Public safety is a major concern of the government, and it is the responsibility of the state through the criminal justice system agencies to offer security to the citizens. Despite the effort to provide proper protection in all places, there are specific areas where the level of insecurity tends to be high, threatening the welfare of the people. In most cases, the police and other bodies inform the general public about crime-prone streets, especially in urban centers and cities where the menace is rampant. When such locations are identified, it becomes easier to prevent the rate of criminality and enhance civilians’ protection. Therefore, the concept of hot spot policing is crucial in crime replacement, and recognizing the affected areas makes law enforcement easy.
The term ‘Hot Spot’ refers to areas with high chances of crime occurrence in law enforcement. These regions are considered dangerous because of their level of criminal activities (Lab, 2020). These locations can include segments of the street, block faces, specific buildings, or given addresses. Similarly, the term ‘Hot Product’ denotes the commodities attractive to the offenders, thus influencing their act of crime to obtain them. Robbers usually focus their targets on the items because of their value and other features linked to them.
Generally, before robbers engage in criminality, they have to survey the surroundings, including the commodity. The routine theory argues that when a thief comes across the target product when there is no guardian, then crime takes place (Felson, 2017). In most cases, the offenders’ aims at items that have value, inertia, visibility, and accessibility are defined as VIVA (Felson, 2017). Criminals aim at stealing products that have value and are easily accessible as well as visible. Moreover, offenders have advanced features that determine the kind of items they steal. When targeting the product, they weigh whether it is Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable, and Disposable, terming it as CRAVED. The commodities that possess all the characteristics become the primary target for the criminals.
Some of the products that contain the VIVA and CRAVED features include phones, parts of vehicles, cash, liquor, and cassettes. For example, cash is valuable and enjoyable, making it the main target for robbers. Furthermore, money cannot be identified due to its homogeneity, making it suitable to be stolen (Chernoff, 2020). Similarly, parts of the vehicles have value and can be removed, thus, they become a possible target as when they are sold in the market, offenders obtain more money since there are people who require them.
The practice of hot spot policing is effective in helping the authorities to map the most affected areas, hence deploying more security to avert potential criminality. Upon mapping the regions that are likely to experience crime activities, police departments can channel their resources to help restore and prevent muggings. Furthermore, establishing their stations or using technology such as CCTVs to provide guardians makes it difficult for the robbers to access the items, hence lowering the rate of criminality.
In conclusion, identifying affected areas in the community makes it easier for law enforcement officers to apply the hot spot policing approach to reduce the crime rate. Items that have value are removable, accessible, enjoyable, concealable, and disposable and become the target of thugs, increasing the likelihood of theft. Mapping locations with a high rate of criminality allows the police to deploy their resources to prevent and reduce wrongdoing.
References
Chernoff, W. A. (2020). Property of Fayard Hall: A pilot study on situational theft prevention on the university campus.Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 22(1), 33-48. Web.
Felson, M. (2017). Routine activity and rational choice: Advances in criminological theory. Web.
Lab, S. P. (2020). Crime prevention: Approaches, practices, and evaluations. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.