Code Enforcement: Policing with a Light Footprint

Policing includes more than just law enforcement.  Crime reduction is a thinking game: how can the police succeed while also saving their own time and resources?   Hunter M. Boehme, an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina, joins the podcast to discuss what I call “less formal” methods for reducing crime.

Main Topics

• Soft power is still power.  Enforcing civil code violations can be used to reduce some violent crimes.
• Non-sworn policing personnel, or even city employees, can provide a light footprint to improve an area.
• While property crime was reduced at a statistically significant level, other violent crimes still declined.
• “Better” does not have to be statistically significant, it just has to be better.  

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The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the author and guests, and are not authorized by and do not necessarily reflect those of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services or the State of New York.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Or without their lawyers, the only way the mob is going to laundry money is in a loss of the money. This is one of the things about policing. There are a lot of tools that are not sexy for, but they have teeth and they can work to reduce crime and disorder. This is what the research evidence tells us about hotspot policing, for example. For two officers spending about 15 minutes on a hotspot or can have a significant impact on reducing violent crime. Another tough approach, and those are my words for, is the use of code enforcement or need to be police or other agencies to focus on the enforcement of three and county or municipal statutes in order to improve the quality of life. This is a problem-oriented approach to fix the physical environment for support this method for reducing crime in this order in the neighborhood. And this is what I call less formal methods of reducing crime. Joined the podcast to discuss a study he recently conducted titled for leveraging code enforcement units to reduce crime for a difference in difference analysis of a targeted crime prevention intervention. Thanks for joining the podcast, Dr.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Thank you for having me on, Scott.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Great. Now when I found your uh your article, then I took a look at your other research, and uh you seem to explore a variety of different topics in policing, such as women in policing, depolicing, uh, over policing, and police traffic stops. So why go down the road of code enforcement? Because it does seem to be a bit outside the policing world.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah, so uh probably three things here. Well, you know, while I still focus on those topics you mentioned, um I've always been and always had a special interest in crime in place and place-based interventions, as I feel like they're more easily carried out uh by police than you know, person-focused interventions. And then, you know, after the summer of 2020, you know, police, many agencies still to this day experience a persistent staffing crisis. So with this place-based intervention focus, I've kind of always had, I thought, what are ways in which police can use uh, you know, with limited resources, creative ways in reducing crime and maintaining public safety. So this has had me thinking a little bit outside of the box beyond you know, police patrol and you know your more common strategies that are used. And then finally, you know, the agency that I work closest with, this is a unique opportunity for me. They their code enforcement unit falls directly within the police agency, and that's the directive of the chief and the goals of the police agency. And based on my research, well, you know, this might some agents, some code enforcement units might fall under, you know, the directive of the police agency. Most do not. They fall under, you know, the city manager, the you know, the local city jurisdiction. So this has allowed this agency that I work closest with to have great latitude in how they leverage and use code enforcement units.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Okay, so that that naturally leads into the next question about you know relevance for policing across the country. How is this uh you know, idea of code enforcement uh going to be helpful for them?

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Yeah, I think that code enforcement can be used as, you know, saving thought of as saving police resources, you know, cost effectiveness, uh maybe taking some stress off of uh police and their duties, right? So you you mentioned soft policing, and I think that's spot on here. That there are some soft policing things that code enforcement units can do, such as uh enforcing the bounds and loads, a large number of city ordinances that I'm still unaware about, that I might be violating uh, you know, every day by not bringing in my trash within 24 hours of being those things that could be signs of disorder that can, you know, police might have to enforce, they can be fully handled or at least partially handled by code enforcement units. Um, similarly, if you know agencies don't have a direct code enforcement unit under their city or under their agency, there's some other similar, you know, public work nonprofits that do this kind of work that I think police can leverage and work with to maybe you know combat disorder and then downstream you know lower crime so that police can focus on, you know, writing reports, responding to calls for service, investigating crimes, and you know, patrolling uh their jurisdiction.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

