Questions....................................................................................................................... 11 Frameworks for Analyzing Crime Problems............................................................................ 13 Routine Activities Theory and the Crime Triangle............................................................... 13 Rational Choice Theory........................................................................................................ 14 Crime Pattern Theory............................................................................................................ 15 Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.............................................................. 15 Tools for Analyzing Crime Problems....................................................................................... 16 The VOLTAGE Checklist.................................................................................................... 16 Crime Scripts: Crime Events as Processes............................................................................ 16 Be Crime Specific................................................................................................................. 17 Offenders Have Preferences................................................................................................. 17 Hot Products.......................................................................................................................... 18 Crime Concentration............................................................................................................. 18 Risky Facilities...................................................................................................................... 19 Crime Generators & Attractors............................................................................................. 19 Hot Times.............................................................................................................................. 20 Collecting Data to Inform Analysis.......................................................................................... 20 Official Databases................................................................................................................. 20 Narrative Reports.................................................................................................................. 21 Other Data Sources for Problem Analysis............................................................................ 21 City Agencies........................................................................................................................ 21 Surveys.................................................................................................................................. 22 Interviews.............................................................................................................................. 22 Focus Groups........................................................................................................................ 22 Observations......................................................................................................................... 22 Using Crime Analysts............................................................................................................... 23 Research What is Known About the Problem from Other Sources and at CPD...................... 23 Progress Check-In..................................................................................................................... 24 Response....................................................................................................................................... 25 Response Objectives................................................................................................................. 25 General Response Guidance..................................................................................................... 25 Types of Responses.................................................................................................................. 25 Page 2 of 56  Law Enforcement Responses................................................................................................ 26 Considering Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy........................................................ 26 Partnering with Residents & Community Based Organizations........................................... 27 Partnering with Local Businesses......................................................................................... 28 Drawing on Other Governmental Agencies.......................................................................... 28 Third-Party Policing.............................................................................................................. 28 Situational Crime Prevention................................................................................................ 29 Identifying Evidence-Based Responses.................................................................................... 31 Documenting and Implementing Your Response..................................................................... 31 Progress Check-In..................................................................................................................... 31 Assessment................................................................................................................................... 33 Assessment Objectives............................................................................................................. 33 General Assessment Guidance.................................................................................................. 33 Evaluating Success................................................................................................................... 33 Process Evaluations.............................................................................................................. 33 Impact Evaluations................................................................................................................ 34 Establishing Goals and Outcome Measures.............................................................................. 34 The Technical Aspects of Conducting Assessments................................................................ 35 Units of Analysis................................................................................................................... 35 Collecting Data for Assessment............................................................................................ 35 Before & After Assessments................................................................................................. 35 Percentage Change................................................................................................................ 35 Charts and Graphs................................................................................................................. 36 Statistical Control Charts...................................................................................................... 37 Seasonality and Other Temporal Issues to Consider............................................................ 39 CPOP Places Relative to Other Places.................................................................................. 40 Selecting a Control Area....................................................................................................... 40 Percent Change Ratio............................................................................................................ 40 When Crime Increases, But Not as Much as the Control..................................................... 41 Displacement and the Diffusion of Crime Control Benefits..................................................... 42 Determining a Catchment Area............................................................................................. 42 Weighted Displacement Quotients....................................................................................... 43 Other Ways to Document Response Effects............................................................................. 44 Pictures.................................................................................................................................. 44 Community Surveys, Interviews, and Focus Groups............................................................ 44 How is a Problem Resolved and Closed?................................................................................. 44 Appendix A: CHEERS Checklist.............................................................................................. 45 CHEERS Checklist................................................................................................................... 45 CHEERS Checklist Tips........................................................................................................... 46 Appendix B: VOLTAGE Checklist........................................................................................... 48 Appendix C: Situational Crime Prevention Detailed description.......................................... 49 Appendix D: Example Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Assessment..... 52 Appendix E: Response Tracking Data Example...................................................................... 55 Appendix F: Outside Resources for Developing Responses.................................................... 56 Center for Problem-Oriented Policing...................................................................................... 