Korte beschrijving

Policing is experiencing an evidence-based paradigm shift with a growing spatiotemporal focus. Existing evidence on policing strategies has repeatedly proven that police presence can effectively reduce reported crime if police resources are concentrated on the places that see high levels of crime concentration. The prevailing consensus in place-based policing (i.e., hot spots policing) suggests that police patrols should aim to be present for about fifteen minutes per patrol visit. This dissertation, however, challenges this consensus and shows that the optimal level of police dosage varies across different places and that substantially lower levels of police dosage can lead to effective crime reduction. The conducted interdisciplinary research relied on quantitative research methods and newly developed geodata algorithms to test the effects of police presence on reported crime rates. In order to map the geographies of everyday policing, large datasets on police vehicle movements (GPS data) and reported crime rates from a large Belgian police department were analysed. The results confirm the effectiveness of focusing police resources on crime hot spots and highlight the potential for algorithmic policing in order to match available police resources to the spatiotemporal patterns of local crime activity. Future avenues in police research are argued for in terms of including more socio-demographic and geographic data to better understand the impact of policing on societies. Such investigations can support a better understanding of the everyday routines of policing, optimize deployment of police resources, and help to shed more light on the blackbox of policing.