Does Stop, Question and Frisk Reduce Crime?
Results from New Research
Principal Investigators:
Richard Rosenfeld, University of Missouri – St. Louis
Karen Terry, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
David Weisburd, George Mason University and the Hebrew University
Funding Agencies:
Open Society Foundations
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has received considerable public attention for its use of Stop, Question and Frisk (SQF). Proponents of the policing tactic claim it is responsible for much or all of New York’s crime decline. Few studies, however, have examined whether SQF reduces crime, and the existing research reaches conflicting conclusions. That research is limited in several ways, including by the use of geographic units of analysis that may be too large and heterogeneous to detect meaningful differences. New research remedies this problem and analyzes the impact on crime of monthly changes in SQF at the level of census tracts, block groups, and street segments. Results of this research are presented at the symposium, which builds on our September, 2011, conference on understanding the crime decline in New York City. The results shed light on a hotly debated issue that affects New Yorkers and the residents of other cities where similar policing strategies are used.
The conference was held on February 18, 2014. Here is the agenda and bios of the research team, discussants, and advisory board.
Research Team:
Richard Rosenfeld, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Principal Investigator
Karen Terry, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Co-Principal Investigator
David Weisburd, George Mason University and the Hebrew University, Co-Principal Investigator
Preeti Chauhan, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Research Associate
Robert Fornango, F1 Analytics
Brian Lawton, George Mason University
Sarit Weisburd, The University of Washington, Seattle
Alese Wooditch, George Mason University
Sue-Ming Yang, National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan
Advisory Board:
Eric Baumer, Florida State University
Robin Engel, University of Cincinnati
David Greenberg, New York University
Steven Messner, University at Albany, SUNY