56 Page 3 of 56 Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy................................................................................. 56 Crimesolutions.gov................................................................................................................... 56 Page 4 of 56  INTRODUCTION We now know that problem solving is one of the most effective crime reduction strategies (Hinkle et al., 2020). Problem solving commonly uses the SARA Model to understand crime and disorder problems and develop holistic responses to address the problems. SARA is an acronym for Scanning, Analysis, Response, & Assessment. Scanning involves identifying and defining crime and disorder problems. Analysis involves using data to understand a problem’s underlying causes. Response involves developing tailored responses to a problem’s underlying causes. Assessment involves measuring if the responses impacted the problem. Problem solving underpins many policing and crime reduction strategies. In the late 1970s, Herman Goldstein first introduced the idea of problem solving as a standalone policing strategy: Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) (Goldstein, 1979). At roughly the same time, problem solving was widely discussed as a core component of Community-Oriented Policing (COP) (Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2012). In both POP and COP, the gist of problem solving was the same but COP also emphasized the importance of community involvement in problem solving (among its other components). Later on, problem solving influenced other policing strategies, like focused deterrence/group violence intervention, CompStat, and hot spots policing. Nonetheless, problem solving is not exclusive to policing. Anybody with an interest in addressing a crime or disorder problem can apply problem solving concepts and the SARA model to address a problem in their community. In fact, there are many examples of residents and community groups driving problem solving strategies across the U.S. Cincinnati’s historic Collaborative Agreement (CA) established Community Problem-Oriented Policing (CPOP) as the Cincinnati Police Department’s primary crime reduction strategy in 2002.1 CPOP is a philosophy and methodology that blends the importance of collaborative police- community partnerships and the concept of problem solving for addressing crime and disorder problems. Under CPOP, a problem is just as important as a call for service, crime incident, or investigation, and CPD personnel are expected to work with community partners to scan for, analyze, and respond to crime and disorder problems.2 With problem solving becoming one of the most effective crime reduction strategies to date, one might say the CA was “ahead of its time” when it established CPOP as CPD’s primary crime reduction strategy. This guide provides an overview for how CPD officers and community members can work together on teams to conduct CPOP. The guide follows the steps of the SARA Model and details the concepts needed to complete each step of SARA. CPD personnel and community members collaborating on CPOP projects can reference this guide as they work together to solve problems. 1 You can read more about the Collaborative Agreement here: https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/department- references/collaborative-agreement/. 2 CPD’s problem solving policy is Procedure 12.370: Problem Solving Project Process. Page 5 of 56  SCANNING Scanning Objectives Scanning is the first step of the SARA process. During Scanning, the objectives are to: Identify potential problems that may warrant further attention Partner with community to verify that perceived problems are real and warrant attention Establish and collaborate with a community stakeholder team (i.e., CPOP team) to define the specific problem in a way that facilitates comprehensive responses to addressing it The sections below provide a guide for how to think about scanning for and defining problems as well as some specific tools that CPOP teams can use to define their own problems. What is a Problem? In some cases, the problem can be very clear. This is likely to be true when problems are identified by someone who has directly experienced the problem. In other cases, however, the problem is unclear. Sometimes the definition of a problem even changes over time. It is common for a CPOP team to change its problem’s definition as more information is learned. Problem solving is a fluid process, so as your CPOP team learns more about the problem, it may be able to improve on its definition. The goal is not to define the problem quickly, but rather define it well so that the problem can be analyzed and addressed. Flexibility is key when defining a problem. CPD Procedure 12.370 defines a Problem as: “A recurring set of related harmful crime, disorder, or safety incidents in a community that members of the public expect the police to address.” Problems result from recurring events. Many people use the terms event and incident interchangeably. That’s fine. The idea of recurring events implies the problem has existed for a long time, usually months or even years, which in return implies the problem is unlikely to go away without a response. CPOP projects are intensive and can take months or even years to complete, so it is important that they are focused on recurring problems. While something may appear to be a “problem” on the surface, it may not warrant a CPOP project if it can be resolved quickly or will simply go away on its own. Working through the Center for Problem Oriented Policing’s CHEERS test is a great way to ensure that the issues you’ve identified are actually problems that should be the focus of CPOP projects. A full-page, printable copy of the CHEERS checklist and logic behind it is available in Appendix A. Page 6 of 56 The CHEERS acronym means: CHEERS Principle What it means: C Community Members of the community must experience the events H Harmful People or institutions must suffer harm from the events Some community members must expect the police to address the E Expectation problem You must be able to describe the type of event that makes up the E Events problem R Recurring The harmful events must recur (i.e., happen repeatedly) S Similarity The harmful events must have something in common Identifying Neighborhood Problems Problems can be identified by the police or the community individually or in collaboration. At CPD, every officer at every rank is expected to engage either directly in or play a support role in CPOP. For this reason, some problems will be identified by officers. However, community members play a vital role in problem identification. Crime and disorder problems directly impact the community who experience them. Community members may include, but are not limited to individual citizens, community and neighborhood organizations, businesses, government agencies, and any other group in Cincinnati. Once a community member identifies a problem, they may notify their neighborhood liaison officer, raise the problem at a community meeting, and so on. In reality, not all problems can be identified by CPD as the events that make up many problems police may never be reported. As such, community members are likely to be the most common source of problems. Regardless of who “discovers” a problem, police and community must come together to complete a CPOP project to address it. The community members raising the problem should be invited to join a project’s CPOP team, and their expectations and insights should play a key role in the Scanning phase. The community members who join the CPOP team should be documented in PSTS. Defining and Quantifying Your Specific Problem Addressing problems means more than quick fixes – it means dealing with the conditions that create problems. Identifying broad and vague issues leads to ineffective responses. In contrast, breaking down issues into identifiable, specific problems has a number of benefits, including: 1. Increasing the likelihood of success Page 7 of 56  2. Having fewer moving parts to keep track of 3. Ensuring enough resources will be available to address the problem For these reasons, it is important that problems are described specifically, so that they can be broken down into their component parts and analyzed. For instance, instead of just “delivery driver vehicle theft” a problem might be “University area theft of delivery driver vehicles left running while the driver enters the restaurant to pick up an order – of which 75% occur during the dinner time rush (5:00pm to 9:00pm) and 90% are Uber or DoorDash drivers.” Bringing together the elements of CHEERS to specifically define a problem, CPOP Teams need to quantify both the events that make up the problem and the similarities between the events. A clear quantification of events has two parts – a count of events and a timeframe that this count occurred within (e.g. past 1 year, past 3 years). An example event quantification is “90 events in the past three years” or “20 events in the six months between 2021/01/01 and 2021/06/30”. Quantifications of similarities should also include two parts – a characteristic linking events and the amount or percentage of events that have the characteristic (e.g. 70%, half, 2/3rds). If an exact number of events sharing the similarity is unknown, an estimation is acceptable (e.g. approximately three-quarters or at least half). Note that problems can, and often do, have multiple similarities linking events and each of these should be quantified. Example similarity quantifications are “80% of victims were Uber or DoorDash drivers” and “approximately 3/4s of the events occurred on weekend nights between 01:00 and 03:00”. It is important to remember when quantifying your problem that problems are not merely one-off incidents, and even a string of incidents of a same type (for instance, a string of robberies occurring near one another) may not actually be part of the same problem. That is why it is important to go through the CHEERS checklist and other identification methods before deciding if events constitute a problem. After all, problem solving is labor and resource intensive and you want to be sure you are addressing a problem that deserves that time and effort. If you are unsure of how to quantify your problem, please refer to the Collecting Data to Inform Analysis section in the Analysis chapter of this guide to get an overview of the different types and sources of data that can be used to quantify and analyze problems. Now that we’ve gone over the CHEERS checklist and discussed some of the ways you might quantify your problems, it would be useful to look at some examples of poorly defined problems and some potential replacements. These are presented in the table below. Reading over the examples above, you can see that well defined problems have specific definitions that are enhanced by their event and similarity quantifications. They avoid using simple crime categories like “auto theft” or “robbery”. These provide the foundation for problem analyses, and eventually for the research and development of potential responses. Page 8 of 56 Poorly defined Better, more specific Event And similarity problems descriptions... quantifications... quantifications... 70% stolen from Stealing cars for 20 thefts in past six downtown condo export overseas months parking garages Auto theft 75 cars stolen and Joyriding by ditched between 2/3 stolen between juveniles January 1, 2019 and 23:00 and 04:00 present 50% initiated using Robbery of delivery 70 robberies in past 3 new Uber or Door drivers years Dash accounts Robbery All luring ads were for cash purchases of Robbery victims set 55 robberies between high value items - up using Craigslist 2020/01/01 and 50% of were for ads 2021/06/30 electronics (e.g. cell phones, laptops), 20% for bicycles 95% of events 300 citizen Alcohol consumption occurred on weekend complaints in past 3 in parks or holiday nights in years the summer Citizen complaints Nuisance brought up at 12 100% of events community meetings occurred on Excessive noise reporting excessive Thursday, Friday, or around bars at closing noise at local bars Saturday nights along time after closing each the 100 block of weekend for the past Main St. year Page 9 of 56 Progress Check-In At this point in the SARA process, the CPOP Team should now have a well-defined problem with data to demonstrate the extent and recurrence of the problem and be able to answer the following questions: What is my problem? Who are the stakeholders for this problem and who can be on my CPOP team? What similarities link the events that make up my problem? How frequently does my problem occur? How long has this problem been taking place? Page 10 of 56  ANALYSIS Analysis Objectives Analysis is the second step in the SARA process. During Analysis, the objectives are to: Work with your CPOP team to develop hunches for why the problem might exist using the problem analysis frameworks reviewed below Work with your CPOP team to collect data and conduct an in-depth analysis to test if your hunches for why the problem exists are supported by data Work with your CPOP team to determine which hunches about why the problem might exist are supported by your data General Analysis Guidance Understanding the characteristics of your problem and what elements contribute to it requires that you get detailed information on a few items, including: Offenders Victims Others who may be involved or have a stake in the problem Time of occurrence Locations Characteristics of the physical environment where the problem is occurring History of the problem Motivations, gains, and losses of all involved parties Apparent (and less apparent) causes and competing interests Current responses to the problem (if any) Results of current responses A guide for how to analyze your problems using a variety of useful tools is detailed below. 