Police observations of the durable and temporary spatial division of residential burglary

This paper seeks to explore police perception of the spatial distribution of residential burglary over different time periods. Using a survey of police department across three police basic command units (BCUs), it examines the accuracy of their impressions of the locations of crime over the preceding year and the preceding two weeks. It also explores how these perceptions might affect the deployment of resources and police action. The results suggest that at the same time as police have a good idea of where burglary occurred over the preceding year, they are less accurate for the recent distribution of risk because temporary hotspots are indeed significantly more unstable than durable hotspots. The temporary predictive power of both one-year and two-week retrospective observations is very limited. Tactical advantages will only be afforded by the swift and routine identification of emerging temporary hotspots.