So let's narrow our conversation to your your research. Now the paper focuses on the physical environment and it really doesn't address an individual's behavior. Oh, okay, so why is the physical environment so much more important to consider than the individual, or maybe this is a complementary approach.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Right. Um, you know, I think you for a full you know crime reduction strategy, you need to think about both people and places. But um, you know, the physical environment does impact individuals, right? And then second of all, it and it may just be my opinion, but I don't think I'm alone here, that I believe that places are much easier to control and track and maintain than individuals. Individuals tend to be more transient within city, cross-city, but the place stays the same, right? Uh the place doesn't move, and there are things you can do to tweak the physical environment, to reduce disorder, uh, reduce, you know, um, you know, potentially crime. So if an area shows, you know, physical environment looks dilapidated or not taken care of, then individuals may be more attracted to these areas, right? So alternatively, the other end there is if an area is taken care of, it signals to an individual or law, you know, both law-abiding citizens or potential offenders that not only um do the community residents care about this area, but potentially the police, the local government are taking care of this place. So, you know, you I think that governments, police agencies, and us as citizens can, you know, better handle places than people. And I think that allows more control by agencies.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah, I'm reminded of uh some jurisdictions that uh the boundary lines are are ignored by by top offenders or those kinds of people that will cross back and forth. So you you you're you're right. You you one jurisdiction can't really focus on the person too well because they only come into their area to cause trouble for a certain amount of time, then they go back home to the other location. So yeah, the the paper also uh uh it mentioned uh the the specific more uh more specifically the the strategies, the place-based strategies such as improving the lighting and improving the green spaces um that uh can help reduce crime. Can you explain this uh a bit more?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, I mean there's uh robot robust literature uh you know where experimental, quasi-experimental designs have assessed enhanced lighting um and lower crime. Similarly, there's also uh a robust body literature that looks at greening spaces, abating blight, fixing up vacant lots in lower crime. So this rests under you know the broken windows, the physical disorder of broken windows element, um, especially pertaining to physical disorder and cleaning up minor visual fuser disorders such as graffiti, quite literally broken windows, kicked indoors, vacant houses, spaces that are not taken care of, trim bushes, um, grass. This idea is that mitigating these signs of physical disorder will not attract more disorder. It will not attract more people. And then downstream, some of these people that might be attracted to disorder, you know, going into a vacant house and getting intoxicated, using drugs, might be there's some of these people doing this might then commit more serious crimes and bring more people to this area for negative reasons. And then similar, our understanding of people's routine activities, right? We tend to take the same uh paths to work, go to the same gym. We take these same paths to you know, routes to work, whatever it may be, bars, restaurants. Um, both law-abiding and motivated offenders take the same route, right? So eventually the offender will take notice of this lack of what we like to term, you know, guardianship, right? Is an area taken care of or not. So, you know, when there's low guardianship, you might be more attracted to say, like no one cares about this area. No, there's no guardians around, whether it's police or citizens that have eyes on the street. This is a fruitful time to commit crime. Alternatively, right, if there's guardianship and visual cues of guardianship, people might just keep walking down the street, no crime occurs.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Yeah, that's almost like part of the hotspot idea is uh, you know, there's a certain amount of guardianship, even if it's just for 15 minutes and they might go away. But then there's that idea that still the the police guardian component is we don't know where they are. They might have just gone around the corner, so that's why supposedly the impact lingers so so much longer. Uh another approach you mentioned in the uh in the paper regarding the physical environment is uh changing the design of that environment. Can you explain uh uh septed?