5W1H Questions Thinking through the 5W1H questions is a good place to start your deep dive into your problem’s components: 1. Who? 2. What? 3. Where? 4. When? 5. Why? 6. How? Page 11 of 56 Asking who is involved will help identify the key players involved in your problem. All problems will involve at least offenders and victims. Additionally, most problems will involve other parties, including people who facilitate the problem, people who are witnesses to the problem and could potentially intervene to stop it, or people who are able to do something about the problem. Asking what occurs during your problem will help you recognize the nature and extent of the problem. Some problems are relatively simple in nature, whereas other problems are highly complex. By asking what happens (which is often best answered after knowing who, where, when, why, and how a problem occurs), you can get a sense of the overall nature and complexity of the problem. Much of this work starts in the Scanning phase, but as you learn more about the problem in the Analysis phase you can update and expand your problem definition. Asking where the problem occurs will help pinpoint the specific location or locations where problem incidents occur as well as allow for an examination of the general physical environment in the area where the problem takes place. Some problems will be concentrated at only one or two addresses, others will be located along a particular block, and others might occur across a wider area. When a high volume of calls-for-service or incidents occur at the same place, it is possible that multiple problems are occurring there, thus emphasizing the importance of knowing exactly where problem events are occurring. Place is a really important component of problems because the characteristics of places and the physical environment, such as lighting, often explain why a problem exists. One question to ask yourself is “why here and not there?” Surely there are other similar places in the city that do not have the same problem, so what is the difference between the place that does and does not have the problem? Asking when a problem occurs can help with further understanding a problem. Usually, you want to know the time Note that exact time of occurrence is of day, day of week, or months of the year that your problem often unknown in official crime data. tends to occur. The reasons are that we all know people do For example, a victim who comes home different things at different times, so knowing when your to find their house was broken in to will problem occurs can help you think about what people are not know the exact time the burglary doing at the time that contributes to the problem. For occurred, just that it happened while example, if you know a robbery problem occurs in the late they were out. But a victim of a robbery night to early morning hours on the weekend, you might likely will know the exact time of question if it has something to do with the local bars. Or if occurrence. So, it is important to be you know assaults are concentrated on weekdays between careful about analyzing time of 1400 and 1600 hours, you might consider if school release occurrence in official crime data. times are driving the problem. In some cases, how time contributes to the problem will be relatively obvious. In other cases, you will have to think about time more carefully. Either way, knowing when a problem occurs can provide a lot of insight. Asking why a problem occurs implies that a CPOP team understands the history of the problem, the motivations and interests of those causing the problem and those who want to do something about it, the gains and losses stemming from the problem, and the potential causes of the problem. Crime problems occur for specific reasons. While we may never completely understand why offenders do what they do, assessing the risks and rewards from their perspective may help Page 12 of 56 determine the best course of action later in the SARA process when you develop a response to the problem. Asking how a problem occurs is about understanding what happens during just one of the events that make up a problem. Problems are made up of crime events, which themselves are made up of a series of decisions made by those involved. We want to be able to understand this decision process of how a single event unfolds as a collection of recurring events forms an overarching problem. Answering these questions may also help better understand why the problem occurs, as the process itself may shed light on specific motivations and causes. Frameworks for Analyzing Crime Problems Routine Activities Theory, Rational Choice Theory, Crime Pattern Theory, and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design are frameworks that can help you better analyze the opportunities that lead to crime and disorder problems. Each of these frameworks complement the others. In fact, they are so complementary that people sometimes have a hard time separating each of them. These frameworks are useful for explaining different aspects of crime and disorder problems, and your CPOP team should keep them in mind as they answer the 5W1H questions (discussed above) and as the CPOP teams works through the VOLTAGE checklist (discussed later). Routine Activities Theory and the Crime Triangle When trying to understand a problem in-depth, it helps to know about all of the problem’s characteristics. One easy way to do this is to use Routine Activities Theory, which was developed by researchers to spell out the minimum requirements for a crime to occur and who might be able to intervene in a crime event. This theory puts forth that for a crime to occur, a motivated offender must encounter a suitable target in a situation that lacks capable guardianship, or somebody who can intervene in the event. Visualizing the elements of Routine Activities Theory gives us the Crime Triangle in Figure 1 (also often called the Problem Analysis Triangle). This graphic can be useful for illustrating the relationship between the different elements that make up crime events. Additionally, the Crime Triangle provides a way to organize the 5W1H questions and find potential leverage points for responses. Figure 1. The Crime Triangle Page 13 of 56 On the inside of the triangle are the three elements that are required for a crime to occur: (1) an offender, (2) a victim/target, and (3) a place. That is, crimes happen when opportunistic offenders and vulnerable victims/targets meet up at the same place and time. A crime cannot occur without one of the required elements. Any problem analysis should, at minimum, include an understanding of who the potential offenders are, who the potential victims/targets are, and where the problem occurs. The outside of the crime triangle is useful for thinking about who can influence or impact the behaviors of the inner triangle elements: Handlers are people who can impact the behaviors of potential offenders. They include parents, siblings, friends, probation and parole officers, and anyone else who can exert control over or who has influence on an offender. Guardians are people who can help protect and look after potential victims or targets during a crime event. Examples of potential guardians include family, friends, police officers, security guards, or anyone else who is in the position of watching out for others, be it formally or informally. Managers are people who oversee the functioning of places. Place managers include business owners, landlords, school administrators, and others who have the responsibility to control behavior. Managers include those people who are designated by owners to regulate conduct in their absence, such as bartenders or bouncers. When developing responses, a key idea is how can you make any of the outer triangle elements more impactful. These will be especially useful to guide your thinking about potential responses in the next phase (Response) of the SARA process. Overall, the Crime Triangle helps with analysis by enabling you to understand the role that opportunity plays in problem creation. Additionally, we know that crime opportunities are not random. Instead, opportunities, and thus problems, tend to cluster in space and time. Some places, like problem bars or convenience stores, tend to experience more than their fair share of problems. We also know that certain kinds of problems, such as street robbery, tend to occur at night and on weekends. Opportunities create problems, so understanding what people do as part of their routine activities creates opportunities is how one can understand why a problem exists. Rational Choice Theory Rational Choice Theory simply suggests that offenders make decisions about committing crime - they weigh the costs and benefits of their behaviors before acting, and act only when the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived costs. Costs can include the potential for getting caught, while benefits can be monetary or nonmonetary (e.g., fun, increased status). There are two main types of decisions related to crime commission. The first is related to involvement in criminal activity, including decisions about initiating, continuing, or desisting from criminal behavior. The second are event decisions, which includes what crime to commit, where and when to commit it, who to victimize, and how to commit the crime. These decisions are not necessarily completely rational nor are they always the “best” decision. Rather, offenders’ Page 14 of 56 decisions are said to be “bounded” by incomplete information, immediate needs, poor cost/benefit calculations, and other factors such as drugs and alcohol. Importantly, however, even within this bounded rationality, decisions are still made and thinking about event decisions helps us think about problem solving. Crime opportunities can be made unattractive to offenders by thinking about the decisions they make just before, during, and just after crime events and then taking away the pieces of a crime opportunity that offenders prefer. In other words, if you think about the decisions offenders are making during your problem’s events, responses can be developed to prevent and reduce the problem by taking away the parts of the event they prefer. Crime Pattern Theory Crime Pattern Theory takes what is known about opportunity and decision-making and “spatializes” it. Crime Pattern Theory suggests that the physical environment structures our daily activities. That is, the places people go and the routes they take to get there are dictated by the physical space, or “backcloth” around them. Important parts of the backcloth are nodes, paths, and edges: Nodes are the places people spend time at and travel to and from, including their homes, work, school, and recreation places. Paths are physical pathways that people take to get from node to node, including streets, walkways, and public transit lines. Edges are the physical or perceptual boundaries between different recognized areas of a city, such as the street between two neighborhoods or residential and commercial areas. Potential offenders and potential victims go about their lives in the same spaces, as they tend to use the same nodes and paths and are constrained by the same edges. Crime Patten Theory suggests that crime opportunities will cluster around busy nodes, along busy paths, and along edges. When trying to understand a problem, it is important to think about how the problem might arise based on how victims and offenders are using space in around the problem location. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is another framework where the physical environment is thought to play a central role in the development of crime opportunities. CPTED suggests that certain aspects of the built environment can influence both the type and amount of human activity at a place. Physical elements of a place can impact its appearance, and people’s sense of ownership over the place and their ability to observe the activity of others, which in turn can increase or decrease criminal opportunities. Additional factors, such as street networks, neighborhood layout, and building design can also influence how people use space. In summary, CPTED suggests that the built environment can impact the decisions that people make, which in turn creates or reduces opportunities for crime. CPTED principles can be used to guide your analysis of problem locations – an example checklist from the Herman Goldstein Award winning “Reducing Crime and Disorder at Motels and Hotels in Chula Vista, California” problem-oriented policing project is included at the end of this guide in Appendix D. Page 15 of 56 Tools for Analyzing Crime Problems The criminological frameworks discussed above have led to the development of some other useful tools to better understand and analyze problems. Some focus on the decisions made by offenders, whereas others focus on the spatial and temporal crime opportunity structures. When analyzing problems, it is helpful to think of each of these as a way to further narrow in on and answer the 5W1H questions, the elements of the crime triangle, and the VOLTAGE checklist. The VOLTAGE Checklist In his book Reducing Crime A Companion for Police Leaders, Jerry Ratcliffe suggests that problems are best analyzed in a structured way. The frameworks above provide a conceptual way to start thinking about and analyzing the components of your CPOP team’s problem. Ratcliffe provides a checklist to work through to further guide your structured thinking. This checklist covers seven important aspects of problems that can be represented with the acronym VOLTAGE. At this stage, your CPOP team should be working through this checklist to document detailed information relevant to your problem. VOLTAGE Principles Prompts to Explore with CPOP Team Members V Victims Is anything unique about victims that drives your problem. O Offenders Is anything unique about the offenders involved in the problem. When a problem is tied to a specific location, there is often L Location something about that location the drives the problem. Different activities happen at different times and those activity T Times patterns explain why a problem exists. It may be something happening at a location that is actually A Attractors attracting the problem. G Groups Offenders sometimes work in groups to drive problems. Some problems are made more likely by something enhancing E Enhancers offending, like drugs or alcohol or a particular tool. **A full-page copy of this checklist is available at the end of this guide in Appendix B. Crime Scripts: Crime Events as Processes CPOP teams can think about the decisions made by offenders as a sequential, step-by-step process, with certain decisions being made, which lead to future decisions, and so on. This process is known as a crime script. Page 16 of 56 When breaking down each step in the crime event, an analogy from the film world, focusing on the scenes, cast, props, and locations, can be used. The scenes in a crime script are completed decisions/actions. Just like in a movie, scenes come one after another. These scenes must be in order or else the event won’t make sense. For instance, offenders often choose a general location to offend in before picking a specific victim. Next, the people involved in each scene are the cast. They include the offenders, victims, handlers, guardians, and place managers from the Crime Triangle. Next, depending on the crime, certain props might be required. For instance, if an offender needs a gun to commit an armed robbery, they must first acquire the gun before committing the robbery. Finally, the locations of a crime script include all the places and times involved in the criminal event. Taken together, a crime script can give a decision-by-decision, or action-by-action, progression of how a crime event occurs. Crime scripts are important to understand because at each decision point there is a possibility for intervention. That is, a response (discussed in the next chapter) can focus on a particular decision point in a crime script and make it less advantageous for the offender, which might prevent the crime from happening. Be Crime Specific As discussed above, criminal events are made up of sequential decisions made throughout the crime process. One important thing to understand about these decisions is that they are crime specific. That is, the decisions made during the course of one type of crime may be drastically different than decisions made when committing another type of crime. For example, the decisions made by offenders when committing a residential burglary are much different than the decisions made when stealing from a convenience store. The importance of crime specificity is further illustrated when we think about the decisions and actions made during the commission of crimes of the same “type”. Take robbery as an example. Broadly speaking, robbery involves the taking of property by force or threat of force. But, within this definition, several robbery “types” exist, each of which requires a different set of decisions to be made. Examples of robbery types include street robberies, commercial robberies, residential robberies, carjackings, and robberies where the victim is lured to a particular place. Each of these involves entirely different sets of decisions. It is important when conducting problem analysis that your CPOP teams is as specific as possible when describing the types of events that make up a problem. Offenders Have Preferences Many of the decisions people make are based on preferences, and people who commit crimes are no different. While research shows offenders are generalists (that is, they commit multiple different types of crime), they also have certain preferences. Offender preferences can impact every aspect of the 5W1H questions posed above. That is, offenders have preferences regarding who to offend against, what crimes to commit, where and when to offend, why they want and need to commit a particular type of crime, and how they plan on committing the crime. A lot has been learned about offender preferences by simply interviewing active offenders. For example, Richard Wright and Scott Decker interviewed active armed robbers in St. Louis, MO in Page 17 of 56 the early 1990s, and asked them questions about their offending. These interviews suggested that robbers have strong preferences in many areas, including robbery location and robbery victims. For instance, while some robbers preferred robbing busy places like grocery stores, check-cashing shops, and sporting events, other robbers preferred to rob drug dealers because they would not call the police. Creating crime scripts and understanding the crime specificity related to your problem can help better understand offender preferences, as it can show problem solvers the types of crimes, locations, times, places, and people for a problem. Hot Products One type of preference offenders have is the target of a property crime. Commonly stolen property is called a hot product. The acronym CRAVED helps one think about potential hot products. Each letter in CRAVED stands for a characteristic that makes a product more desirable: CRAVED Principle Description C Concealable Product can easily be hidden R Removable Product is easily removed A Available Product is widely available and easy to find V Valuable Product has a high monetary value or high desirability E Enjoyable Product is enjoyable to own or consume D Disposable Product is easy to sell or use It might help to understand CRAVED products by thinking about consumer electronics. An example of a CRAVED item might be an iPad. An iPad can be concealed easily if taken, is easily removable from a location, is commonly available, is valuable both in terms of personal use and resale, is enjoyable for the offender or whomever they sell it to, and can be easily disposed of by selling it. An example of a less CRAVED item might be a desktop computer. Desktop computers tend to be less Concealable, Removeable, and Disposable than iPads, so they may be less likely to be stolen relative to other devices. Understanding what products might be CRAVED by offenders and why a product is CRAVED is an essential part of problem solving for property crime because that information then can be used to develop responses to make the products less CRAVED. You don’t have to have a response for every product – just the hot products. Crime Concentration Crime also concentrates at places. Most crime events concentrate in a small number of places, whereas most places have little, if any, crime. This phenomenon is known by many names, including the 80/20 Rule, the Iron Law of Troublesome Places, and the Law of Crime Page 18 of 56 Concentration. Academic research has shown over and over that just over 3% of all possible places in the city experience about 50% of crime and that concentration is stable over time. That is, without intervention, places that are hot spots tend to stay hot, and places that are crime-free or low crime tend to stay that way as well. When identifying hot spots, it is especially important to be crime specific (discussed above), as different crime types can concentrate in different areas. Risky Facilities Crime concentration also can be observed when looking at Risky facilities can be identified by