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38 J. Quantitative Criminology 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/jquantc38 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Quantitative Criminology (2022) 38:1-22 https://doi.org/10.1007/si0940-020-09481-7 ORIGINAL PAPER Does Hot Spots Policing Have Meaningful Impacts on Crime? Findings from An Alternative Approach to Estimating Effect Sizes from Place-Based Program Evaluations Anthony A. Braga' - David L. Weisburd'3 Accepted: 23 October 2020 / Published online: 4 November 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Objectives Prior meta analyses of hot spots policing show that the approach reduces crime, but report relatively small mean effect sizes based on Cohen's d. The natural logarithm of the relative incidence rate ratio (log RIRR) has been suggested as a more suitable effect size metric for place-based studies that report crime outcomes as count data. We calculate the log RIRR for hot spots policing studies to assess whether it changes interpretation of hot spots policing's impact on crime. Methods Cohen's d and log RIRR effect size metrics were calculated for 53 studies rep- resenting 60 tests of hot spots policing programs. Meta-analytic techniques were used to compare the estimated impacts of hot spots policing on crime and investigate the influence of moderating variables using the two differing effect size metrics. Results The Cohen's d meta-analysis revealed a small statistically significant mean effect size favoring hot spots policing in reducing crime outcomes at treatment places relative to control places (d=.12) of approximately 8.1%. In contrast, the log RIRR meta-analysis suggests that hot spots policing generated a more substantive 16% (d=.24) statistically sig- nificant crime reduction. The two metrics also produced differing rank orders in magni- tudes of effect for the same studies. Conclusion Cohen's d provides misleading results when used to calculate mean effect size in place based studies both in terms of the relative ranking of the magnitude of study out- comes, and in the interpretation of average impacts of interventions. Our analyses suggest a much more meaningful impact of hot spots policing on crime than previous reviews. Keywords Hot spots policing - Meta-analysis - Effect size - Cohen's d - Log RIRR E Anthony A. Braga a.braga@northeastern.edu School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, 204 Churchill Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA 2 Institute of Criminology, Hebrew University Law School, Jerusalem, Israel 3 Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA Springer

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