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Yeah, and all these are you know um kind of correlated. It's it's broken windows, it's routine activities, but you know, crime prevention through septe, crime prevention through environmental design started in the late 60s, early 70s with C. Ray Jeffrey, Oscar Newman, and this idea of defensible space. Um, and under that is there are you know tweaks you can do to the physical environment that may lower crime or show uh you know, Jeffrey threw out a lot of concepts like um natural surveillance, and this kind of falls under that increased lighting trim bushes. You're increasing what is termed this natural surveillance. This allows residents to see suspicious behavior, and this also signals to potential motivated offenders that they're more likely to be seen. Uh, similarly, installing fences, barriers to prevent you know, offenders from getting to and from places, it reduces opportunities for crime. That's this concept of natural control, landscaping, well-marked entrances. This is a private property. People are more likely, you know, this an area that challenges suspicious behavior, that's territoriality, right? So, you know, an example that happened locally, we opened uh, you know, redid our um local park, right? And previously the park did not have a fence around it. There was no sign of like this is where the park ends or begins. As part of this renovation, they added a fence, and there's only one or two entrances. And that's kind of these signs of territoriality that there's only one place to enter or two places to enter, one and that, you know, these changes to the physical environment can provide these protective signals or you know, deterrent signals to offenders that this is not a right place to commit crime.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yeah, I think I read something uh year years ago about uh how the the the lighting issue doesn't have to be very, very bright, but as long as you light the person up enough that they can see themselves. When they can see themselves, they think God and everybody can see them. So they then they have that guilty conscience and they move along with with any kind of lock, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

And it saves time and resources.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Time and resources, yeah. So if I'm lit up enough to see myself, I think everybody can see me and I'm moving on, and the cops don't have to show up and nobody makes a phone call. So let's let's jump into your study. Um you're looking at code enforcement. So where was it done and how did you get the data?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, so it's uh executed in Columbia, South Carolina, right next door at the you know, by the Columbia Police Department. That that's the agency that has you know the code enforcement unit directly under the police agency. We use we looked at violent crime, um shootings and part uh property crime like burglary theft, motor vehicle theft. We geocoded all the crime incidents that occurred before and after the intervention across the city that allowed us to look at displacement. That you know, I know we'll get to. Um uh so in the targeted areas, you know, um, this uh were historically high crime areas as selected by CPD. Um uh code enforcement started mowing grasses, they landscaped overgrown um vegetation, they abated abandoned buildings, uh, they helped seal doors. And this was a kind of a sticking point here because they I had a lot of um meetings with the code enforcement units both before and after this project. And I was like, what was the biggest thing here that y'all had to do, right? And they said, you know, mowing grass in the summer, we had to do it pretty consistently because it grows a lot here, especially in the heat and the rain. But it was these sealed doors. So they would seal these doors of these vacant houses, and then within two weeks it'd be kicked back in by somebody. And they would squat and they would live there. But, you know, for at least a week and a half there before it's kicked in again, it prevented these people, these outsiders, so to speak, from coming in. So that was their big mechanism here. I, you know, it was a whole, you know, we attribute this our significant findings to the whole multitude of this, but that's where they paid the most attention to was these seal sealing the doors and fixing up the uh broken windows. Um so that that was kind of the main you know intervention that they executed.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Right now, so okay, I have a follow-up question, but it relates to something you you had mentioned earlier regarding the code enforcement unit. Uh you mentioned this was within the law enforcement, the the policing itself, rather than uh as I've described it, like the yellow vehicle driving down the street that you know up here in the in in my part of the country, they they fix a pothole, or that you you may see them cut the easement uh over where the uh the power lines are. So this was within the police agency?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah, I mean that's a great point. So not only, you know, I know I mentioned that it's been within the police agency, but they also you know have the same emblem as the police agency. Their vehicles are white, just like their squad cars. They drive some trucks, they drive some SUVs, and on the side of them, they have you know the CPD emblem. So if you're not, you know, a criminologist or someone as interested in this as you know we are to your average, you know, uh citizen, they're just gonna think that it's a police officer. And, you know, so I do think there was an element of increased presence in the targeted areas that had to do with this these crime reductions beyond, you know, the sealing of the doors and the mowing of uh vacant houses. Um and the another element here that we didn't measure is when I met with uh code enforcement, I would say, you know, were any citizens coming up to you while you were doing this? And they said that there was some suspicion, not necessarily negative, but kind of like, wait, y'all haven't been here this whole time. What are you doing? And they there was some suspicion, which might not be a bad thing. The suspicion raises you know mental and visual cues in behavior. And then second of all, they even said that there's some people banking them to an extent of like, glad you're here. This there's you know, we're glad you're cleaning up this place. Now, the other end of that was like, we want you to be here all the time, then that's not feasible. But you know, they that was um, I think the presence and this perception that they might be police officers and might not, they're helping here might have also contributed, you know, public sentiment here.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