specific types of places. The term facility can be used to describe obtaining a list of all places within a type of place that serves distinct purposes. Examples of a facility type (e.g., all bars in a facilities include bars, restaurants, gas stations, and parks, city). Next, decide what type of among others. crime to focus on and count the number of crimes at each facility. People tend to think that some types of facilities have more crime Finally, rank-order the facilities than others. Say, bars have more crime than parks. That is often based on the number of crimes that true. But more importantly, only a few facilities will experience occurred at each and decide what most crime within a facility group. So, a small number of bars percentage of places you want to will be responsible for most crime that occurs at bars within a focus on. For example, you might city. And usually the 80/20 Rule holds, where 80% of a problem want to identify the worst 10% of occurs at just 20% of places of a given type. Academic research bars in the city for theft and focus suggests that this pattern holds true for all facility types. The crime reduction efforts on those subset of facilities that have a disproportionate amount of crime places. can be referred to as risky facilities. Crime Generators & Attractors Another way to understand crime concentration at places is to look at how the opportunities at places develop. While some crime opportunities occur naturally, others are created by offenders or place managers. Crime generators are places that are not inherently criminogenic, but where opportunities concentrate due to how busy the place gets. These places tend to bring together suitable targets and low guardianship, which offenders can take advantage of. Examples of common crime generators include entertainment districts, malls, and restaurants. Crime attractors are places that specifically attract offenders, thus increasing the concentration of offenders at a place. People looking to commit crime come to these types of places because they know that there are criminal opportunities there. Examples of crime attractors include drug markets and the area around bars at closing time when drunk patrons walk home. Crime enablers are places where opportunities are created due to poor place management. Remember, a place manager’s role in the crime triangle is to regulate behavior at a place. Any place with a disinterested or absentee manager who is not sufficiently regulating peoples’ behavior could be a crime enabler. An example of a crime enabler is a landlord of an apartment building who chooses to ignore drugs being dealt out of units in the building. Page 19 of 56 Because the opportunity structure at each type of place differs, responses for addressing generators, attractors, and enablers will also differ. Reducing opportunities at a crime generator might involve providing more guardianship for victims or better handling of offenders. Reducing opportunities at a crime attractor may include a number of responses, such as offender handling, improved place management, or other strategies aimed at the specific location. Finally, to reduce opportunities at crime enablers, the focus needs to be on improving place management. Simply thinking about what type of place you might be dealing with can help a lot with thinking about how you might address your problem. Hot Times Crime also concentrates in time, including during different times of the day, days of the week, and months or seasons of the year. Times when crime tend to spike relative to normal are called hot times. Again, crime specificity is important here for determining hot times. For example, residential burglary often concentrates during the day when people are away from their homes, whereas commercial burglary may concentrate at night after businesses have closed. Identifying temporal patterns alongside spatial patterns can further narrow in on a problem. If a problem is occurring at a certain time, then what is going on at that time that might help explain it? Collecting Data to Inform Analysis Collecting and using data to enhance your problem analysis is the overall point of the Analysis phase of the SARA process. Most of the time you spend on problem solving will be in the Analysis phase. While official police data is usually used in this phase, there are some problems that cannot be identified through police data alone, so other data sources are necessary. In the sections below, the different types of data that your CPOP team can incorporate into your analysis are shared. Official Databases Official law enforcement data is any data systemically collected by CPD or other local, state, or federal law enforcement organizations. CPD databases are a good place to begin problem analysis as they include information on things brought to CPD’s attention. Calls-for-service (CFS) data will include all 911 calls. Of course, not all CFS will result in a confirmed crime and the nature of a CFS may change between the description provided by the caller and when an officer takes a report, but CFS still give an indication of what is going on. There are advantages of using CFS data in problem analyses: 1. It allows officers to examine events that may not have resulted in an official incident, but harms citizens who expect the police to address the problem, such as disorderly behavior, noise complaints, or suspicious behavior. 2. CFS data can be used to examine concentrations in officer activity. For instance, if officers are routinely called to a particular location, it may make sense to analyze the types of problems occurring there. Page 20 of 56 Crime incident data include records of every founded crime incident recorded by police. These data often include even more detailed information in the narrative reports (see below). Other police databases include information that can be linked to crime incidents: Arrest record data include records for every person arrested for a crime incident. Victim record data include records for people victimized in crime incidents. Property data include what property was damaged or taken during crime incidents. There are numerous advantages of police data: 1. They are easily accessible. 2. They are often detailed and you can gain a large amount of knowledge by using them. 3. The databases are often relational, meaning that when looking at a particular incident, you can gain a wealth of knowledge by linking to other databases. This may be the most important advantage. For example, from a single crime incident, an officer can obtain information on what happened, when and where the incident occurred, who was involved, what, if anything, was taken, whether those involved have a criminal history, whether those involved are gang members, and whether those involved had any other types of police contact in the past. Narrative Reports Narrative reports include detailed information on each criminal incident as written by responding officers. Structured details of each incident are recorded in incident databases (see above), including the type of crime, when and where the incident occurred, and other incident-specific characteristics. But the narrative summaries provide incident synopses and often include information that is not captured in the other structured data fields. This information can be used to find similarities between the events making up a problem that might not otherwise be obvious. For example, incident data for a robbery event will include basic information, but the narrative summary may indicate additional information that enhances the ability to analyze specific types of robbery. Thus, using narrative information from incident reports is useful in moving from broad analysis to specific analyses of narrower problems and narrative reports should be used for pretty much any problem that is based on crime incident data. Other Data Sources for Problem Analysis Not all problems can be identified and understood through official data. Many of the problems never come to police attention through official means. It is important to draw on other types of data that may be informative when analyzing problems. Collecting alternative data from other sectors is beneficial even when official data are available because they provide supplementary information that might not be apparent through an analysis of official data alone. City Agencies Other city departments may have official data available that are relevant to analyzing problems. For example, the Property Maintenance Division collects data on tenant complaints about poor housing conditions and neighbor complaints of blight on commercial and residential buildings. Page 21 of 56 Many city data sets are available on the City of Cincinnati open data website. Additional data can be obtained by reaching out to the relevant departments. The key here is thinking creatively about what type of data might help your CPOP team’s analysis and the checking if another department collects it. Surveys Another way to gather information for problem analysis is to survey knowledgeable groups of people, including community members, community organizations, police officers, or other parties that may have knowledge of specific problems. The goal of surveys is to systematically ask people questions about certain topics. There are numerous decisions that go into survey design beyond what group to survey, including question type, question wording, number of questions, etc. While tricky to design, the advantage of surveys is that it allows CPOP teams to learn more about the types of problems communities face as well as more detailed information on the problems’ causes. For example, a community survey might help identify the problems that community members want addressed, while a survey of bar owners might establish (un)common security practices that are present in problem bars. The key here is thinking critically about the questions asked so that insight to your problem can be gained. Interviews While surveys allow for information gathering on a larger scale, interviews with select groups or individuals are another way to gain in-depth knowledge about a particular issue or problem. Examples of groups that interviews might be beneficial to use interviews with include officers, offenders, victims, teachers, parents, and business owners. The advantage of interviews is that you can tailor questions to the subject/interviewee and probe for greater detail with those being interviewed. For example, interviewing arrestees can lead to information on their specific motivations, target preferences, M.O., and possible prevention methods that might be impacted them. The amount of information gathered in interviews can be extremely useful in understanding problems’ existence as well as potential responses later in the SARA process. Focus Groups Like one-on-one interviews, focus groups are a way to gather information directly from interested parties. Focus groups are interviews with multiple people, all in the same room (or the same online meeting) at the same time. Focus groups involve a leader engaging in discussions with the group by asking questions and responding to their answers. This group dynamic allows for enhanced discussion among individuals