April 7, 2025. Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes, News, Oxfordshire

A deep dive into Hotspots Policing: Thames Valley’s Latest Findings

Welcome to our latest blog post, where we delve into the newest research from the Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership’s “What Works” series. This series is dedicated to evaluating interventions aimed at preventing violence and sharing the findings with our local and national partners. Today, we’re excited to present the combined findings from two ground-breaking randomised controlled trials on hotspots policing in the Thames Valley.

What is Hotspots Policing?

Hotspots policing is a strategy where police officers are deployed to small geographic areas with high concentrations of crime. The idea behind hotspots policing is that seeing a police officer patrolling, and protecting the area, acts as a deterrent to potential offenders. However, most of the evidence about this approach comes from high crime areas of US cities, and so it was not known how that would transfer to the Thames Valley, a region with much lower crime rates. Does it work in the Thames Valley, and how might it work best?

The Trials

Between 2021 and 2024, two trials were conducted to answer this question. Both trials used a mobile phone application to task officers to patrol designated hotspots, making the process more efficient and allowing for better oversight. The trials also tested the effectiveness of this novel approach to officer tasking.

Trial One

In the first trial, so that we could directly test how the best evidence from the US might work in the UK; small hexagonal hotspots, each about the size of seven football pitches, were identified. Officers from the Joint Operations Unit (JOU) were tasked to patrol these areas using the mobile app. The results were promising: there was a significant increase in patrol activity, but the reduction in crime was not statistically significant. This trial highlighted that while the mobile app was effective in directing patrols, the US methods for identifying hotspots might not be suitable for the Thames Valley, and our hotspots may have to be designed differently.

Trial Two

The second trial took a different approach by identifying larger, contiguous patrol areas that made sense geographically. Local officers were tasked to patrol these areas using the same mobile app. Despite the higher concentration of crime in these larger hotspots, there was no significant reduction in crime rates. This trial suggested that local officers might have been patrolling these areas regardless of the app’s instructions, and the larger areas might have been more challenging to patrol effectively.

Key Findings

What’s Next?

The research suggests that hotspots policing has potential but needs to be tailored to the local context. Future trials should focus on designing interventions that consider the unique geography and crime patterns of the Thames Valley. Additionally, improving officer training could enhance the effectiveness of hotspots policing. Due to lower rates of crime at place, it would be beneficial to conduct rigorous testing of in-depth problem solving approaches at high-crime places, as longer term approaches may work better in areas with lower rates of crime.

Conclusion

Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership have demonstrated that it is possible to conduct violence prevention research across a range of areas. These trials provide valuable insights into how hotspots policing can be adapted for different contexts, and have allowed the Thames Valley approach to delivering hotspots policing to be developed over time, as we learn from previous iterations.