But again, even if you didn't measure it, just knowing that then you can, you know, uh potentially study it, A, other people can study it down the line, and B, it's the idea that, okay, these people are looking at you with uh uh giving you the side eye, but then they're showing up and they're talking to you, and then can you come come back? That I suspect that could relate to the idea of if uh the hotspot patrols were in those areas, the people would want to talk to the officers, and hey, can you come back? So I think I I see that as a as a is a positive sign. So okay. They boarded up buildings, they cut grass, they did all these kinds of things, and uh you know, so and and you're trying to reduce violent crime, burglaries, auto theft, those kinds of things. What did you find?

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So we found non-significant effects on violent crime and shootings, um, you know, robbery uh and shooting for training in a negative direction, but non-significant. But we found a very, very robust. We we execute a bunch of robustness checks, sensitivity tests, uh, robust, significant decrease in property crimes relative to the control areas. We we matched up some control areas based on similar demographics, historical crime, and we used those as control areas. So relative to these control areas uh across 90 days, they reduced 1.3 serious property crimes per month, which you know was totals roughly about four serious property crimes across the 90 days. Um yeah, so that was the main finding was this effect on total property crime. These are serious property crimes, burglary theft, motor vehicle theft that just you know did not happen.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

So it doesn't sound like a lot, but again, in the statistical world of of nerds, you know, 4.1 is statistically significant, which means that you found something. But you you didn't but this didn't relate to the the other violent crimes like shootings. Is that what you said? Correct. So you're finding a positive outcome of these in the area of what you might actually expect property crimes, but you're not finding it in the violent crimes. So okay, so it yeah it worked in one way, but it doesn't necessarily work in the other way.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

And you know, the good thing, you know, there was not a significant increase in violent crime. And you know, property cr violent crime is much more rare, you know, from a statistical sense, it's much harder to detect when we're only running this for 90 days. And although, you know, we it was targeted in a high crime area, you know, crime is still relatively rare, and you know, that we could attribute to that, but um, you know, we didn't see an increase in violent crime. So, you know, when I when I presented these results back to the agents, they they felt it was successful because these were four fewer property crimes, four fewer investigations that are needed to follow up, four fewer victims, households, and so forth, that you know, they didn't think their time was wasted here.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Okay, so was there any you had mentioned I I think you mentioned earlier displacement. So whatever was going on, this is one of the arguments for uh for hotspots or to against hotspots. If you're just gonna have a couple cops sitting at this intersection or on this street uh once or twice a day, it's just gonna push the guy down the street. Is did you find displacement with uh with this approach?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Um we tested specifically the significant effect, right, on on property crime, and we found no no displacement whatsoever. Um, if anything, there were signs of a diffusion of benefits where crime nearby might have actually decreased as well, but not to the level of you know significance here. Um and you know, about the displacement, I know that's always a concern amongst police aid police officers, but you know, we can rely on a hit uh you know a strong body of evidence that most studies do not find displacement at all. They either find null effects on displacement or they actually find uh diffusion of benefits, which I I've also find in other studies. So, you know, like we didn't test for it in this study, especially on violent crimes, since that was not significant. But you know, relying on a a a pretty strong body of empirical evidence, I would I would you know make the the informed assumption that it probably did not displace, you know, violent crime.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Right. Well, which is uh again good. If you if you're if you're seeing a program that it might not you said there was a trend down, but it wasn't statistically significant. So a lot of times a lot of times police agencies, and there was an article article written recently about you know maybe we're out maybe agencies don't really care about statistical significance, but if the trend's going down, the trend's going down. Right. That's a good thing. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um a couple of implications. Did you have too many two or three for implications for policy uh personnel, police leaders that they they could uh use from this uh this research?

