The Police Impact on Crime

Whether crime intelligence analysts are working to support police commanders or community activists, whenever the conversation turns to crime solutions the first question is usually, ‘What should the police do?’. It is therefore beholden on readers to have at least a basic understanding of the impact of commonly discussed strategies. It is beyond the scope of this book to document all of the research that has been conducted on crime prevention and reduction strategies. I will therefore restrict this section to the research most relevant to police commanders and analysts and, rather than bombard the reader with a daunting list of references, confine the literature reviewed to a number of key studies. We start with increasing police numbers and offender targeting strategies.