Mathematicians suggest ways to deal with criminal hotspots
Mathematicians suggest that there are two kinds of crime hotspots: “supercritical” and “subcritical”; the mathematicians’ equations indicated that rigorous policing could completely eliminate the subcritical hotspots, but would simply displace the supercritical variety
The equations suggested there are two kinds of hotspot:
- The first, called “supercritical,” arises when small spikes in crime pass a certain threshold and create a local crime wave.
- The second, “subcritical,” happens when a particular factor — the presence of a drug den, for instance — causes a large spike in crime.
The equations also indicated that rigorous policing could completely eliminate the subcritical hotspots, but would simply displace the supercritical variety.
The approach “presents a novel hypothesis of how hotspots form”, says John Eck, a criminologist at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Brantingham hopes eventually to be able to predict where subcritical hotspots are forming, so police can step in to nip problems in the bud. His team is already collaborating with Los Angeles< police.
-read more in Martin B. Short et al., “Dissipation and Displacement of Hotspots in Reaction-Diffusion Models of Crime,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (5 January 2010) (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910921107)