LPRC - CrimeScience Episode 63 – Choice, Crime, and Evidence-Based Prevention featuring Dr. John Eck (University of Cincinnati) Part 1

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

Dr. John Eck, Professor at the University of Cincinnati, joins Dr. Read Hayes to give his perspective on Bounded Offender Rationality and Situational Choices, how and why crime is concentrated at specific places, place management, and much more in part one of our two-part discussion. The post CrimeScience Episode 63 – Choice, Crime, and Evidence-Based Prevention featuring Dr. John Eck (University of Cincinnati) Part 1 appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Be a leader in loss prevention by implementing integrated solutions that enhance safety, reduce shrink, and help to improve merchandising, operations, and customer service. operations, and customer service. Bosch Integrated Security and Communications Solutions spans zones one through four in the LPRC's zones of influence, while enriching the customer experience and delivering valuable data to help increase retail profitability. Learn more by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. So welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. Today I'm talking to Professor John Eck of the University of Cincinnati, and one of the probably most prolific, I would say environmental criminologists,

but have helped so many of us shape the way that we think about the world, how to use common sense, the logic part of the science-based effort, in addition to good evidence, and also a lot around practitioners, in particular law enforcement. So today, I thought, John, we would talk a little bit about what's of interest to you, but also might be interesting to our listeners. And it really is a good mix of academics of law enforcement practitioners and then loss prevention or asset protection practitioners. So I appreciate you coming on today with us. Thank you for inviting me. So the first thing is, you know,

we think a lot about choices and decisions that we as humans make and how that clearly shapes our behavior and maybe is shapeable by things that we might do to the environment or to opportunities that are out there. So I thought if you could, just a real quick primer on, you know, offender rationality and how it's founded, you know, situational choices, and just a little bit around why do we sort of think this way? And why is there so much evidence that supports this type of thinking when we're trying to prevent victimization, crime, and loss.

All right. Well, my interest in this area probably starts long before I've heard about it. As an undergraduate, I was sort of fishing around with a major in it, and I got intrigued by microeconomics. And by microeconomics. And in microeconomics, of course, rational behavior is sort of assumed, although it's interesting because I remember my first professor talking about rationality and going through this, and then, of course, he says, of course, none of this is true, right? You know, people aren't rational the way economists like to describe it, You know, people aren't rational the way economists like to describe it, but our models work, which was like completely blew my mind.

But I like that idea. So, I mean, if you really probe rationality and go back into the psychological literature, the whole idea sort of falls apart relatively quickly. What we think of as rational doesn't really exist in the real world, but it's not crazy random nonsense either. But I think that what my first economics professor said was spot on. It's not technically correct how people think, you know, in terms of rationality, but it's a good enough explanation to get something done. And so that's really how I approach it. If someone came to me tomorrow, neurobiologists, and we've got all this evidence that people think in this particular way, and it doesn't fit rationality. I'd say fine, I'm with that. My feeling is, as long as people make decisions that are reasonably consistent over time, and they make decisions based on some

kind of consistent criteria, that is good enough rationality for me. Another way of thinking about it, it's often called bounded rationality, that people have a certain amount of rationale and given their cognitive limits and the environment and a variety of things like that. So I don't want to use this as a very technical term that has deep scientific roots.

There's huge debates about this whole stuff, but it works. And that's, I think, the most important thing. And the flip side of it is when we think of people as irrational, sort of make arbitrary decisions on whims and totally unpredictable. That is of no use at all. We can't really do much with that information. So it's a good enough way of approximating things. And what I like about it is that it fits reasonably comfortably with some of the basic ideas of deterrence

without going to the extreme end that all we need to do is whack more people faster and harder and we'll reduce crime. The idea is that people can be deterred, but you have to look at very small micro level circumstances, because at the same time, people are also extremely clever, both offenders and non offenders. And so they, they can find ways of wheedling out of situations. And what is always reminds me of this in any large undergraduate class, there's always a couple students who no matter what you do, have somehow fiddled the system. And so they're clever. So that's basically my sort of relaxed view of things. I don't know if that answers the question, but it's not a hard and fast type of decision making. I think it's very helpful, John, and it's such a strong tradition of what you're talking about, in my opinion anyway, in environmental criminology and opportunity theory and that it just needs to be good enough to sort of make sense of it

