Why is all this maths important?
An introduction to the rationale behind our analytical approach
This post is the first in a short blog series designed to accompany the analyses, documentation and reproducible code developed as part of our Safer Streets project. While the technical outputs are aimed at transparency and reusability, this series provides a more accessible commentary on the why behind the what - why we’re doing what we’re doing, and why it matters for policing and crime prevention practice.
In policing, every decision has an opportunity cost. Whether it's about where to send officers, which partnerships to invest in, or which issues to prioritise, resources are always finite. That means doing one thing comes at the expense of not doing something else. So the key question becomes: how can we allocate time, attention, and resources to the places and problems where they will make the most difference?
A core part of the answer lies in understanding which problems are most frequent, most harmful, or have the greatest overall impact, and then targeting those problems with appropriate interventions. In other words: focus effort where it matters most.
This is the logic that underpins hotspot policing - a well-established approach that recognises crime tends to concentrate in certain places, often at specific times. The evidence shows that targeting these micro-locations with the right type of action can reduce crime without simply shifting it elsewhere. It’s a rare example of a policing strategy with strong and consistent empirical support.
That sad, much of the research behind hotspot policing is based on high volume violent and property crimes - types of offending that have seen substantial declines since the mid 1990s. These types of offences often exhibit clear spatial and temporal patterning and are well suited to mapping, analysis and ultimatley targetted intervention techniques.
Today’s policing priorities are somewhat different. Under the Safer Streets programme, forces are focused on issues like:
- Violence against women and girls (VAWG)
- Knife crime
- Anti-social behaviour (ASB)
These categories are complex, multi-faceted, and some may be underpinned by different dynamics than traditional property or violent crime.
These challenges raise important questions:
- Do these offences concentrate in the same way as burglary, car crime or other forms of violence?
- At what scale - street, neighbourhood, town - do patterns emerge?
- Are those patterns stable over time, or highly variable?
At present, the evidence base for these questions is limited. That’s why this project begins by returning to basics: descriptive analysis, guided by clear, reproducible methods, to explore how these priority crime types behave in space and time. This kind of foundational analysis is essential groundwork for any future efforts to reduce crime by targeting patterns effectively.
And just as importantly, we need to recognise that different crime problems require different responses, and those responses must be scaled appropriately. Some interventions work at the level of an individual facility, street, or hotspot. Others make more sense at the community or borough level. A mismatch between the scale of the problem and the scale of the solution risks wasting precious time and money.
So, why is all this maths important? Because when it comes to selecting and targetting crime prevention interventions at specific problems, doing the right thing, in the right place, at the right time starts with understanding what’s really happening - and that understanding begins with data.
In the next post, we’ll explore the different features of crime prevention interventions, from cost and scale to duration and speed of effect, and consider how these characteristics might be matched to the spatial and temporal patterns of offending. By doing so, we hope to better understand how to maximise the effectiveness of interventions in addressing the specific problems they’re designed to tackle.