because they are reacting to and explaining themselves to one another. Groups that it might be beneficial to use focus groups with include officers, community members, victims, and place managers. For example, a focus group of apartment owners about how they deal with problem tenants may illicit information helpful to understand problems arising in apartment buildings. Observations Another type of unofficial data source includes observations. The more formal version of observation data are structured observations, which require a pre-designed data collection form that guides the recording of important details related to a problem. That is, the form itself guides Page 22 of 56 the observer and tells them what, specifically, to look for. This requires careful instrument design and an understanding of the problem characteristics to observe ahead of time. By using a structured observation form, it ensures that the same information is collected from each observation. Because of this, structured observations can be very beneficial in a number of instances as they enable direct quantifying and comparing of the characteristics of a problem. For example, a CPOP team could observe differences in security practices of bars or convenience stores, the level of disorder in different areas with public drinking complaints, or the actions of group and gang members in public spaces. Whereas structured observations are more systematic in nature, they require a data collection form that may not be available. Unstructured observations have no such requirement. Rather, all that is required is a notebook and a camera. Unstructured observations are useful in that they can be done at any time and can include any amount of information deemed important by the observer. The most important part of unstructured observations is careful notetaking, which is why using a camera is often suggested. Unstructured observations can record a number of important aspects of problems, such as graffiti, signs of disorder, groups of individuals hanging out with each other, or differences in places during hot times and cold times. The benefit of using a camera is that the CPOP team can revisit the pictures/recordings and reevaluate them as additional information is acquired. Creativity is key in observations as sometimes the CPOP team may know what to look for and structured observations make sense, but other times the CPOP team may not have specific ideas about what is driving the problem and want to apply a broad focus so unstructured observations make sense. It may be best to use a hybrid approach of combining structured observations with unstructured free-text notes. Using Crime Analysts CPD crime analysts are a great place to start when conducting the Analysis step in the SARA process. They will be able to assist your CPOP team in a number of aspects, including accessing official CPD data sources, producing summary charts, figures, or maps, helping in the design of data collection strategies, managing newly collected data, and helping organize the documentation of a problem. Additionally, a crime analyst may be aware of other problems or problem analyses being conducted in CPD and can link the CPOP team to the proper resources or other personnel that may be useful for addressing a problem. Research What is Known About the Problem from Other Sources and at CPD Finally, it is often helpful to know how other cities have handled similar problems. While your problem, or aspects of your problem, may be specific to Cincinnati, CPOP teams do not have to reinvent the wheel. There are numerous resources at your disposal that are useful in summarizing research on crime problems. One particularly useful source is the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing located at Arizona State University at the time of writing: https://popcenter.asu.edu/. Their website includes a number of resources, including problem specific guides, problem response guides, problem tool guides, examples of successful projects, Page 23 of 56 and additional resources on problem-oriented policing in general. This should generally be the first step when researching what is known about a crime problem from other places. Additional resources include other police departments, local and national experts, and academics (such as those in University of Cincinnati, Institute of Crime Science), libraries, and government resources. Looking into one, or all, of these to see what has worked (and not worked) elsewhere can help you begin to formulate some ideas of what might work to address your problem in Cincinnati. Likewise, at this point, your CPOP team should look into what (if anything) is currently being done in the city to address this problem, and what has been done in the past. It is possible that a similar problem has arisen elsewhere in the city before and that a previous strategy has been implemented and assessed. Knowing what has worked (and not worked) previously in Cincinnati can also help guide the development of a problem response in the next phase. Progress Check-In Recall, in the Analysis step the goal is to work collaboratively with community stakeholders to analyze your problem. At this point, your CPOP team should now have taken your well-defined problem from the Scanning phase and analyzed it using the 5W1H questions, the VOLTAGE checklist, and some (or all) of the other tools and criminological frameworks discussed above. Your CPOP team may have had to collect and analyze its own data. Further, your CPOP team should have researched what is known about the problem at CPD, in Cincinnati broadly, and elsewhere. You should now have the answer to the following questions: What are the unique set of circumstances that make up the crime events that are a part of this problem? Is this problem currently being addressed? If so, how? And where does the current approach seem to be failing? What is known about this problem elsewhere? What responses have worked in other areas to address this problem? What resources might be drawn on to develop a response to the problem? Page 24 of 56  RESPONSE Response Objectives Response is the third step in the SARA process. During Response, the objectives are to: Develop a multi-faceted response plan that addresses the hunches about why the problem exists that were supported by your analysis Work with your CPOP Team and other stakeholders to implement your response plan Document response implementation, including what was implemented, who was involved, and the start and stop dates of implementation General Response Guidance Responses should be problem-specific, evidence-based, and not limited to law enforcement personnel/actions. Including the community in the development of responses is key for CPOP projects. The community is who will be experiencing the problem responses directly, so there is rarely, if ever, a scenario where they should be excluded from the response development process. When developing a response, the emphasis should be on identifying evidence-based solutions that have previously worked to address similar problems yet adapted to suit your CPOP team’s needs. Evidence-based solutions are ones that have been previously researched and shown to work, preferably in multiple locations. It is advantageous to implement evidence-based responses as they usually provide a cost-effective means of addressing problems – no money or effort is wasted on attempting something that is untested, and there is less risk that the response will inadvertently increase or displace the problem. In some cases, evidence-based practices may not exist for a particular crime problem. The preferred approach in cases like these is to develop an intervention that follows broader crime prevention principles that have been shown to work, like those discussed below. Each of the sections below describes different responses that you might consider as well as some examples of specific and general approaches that research has shown to be effective for addressing crime problems. Types of Responses One way to think of responses to crime and disorder problems is to separate them into two groups: (1) law enforcement and (2) non-law enforcement responses. For the second group, you might engage in the thought experiment, “how would my CPOP team reduce this problem if there were not any cops in the city?” Of course, your CPOP team may conclude that your problem requires both law enforcement and non-law enforcement responses. Additionally, it is important to remember the importance of crime specificity for crafting responses. Because problems require specific (and persistent) opportunities for them to occur, Page 25 of 56 responses to problems also must be specific. What works for one type of problem, such as street robbery, likely won’t work for another problem, such as residential burglary. Likewise, what works in one city, or at one time, for a specific problem may not work elsewhere or at a different time. So, responses need to be specifically tailored to each problem. Of course, certain types of responses may be applicable to multiple problems. Law Enforcement Responses The first set of potential responses to problems involve law enforcement. Police can do a number of things to combat problems, many of which could be considered “normal police operations”. One thing the police can do to respond to problems is simply increase their presence. Many problems the police are expected to deal with are highly concentrated in space and time. If scanning and analysis suggests this is the case, the police can simply place more officers at the places and times that problems are occurring. When focused on micro spatial and temporal crime concentrations, this tactic is known as hot spots policing. Hot spots policing research dates back to at least the mid-1990s, and has been repeatedly shown to be effective for reducing calls for service or crime incidents. The drawback is that police resources are often limited and CPD may not have officers to just place at a problem location. Academic researchers have also shown that impact police presence starts to wear off over time. What police officers actually do in crime hot spots depends on the type of problem they are encountering. Sometimes, merely being present in a hot spot is enough, either by driving around in a patrol car or walking around on foot. In other instances, police may want to engage in specific practices that directly address the problems in that hot spot. It is important to first understand what those problems are before choosing an action, as some approaches will be more successful than others. Not only do problems concentrate in space and time, but they also tend to stem from a small group of people. Research suggests that roughly 6% of people commit almost 50% of all crime, with less than 1% of people in a neighborhood committing most violent crime. So, it also makes sense to concentrate police efforts on those individuals who are causing the most harm to communities. Focused deterrence initiatives (also sometimes called pulling levers policing initiatives, like the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence) are problem-oriented strategies that concentrate on prolific offenders. In Cincinnati, this