and good enough to, based on that, devise simple, singular, or combined preventive or protective efforts. It gets to the heart of logic more than strict logic, I guess. And it's sort of like, does it work? Yes. And let's continue with it. Does it not work? Yeah. Okay, then let's try something different. And it also allows us to say in a particular circumstances, look, we're dealing with someone who is not all that rational, who cannot predict all that well under these other circumstances. So it tolerates things like

offender rehabilitation and other ways of preventing things. Although those are not areas I generally delve into, mostly for personal interests. I like the situational environmental approach a lot better. That's excellent. I think another area that's very helpful that you've put a lot of time and thought and effort into, and you and your students, those you've mentored, and we've talked about Tamara and others, but how and why crime events, attempts, victimization is somewhat concentrated. And it's concentrated at specific places for reasons. Again, going back to that good enough. So there are things about individuals and how we make our decisions, whether they appear rational or not.

But there's some calculus there. And we're taking in certain things on the environment outside of us to make sense of that or to make our choices. Can you talk a little bit about crime and concentration? Yeah. I mean, I think the concentration of crime is one of these areas which it's surprising that criminologists have not studied this for longer. I mean, now it's surprising that criminologists have not studied this for longer. I mean, now it's probably going on 20, 30 years with the place research, a little longer for repeat victimization, a little longer for offender. But it took a long time before criminologists started naturally thinking about things being highly concentrated, particularly

in very small spaces. And it just happens to be my fascination is with these places, particularly at the address level. It concentrates also at this like the street segment level, but that just doesn't happen to be something that excites me. So what I'm interested in is basically why a bunch of different stores that have similar characteristics, almost inevitably, you're going to find a couple of those stores having most of whatever crime you're looking at, violent theft, and most of them having little or none. And then a few scattered in between that. We've now looked at, I don't know how many different studies of different kinds of facilities, you know, convenience stores, apartment complexes, parking garages, bus stops, actually some more interesting stuff on churches and mosques. And no matter what you're looking at, it's always the same.

A few have most of the crime and most have very little or no crime. very little or no crime. And it really, the universality of this thing is remarkable. I can't find a single study that contradicts that, not a single one. If you have enough crimes to count and enough places to look at, you will always find crime concentration at particular places. So to me, the really interesting question is why? Why is this happening? And it goes into really two different directions. One direction is sort of like, that's just the way of the universe, because it turns out that everything in the universe literally is highly concentrated.

So the concentration of crime shouldn't be too surprising. It happens with earthquakes. It happens with landslides, happens in biology and cosmology. A few contribute to the most. I mean, speaking now at the time of COVID, and the research coming out suggests that at least until recently, a few high COVID events and places contribute to most of the COVID diagnosis. So one way of explaining this is to say, well, this is the way the world works, which is

sort of interesting, but it's not all that helpful. So what I tend to focus on is how places are run, who owns it, who operates it, and what are they doing that usually prevents crime, but occasionally we get people who own and operate places that are either not doing a good job, maybe they're ignorant, but for some reason allow a lot of crime to occur. And that, too, is an understudied area. A lot of research on offenders, a lot of research on victims, but very little on the behaviors and actions of owners and operators of places. People I call place managers. The landlord for an apartment building, the building superintendent, the bartender, and so forth. It's a nice tie-in. And being a son and grandson of physicians, John, I always enjoy and employ the medical analogies. And you mentioned sort of on the human behavior level with COVID-19.

We see these super spreader individuals that interact with super spreader events. They've got a lot of people that spread to. But then even looking at long COVID and these things where, okay, well, where's the blood going to transport, most likely pick up and transport the actual disease? And then, well, A2 receptors seem to be where the entry points are. Well, where are the most of those located? Well, that's the concentration, right? So like you say, it just right down to the molecular and sub-molecular level. Yeah, that's right. Everything is there. And that's our challenge. And that's really what I know myself and our team, we try

and work with the practitioners, primarily APLP, as well as law enforcement. And I know you do on, particularly on the law enforcement side, as well. But yeah, let's think about these things. Let's use evidence and data. Let's visualize this. And now let's concentrate what we do, where it's most needed, and so forth is that and going to your place manager uh your place management you know you've so we've got these clusters by address maybe segment or whatever hot spots the hot dots if you will talk a little bit more about place management and managers and the role they play because i i agree with you that's that's obviously what we're doing is trying to help them change their behavior

