The goal of this study was to systematically review the extent to which geographically focused policing initiatives appear to displace crime (simply relocate it to other places) or diffuse benefits (lead to reductions elsewhere).
Evaluation research which assessed whether such schemes may have led to displacement or diffusion of benefit to nearby areas was identified, obtained, and coded. Research reports were assessed in terms of their methodological rigor and the quantitative estimates of outcomes collected. A hierarchy for estimates of displacement was established. For 16 studies, meta-analysis was used to produce a collection of results that had two sets of outcome information in terms of effect sizes (the success of the intervention and the extent to which it may have caused displacement or diffusion). The results demonstrate that in the case of geographically focused police efforts, displacement is far from inevitable, and in fact, on balance, that the opposite, a diffusion of crime control benefits, appears to be the more likely outcome. This in turn demonstrates that such endeavors on average have an overall reductive impact on crime. (Published abstract provided)