approach previously has been successfully implemented to reduce group and gang related gun violence. In these strategies, intelligence is collected and analyzed to identify which groups and gangs are perpetrating the most violence. Law enforcement then informs those groups and gangs that they must stop the violence or be subject to a concentrated police effort. This is but one example of a way to concentrate resources on specific problems, in this case, problem offenders. Considering Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy Most importantly, CPOP teams must keep in mind the importance of police legitimacy when selecting law enforcement responses to problems. Some law enforcement responses can negatively impact police-community relations. Though it may be tempting to implement certain approaches for short-term crime reductions, it is important to not choose responses that cause more harm than Page 26 of 56 good. Issues such as over-policing, excessive use of force, and general mistrust in the police are important aspects to consider when selecting responses to a particular problem. For instance, initiatives like hot spots policing and focused deterrence, while potentially impactful in terms of problem reduction, may be perceived by the community as biased or increase negative police- community encounters. One way to mitigate this perception and to ensure a more equitable problem response is to engage the community in the Scanning, Analysis, and Response development for crime problems. Studies show that most people who live in high-crime communities are not themselves engaged in crime, but some community members also may not be engaged or know how to become engaged crime reduction strategies in their neighborhood. It is important to think about two elements here: (1) community policing and (2) procedural justice. Community policing is a philosophy that centers on bringing the community together with the police to create partnerships in order to address issues of public safety. This approach acknowledges the fact that the police need the help and support of the community to accomplish their goals. The primary objective of community policing is improvement in police-community relations, which in turn can help the two groups come together to solve crime problems. While there is no specific way to “do” community policing, it usually involves increasing community engagement (via community meetings, programs, forums, etc.) and problem solving (e.g., consulting with residents to identify possible crime problems). Procedural justice is a philosophy that puts the community first. Procedural justice emphasizes the importance of fair treatment of citizens by members of the criminal justice system, including the police, during citizen interactions. More procedural justice builds more legitimacy. Research shows when people are treated fairly and with respect, and when they have a say in how they are policed, they are (1) more likely to view the law as legitimate; (2) less likely to break the law; (3) more willing to accept and defer to police authority; (4) more willing to voluntarily cooperate with the police; and (5) more likely, as a community, to support the police. Taking all of the above points together, there are a number of law enforcement-specific responses that could be used to respond to problems. Again, it is important to remember that these responses should be evidence-based, problem specific, and involve the community members who are harmed by the problem itself. Initiatives like hot spot policing, focused deterrence, and other police-led programs can incorporate legitimacy and procedural justice to ensure that problems are dealt with effectively and equitably. That said, not all problems require a police-led response. Many problems can be dealt with by non-law enforcement groups, including community groups, business groups, and other government agencies. Partnering with Residents & Community Based Organizations Beyond the community’s role in scanning and analysis, the community always should be incorporated into response development. Responses will have a direct impact on the community, so community insight is invaluable. In some instances, community members and community groups can play a supporting role in responding to problems. In other cases, they may be the best persons to lead response. Partnering with community groups and leaders in problem response also allows stakeholders to have a say in how their communities are policed, thus improving Page 27 of 56 relations between them and the police. This is at least one of the reasons community members must be added to CPOP teams from the start of a project. Partnering with Local Businesses CPOP teams can also partner with local businesses to develop problem responses. This can be beneficial for a number of reasons. 1. Problems may stem from crime opportunities caused by certain businesses, be it inadvertently or intentionally. 2. Businesses may be the ones suffering from the problems being addressed. Because of this, businesses and business groups may be better suited to address and respond to the problems in the first place. For example, Cincinnati Neighborhood Business Districts are groups of businesses that partner together to fund improvements to their areas. These improvements may include things like changing traffic patterns or adding additional lighting. Drawing on Other Governmental Agencies Other government agencies can also be of use when developing problem responses. Agencies including Buildings and Inspections, Public Health, Public Services, and Jobs and Family Services, are specifically suited to address many of the issues we know contribute to problem creation. Other government workers, like the city attorney’s office or county prosecutor’s office, are another resource to consider. Identifying which city agencies may be most helpful to your specific problem should happen during the Analysis phase. In the response phase, you want to determine what role each of the agencies you previously identified will play in your response. Third-Party Policing Finally, it may be beneficial work with non-law enforcement entities to best address certain problems. In many cases these partnerships come naturally due to preexisting relationships, whereas in others it may stem from community groups, businesses, or government agencies participating on your CPOP team. In some instances, the city or CPD may need to use some level of accountability to hold individuals, businesses, or other groups accountable for responding to problems they are responsible for. The level of coercion required by police depends on the level of cooperation from the entity responsible for the problem. Table 1 below shows Herman Goldstein’s hierarchy of coercion, ranging from mere education to civil actions. Page 28 of 56 Table 1. Goldstein's Hierarchy of Coercion Least cooperative 1. Bringing a civil action 2. Mandated legislation 3. Charging fee for police services ↓ 4. Withdrawing police services 5. Public shaming 6. Creating new organization to assume ownership 7. Engaging another existing organization 8. Targeted confrontational requests 9. Straightforward informal request Most cooperative 10. Educational programs Another name for this type of response is Third-Party Policing, where police leverage legal levers over groups like landlords, bar owners, or business owners so that they take responsibility for crime prevention at their establishments. In some cases, you need only ask these entities to address the issues that are creating problems. In other cases, you must increase the amount of coercion to force cooperation. This can often require police to work directly with other government agencies responsible for civil code enforcement, which can be leveraged against business owners to ensure compliance. CPD does this often through its Code Enforcement Response Team (CERT) program. An informative example of the Third-Party Policing process can be demonstrated with problem bars. Rather than continually respond to calls for service at a single or group of problem bars, the police can instead ask the bar’s place manager to respond to the problem. If this does not work, the police might then bring in civil code enforcement and threaten to declare the bar a nuisance, which threatens the ability of that bar to stay open. Through this and other legal levers, the police coerce the third party (the bar owner) to take responsibly for crime prevention at their bar. Again, Cincinnati has a long history of using this tactic to address nuisance bars where violence occurs. A final note to keep in mind with respect to Third-Party Policing: as mentioned above, tactics like this need to be used only after considering the importance of legitimacy and procedural justice. When developing responses to problems, always err on the side of the least coercive method to ensure compliance, and only move up the ladder of coercion if the third-party refuses to cooperate and other responses are ineffective. Situational Crime Prevention To reiterate - it is important that when tailoring responses to problems that you keep in mind that police are not the only ones responsible for dealing with problems, nor are they always the best group to implement problem responses. In many cases, people and groups beyond the police may be better suited to address the people and places responsible for problem creation. In these cases, the police can still provide supportive assistance as it relates to their expertise in crime prevention and the frameworks discussed in the previous section that detail the importance of crime opportunities. Page 29 of 56 Every problem requires its own solution. However, that does not mean a CPOP team needs to start from scratch when thinking about how to block crime opportunities. In fact, based on the frameworks described in the Analysis section, researchers have created a list of techniques that law enforcement and non-law enforcement personnel alike can use to block crime opportunities. Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) bridges the gap between theory and practice by providing useful techniques to reduce different elements of crime opportunities. SCP consists of five general types of prevention measures, each of which contains five specific techniques. These measures and techniques are displayed in Table 2 below and described in detail in Appendix C. Table 2. Techniques of Situational Crime Prevention Reduce Reduce Remove Increase Effort Increase Risk Rewards Provocations Excuses Reduce Extend Target Harden Conceal Targets Frustrations and Set Rules Guardianship Stress Control Access to Assist Natural Remove Targets Avoid Disputes Post Instructions Facilities Surveillance Reduction Reduce Screen Exits Identify Property Emotional Alert Conscience Anonymity Arousal Utilize Place Neutralize Peer Assist Deflect Offenders Disrupt Markets Managers Pressure Compliance Control Strengthen Formal Discourage Control Drugs and Deny Benefits Tools/Weapons Surveillance Imitation Alcohol First, a single prevention effort may address multiple techniques or types of prevention. For example, implementing a locking system for a public housing complex to limit the number of non- residents is a form of target hardening, controlling access to facilities, deflecting offenders, reducing anonymity, reducing arousal or temptations, and assisting compliance (among possible others). While prevention efforts need not address multiple techniques or goals, it may be helpful to think of ways to obtain multiple goals with implemented tactics to provide more efficient solutions to crime problems. Second, it is important to note that while your CPOP team should think about how each of these techniques might help in your problem response, not all of these techniques are useful in every situation. That is, while some techniques might be highly useful for one type of problem, they may be relatively useless when addressing another type of problem. For example, if the problem you are addressing is speeding vehicles on residential streets, you would likely only need to use a few of these techniques rather than attempt to do all 25. The good news is you can often make a Page 30 of 56 meaningful crime reduction impact with only a few, or even one, of these techniques. Having a thorough knowledge of a problem and its characteristics well can help your CPOP team identify the best situational technique(s) for addressing a problem. Identifying Evidence-Based Responses It is important to remember at this point that any response your CPOP team comes up with should be specifically tailored to the problem. Sometimes that means coming up with creative solutions yourself, as a problem might be new or unique enough that it requires a fresh response. In other cases, however, a problem may be quite similar to those experienced previously in Cincinnati or elsewhere. For these situations, and even for situations where your CPOP team needs to craft its own response, there are a number of resources available detailing evidence-based responses to crime and disorder problems. Conducting a Google search or consulting with a local academic who can provide recommendations from research can be helpful. Appendix F has a list of outside sources that might be useful to you. Documenting and Implementing Your Response Once your CPOP team has decided what response will be implemented to address the problem, the next step is to document that response. It is important to thoroughly document all steps in the SARA process, including the Response steps, so that in the Assessment phase the response can be accurately evaluated to determine if it was successful. If a response is successful, this documentation also serves as a guide for future implementations of the problem response and if unsuccessful, can be used to figure out what went wrong. Occasionally, implementing evidence-based responses that have worked elsewhere will not work in Cincinnati. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but a well-documented response will allow for the detection of ineffective strategies and enable your CPOP team to pivot to a different response to the problem. Likewise, a well-documented response can provide the basis for identifying particularly successful strategies that can be implemented again in the future if the need ever arises. When documenting the response implementation, it is important to systematically log details about the timeline of the response (including start and end dates of the entire response, and specific dates and times of each response element that is implemented), the strategies involved in the response, who was involved in implementing these strategies, what exactly they did, and the specific locations where the strategies were implemented. This documenting and tracking can be completed in a number of ways, including through a Microsoft Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. There is an example tracking template in Appendix E. Progress Check-In In the Response step, the goal is to develop and implement a response to a problem and document your CPOP team’s progress. At this point in the SARA process, you should now have taken thoroughly researched problem from the Analysis phase and looked into potential responses and Page 31 of 56 partners for implementing that response. Further, you should have decided on a response, began to implement it, and be thoroughly documenting each implementation step in your response strategy. You should now have the answer to the following questions: What is the response for the problem going to be? Who are my community partners for this problem and what is their role in implementing the response plan? Finally, as response are implemented, what response actions have been taken, by who, and when? Page 32 of 56  ASSESSMENT Assessment Objectives Assessment is the fourth step in the SARA process. In the Assessment step, the goal is for the CPOP team to determines whether your responses have been effective at addressing the problem. During Assessment, the objectives are to: Use validated analytical tools to determine if the CPOP Team’s response plan has impacted the problem Use validated analytical tools to determine if the CPOP Team’s response plan has resulted in any displacement Document the full CPOP Project in CPD’s Problem Solving Tracking System if the problem has been reduced or eliminated Return to the Scanning, Analysis, or Response phases of the SARA process for adjustments if the problem has not been reduced or eliminated General Assessment Guidance There are many things to consider when assessing the problem-solving process to this point. Hopefully, the response led to a reduction or elimination of your CPOP team’s problem. However, that is not all your CPOP team needs to assess. Also check if the response has moved, or displaced, the problem to another area or time, or if it created new problems to deal with. Research shows that the likelihood of this happening is fairly low and that, typically, whenever crime is displaced it occurs at a lower rate than the initial problem the response was meant to address. However, knowing how much (if any) crime was displaced and where/when it was displaced to is necessary to determine if any follow up responses are needed. It is also important to keep in mind, and document where possible, how a response plan impacted police-community relation. Responses will not be perceived as being effective if they disproportionately impact some community members. The sections below detail different aspects of assessment, including types of evaluations, important considerations when trying to assess effectiveness, and what happens if a problem is resolved (or not resolved). Evaluating Success Process Evaluations As was mentioned in the Response chapter, before the Assessment stage it is important that your CPOP team keeps track of and thoroughly documents what it has done. This is typically called a “process evaluation”, whereby you systematically examine the steps taken throughout the entire problem-solving process. This could tell not only if your work reached its intended target, Page 33 of 56 but also whether your CPOP team moved through the SARA process correctly. All the information from the Scanning and Analysis phases should be included in process evaluations in order to contextualize the problem. Additionally, the exact nature of the response should be documented: who did what, how the response was implemented, when and where these groups conducted the responses, and why you picked that particular response. Process evaluations are important for several reasons. For one, if your CPOP team’s response worked to reduce the problem, you want to be sure to have documented exactly what you did. This allows others to copy what your CPOP team did if they are experiencing a similar problem, and it also helps if your problem eventually reoccurs. Process evaluations are equally important when responses do not work. In these instances, you want to be able to figure out if some portion of the process went wrong or was not implemented as intended. If so, then you only need to adjust that part of the process and then try again to see if the problem can be addressed effectively the next time. Impact Evaluations The second type of evaluation needed in the Assessment step involves estimating whether the response had the intended effect of reducing or eliminating the problem. These types of assessments are called impact (or outcome) evaluations. That is, they measure the impact the response had on the problem and whether the outcome measures (e.g., crime, disorder, 911 calls, community satisfaction, etc.) went up, down, or stayed the same. Impact evaluations are complemented by process evaluations. When you know the process of how the problem response was developed and how it was implemented, you can be more certain that the impact observed is real and not the outcome of some other factor. Establishing Goals and Outcome Measures To assess the effectiveness of your CPOP team’s response, you need to first determine what the goal is for your response and how you will measure your outcome. Different responses will have different definitions of success. For some, a reduction in crime incidents will be the goal. Others may place an emphasis on improvements in community perceptions of safety. You’ll also need to decide if your CPOP team will be happy with any reduction in the problem, or if it’s looking for a minimum reduction level, or a complete eradication of the problem before the response is considered a success. It is important to keep in mind that there are multiple aspects of problem responses that your CPOP team can assess to determine if the response was a success. Community satisfaction is overlooked when it comes to assessments of response effectiveness, but it is integral to maintaining healthy police-community relations. Responses that prioritize crime reduction to the detriment of the community experiencing the problem can end up doing more harm than good. Whenever possible, it is important to expand assessments of problem responses beyond simple measures of crime reductions. Page 34 of 56 The Technical Aspects of Conducting Assessments The sections below provide additional technical details of conducting a thorough problem assessment. It is important that the person conducting the problem assessment is well-versed in these technical details, but it recognized that other members of the CPOP team may not need this level of detail. All readers are encouraged to read the following sections, but their direct applicability may vary across audiences. For example, for CPD CPOP projects, it is expected that a crime analyst typically would be responsible for completing the problem assessment. Units of Analysis “Units of analysis” is a research term used to describe the level of focus of an assessment. To complete an assessment, a unit of analysis must be chosen. Units of analysis are typically people or places. For example, if you are assessing community satisfaction to your response and you hand out surveys to community members, your unit of analysis will be individual people. However, if you are interested in determining if your response reduced crime in particular neighborhoods, then your units of analysis are neighborhoods. You will almost always want to define a clear geographic boundary for your problem to serve as the unit of analysis. Collecting D