Crime on bus routes: an evaluation of a safer travel initiative

Abstract

This paper reports the main findings of an evaluation of an intensive four-week policing operation along a single bus corridor, aimed at reducing the extent of crime along the bus route. The evaluation, which adopts a mixture of quantitative evaluation techniques, demonstrates that the operation was successful both in increasing officer arrest rates (up to four times for the officers who worked on the scheme), and also in reducing crime levels for particular crime types, namely assault and theft from vehicle, up to 400m from the route. A conceptual discussion is provided as to how to measure the effectiveness of an operation with no geographically predefined action area and to define the relationship between action areas and displacement or diffusion zones. Consequently, this evaluation examines both the influence of the scheme within a predefined distance from the route, and also proposes a method for determining the likely range of influence of the scheme in terms of physical distance