Causal effect of spatiotemporal patterns of police stops on street thefts:A case study of the central business district of ZG City
As a formal supervisory force,police stops have a significant impact on the spatiotemporal distribution of crimes.However,existing research lacks sufficient discussion on the endogeneity issues between police stops and crimes,as well as an in-depth exploration of the spatiotemporal patterns and preventive effects of police stops in the central business districts(CBDs)of large cities.Therefore,this study took the CBD police station located in the core area of the CBD of ZG City,a big city in southern China,as an example,and used exact spatiotemporal big data of police stops and street thefts to analyze their spatiotemporal pattern characteristics.Then we applied the share-shift method to construct the Bartik's instrumental variable to analyze the causal effect of police stops on street thefts.This study found that:1)Police stops in the CBD showed an obvious hotspot clustering trend,and their spatiotemporal coverage mainly included sustained hotspots,continuously enhancing hotspots,historical hotspots,new hotspots,and dispersed hotspots,with varying spatiotemporal relationships between police stops and street thefts for different hotspot types.2)Endogeneity issues affect the assessment of the causal effect of police stops on crimes.After considering instrumental variables,we found that police stops in the CBD had a significant deterrent effect on the occurrence of street thefts,and for every one standard unit increase in the number of police stops in the previous week,the number of street thefts in the current week will drop by about 0.243 cases.This research focused on the quantitative study of the spatiotemporal relationship between daily police activities and criminal behaviors.The findings can serve as a scientific basis for refining the planning of police stops,enhancing patrol efficiency,and realizing the rational allocation of police resources.
police stopsstreet theftscausal effectinstrumental variablespatiotemporal patterncentral business district
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