and get better at protecting action. Yeah. It's interesting that the whole business side of crime has sort of been marginalized by mainstream criminology, but I suspect that's where most of the action is. I suspect that's where most of the action is. Like so many things in my life, I blundered into this thing. I actually had a grant from the National Institute of Justice back in the 90s to study drug dealing locations

in San Diego. And I was also writing my dissertation on this topic, but based in the Washington DC area. So I'd fly out to San Diego several times a year and meet with the narcotics detectives who were looking at these things. And I would have all this data that my people on the ground and police department had collected and I was analyzing. So I'd get off the plane and call up one of the detectives and he'd meet me at the hotel. And so I was all excited about my ideas and I would spout out some cockamamie notion. And I remember on numerous occasions, I'd get this look like, okay, you think you're so smart. But then it would drive me to these locations and describe what's going on there. And it completely had nothing to do with my data.

It's like I couldn't explain this. And this happened repeatedly. repeatedly. Then from talking to these narcotics detectives and walking around with the patrol officers in these areas, this consistent theme came up. It's like an officer would point to an apartment building and said, that building is owned by a woman who's the wife of a border patrol agent, a woman who's the wife of a border patrol agent, has a lot of drug dealing in it. You know, she doesn't seem to know what she's doing here. You know, we've worked with her, but it's not working.

And another time I remember officers saying, yeah, we've tried to work with a landlord in this place, but we went into what was the equivalent of a Home Depot, some big box store for hardware and stuff. And he said he couldn't even get credit. And it sort of struck me that these officers and detectives had sort of honed in on something fundamental that the owner had a lot to do with how much crime there was, and not necessarily because they were bad people. The officers weren't accusing them of misbehavior usually. It was just they were strapped, they were inept. For whatever reason, things weren't going right. So when we analyzed the data we had, we found that even in your control for the same block, there were distinctive differences between places that had drug dealing and not drug dealing on the same block. and not drug dealing on the same block. And that's really where that origin of place management came from,

is the combination of this analyzing these data, but also with the insight of these cops. They didn't have a name for it. And I spent about a month trying to figure out what am I gonna call this thing? And that's how the name place management came about. And what intrigued me as soon as I started just pitching back these ideas to the police on these notions, they'd say, yeah, that makes sense. And then they would find more examples that fit. Then I'd give the same kind of explanation to people in criminology, with very few exceptions.

Most of them would sort of scratch their heads and couldn't figure out what the hell I was talking about. And that's when I knew I was onto something. The people who were actually facing these problems could understand how police management ruled their lives. But the people who were sort of more distant from it had difficulty with it. It's a topic which has actually received relatively little research. Most of the research has actually been experiments and quasi-experiments to find out whether intervening with place managers prevent crime works. As we've done several systematic reviews of that literature and consistently find that when place managers

actually change their behavior in high crime locations, they can reduce crime considerably. And there's anecdotal evidence, it's not something I would make a strong case for, but it's intriguing. I think if somebody who is very astute in business practices looked at the same places, they would find out that once they change, they're making better profits. Which makes me suspect, and I don't want to make too much of this, that the amount of crime in a place

is sort of an indicator of management capability. You know, amount of crime relative to comparable places. So the places at the extreme end have management practices that cause all sorts of other problems besides crime. No, it's excellent. You know, we've looked at, in addition to their maybe knowledge or expertise, what should they do? How should they do it? But how well do they do it? Of course. But some of it's the commitment and leadership above them. How much what's emphasized, you know, that the district manager comes through and is horrified to see old food in the break room and refrigerator. And now everybody's scrambling for a week on that. But so, yes, as you know, everything's multifactorial.

factorial, but at the end of the day, yes, the police management to us seems to be the key, and just now how do we help them know what to do and how best to do it, and then are there mechanisms to help ensure that they are doing it and doing it the right way? Yeah, I, you know, I teach in a criminal justice department, so our number of colleagues I have who deal with businesses is tiny. But I'm suspecting that actually a lot of the place management research should be taken over by people in business schools, because it's actually a business problem, not a criminal justice problem. And that greater emphasis should be put on these kind of issues. And the whole crime area should take on a greater importance in training people for running businesses of all scales,

as opposed to being sort of shunted aside. That makes a ton of sense. A ton of sense. Thank you for tuning into the first part of our episode with John Eck. Please check back next week for the rest of our discussion. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime Science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org.

The content provided in the Crime Science podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the LPS Prevention Research Council.