Evaluation Report - Target Hardening (A Methodological Review) (From Link Between Crime and the Built Environment, Volume 2, P C176-C189, 1980, by Tetsuro Motoyama et al - See NCJ-79544)

• NCJ Number: 79556
• Author(s): H Rubenstein; T Motoyama; P Hartjens
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 14 pages
• Corporate Author: American Institutes for Research
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Available on microfiche from NCJRS as NCJ-79544.

Annotation

This review assesses an evaluation conducted by the Law and Justice Planning Office in Seattle, Wash., on the impact of a target hardening project in four public housing developments.

Abstract

All housing units in the four developments were hardened over the period July 1974 to May 1975. The evaluation tested the assumption that target hardening would reduce the burglary rate, force burglars to use more conspicuous modes of entry, and thus increase the probability that the burglar would be seen and more easily identified to the police. If this did occur, the evaluators expected an increase in the police clearance rate for burglaries through arrest. The evaluation of the treatment effects was based on comparisons of pre- and post-hardening crime rates for the hardened sites, adjacent nonpublic housing, and Seattle as a whole. The design is similar to a pre-post experimental design; however, because of the possible shifting of crime from the treatment sites to adjacent nonpublic housing, such sites cannot be considered control groups. Data were collected from the police department, the Seattle Housing Authority, and a series of victimization surveys conducted at the hardened sites and in nonpublic housing units located in the same census tracts as the experimental developments. The evaluation found significant decreases in burglaries in three of the four hardened sites, while there was no significant change at the fourth site. The increase in the proportion of burglaries cleared by police arrest was not significant. There is no indication that hardening resulted in a displacement to other crimes in the sites nor to burglary in adjacent developments. These conclusions, however, are based on a questionable analytic technique, the paired t-test. The data suggest an interaction between the hardening and month-to-month variation (seasonal trends) in burglary rates. Further, the design used does not permit the conclusion that no displacement occurred. Failure to account for differences in the number of possible units included in the adjacent sites and their size relative to the targeted sites obscured the displacement effect if any existed. For the original report, see NCJ-54145.