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Absolutely Absolutely. I have you know several that come to mind here is you know uh police agencies can leverage not I mean, even if they don't have a code enforcement unit, they can leverage non foreign personnel, police cadets, things that can go out to the community and you know, abate blight. Disorder, you know, other community concerns to free up. You know, their officers, patrol officers, and, you know, patrolling, responding calls for service, uh, public works, other nonprofits can be leveraged here. Um, if you do have a code enforcement unit, you know, they can do several things for soft policing or light footprint policing, right? Like it, you know, as I mentioned, the the conversations with code enforcement and citizens, these are very, you know, light footprint. They had positive interactions while also reducing, you know, property crime that, you know, you know, disorder, fear of crime, also things we didn't measure, they can impact fear. Um, fear of friends are very uh you know top priority for many police agencies. Um, another example uh that I've I've learned with this code enforcement unit is you know a troublesome rental unit, right? Uh that that tends to be a problem at least here, but you know, some rental owners might not police their own rental unit very well. Well, code enforcement right. So they rent out to people they don't, uh they're very laissez-faire, they're very apathetic towards their property, they're just making money, so they don't, you know, care who they rent out to, and then next thing you know, these rental units become a huge burden for calls for service. Well, the code enforcement units can start, you know, uh assigning penalty points that if a certain number of calls for service happen at this location, you can assign penalty points and then you generate enough penalty points fines and restricting your rental license, you know, in the most extreme case. And you know, you're you they're kind of policing here without you know carrying a gun and being sworn. But at the end of the day, they're restrict they could restrict rental property units. And that's something I want to further explore because I know that can be done by code enforcement units. Um so yeah, I mean there's definitely sophisticated ways, and then you know, for those agencies that are experiencing a staffing crisis, just think of innovative ways that non-foreign agent you know personnel or you know, multi-agency collaborations and partnerships can be leveraged to reduce crime.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

So is there uh anything I didn't cover? Anything we missed that you uh wanted to mention about this?

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Uh I guess one more thing is, you know, and and we're doing this in another study with this agency, is you know, it can be coupled with multiple crime prevention strategies, right? So like code enforcement can abate blight while you can leverage the local power company to install brighter LED lights while also implementing hotspots, high visibility policing, where and these are all kind of light footprint. Officers are just going to the high crime micro location, turning on their lights, driving away, while code enforcement is cleaning up the broader neighborhood, and then you're installing lights and you're kind of coming at this from multiple directions. So I'd, you know, from another policy perspective is you know, have agencies get kind of creative and pull on a bunch of levers here to reduce crime and you know, a very light footprint kind of way.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yeah, that's that's the thing. It's the the the soft approach to the light footprint. Some people will will look at those things as well, it's not real police work, but the idea of police work is so diverse these days, it's almost like I have a c I have a friend that's a we shouldn't even call it law enforcement anymore because that's uh part of what they do, but it's not nearly as you know much as the other things that policing gets into to help uh improve society, reduce violence, and uh reduce crime.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Right. And you know, police wear a bunch of hats, so pull on a bunch of agencies to help with uh their mission.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yeah. Well, Hunter, this was great information. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Thank you for having me. Thank you for all this uh for running this podcast and everything you're doing for policing.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

I'm I'm trying to get this information out there to improve uh improve the profession, and I hope it uh hope it gets to into their ears. Thanks again, Hunter. Thank you. Have a great day. That's it for this episode of the Police in Service Training Podcast. I want to thank you, the listener, for spending your valuable time here. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe on Apple Podcast or wherever they get their podcasts. If we have any questions or comments, positive or negative four or something. Or you can find me on the