Crime Statistics

This report evaluates the use of cameras to reduce car-related crimes in Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro) commuter parking facilities. Using a randomized controlled trial design, digital motion-activated cameras (akin to red light cameras) were installed at the exits of 25 Metro parking facilities, which were matched with 25 parking facilities serving as controls. Findings suggest that the cameras were not effective in reducing crime, and no evidence of displacement was found. Researchers concluded that cameras might have yielded their intended crime control impact if they had real-time surveillance capabilities and were fully employed for investigative purposes.

This report evaluates the use of cameras to reduce car-related crimes in Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro) commuter parking facilities. Using a randomized controlled trial design, digital motion-activated cameras (akin to red light cameras) were installed at the exits of 25 Metro parking facilities, which were matched with 25 parking facilities serving as controls. Findings suggest that the cameras were not effective in reducing crime, and no evidence of displacement was found. Researchers concluded that cameras might have yielded their intended crime control impact if they had real-time surveillance capabilities and were fully employed for investigative purposes.

This research evaluated the impact on crime of the closing, redevelopment, and subsequent reopening of three public housing developments in Milwaukee, Wis., and Washington, D.C., under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)'s HOPE VI initiative. We found a clear indication in all three sites that crime dropped at some point during redevelopment and we generally observed a diffusion of benefits from the redeveloped sites outward. The findings suggest that large-scale public housing redevelopment initiatives like HOPE VI can create a diffusion of benefits to nearby areas, which may also experience reductions in crime levels.

After the mid-1960s, theft rates in Washington, D.C., were higher and more volatile than rates for the nation as a whole. Since then, rates in Washington, D.C., have dropped but remained higher than the national level in 2009. Weekly theft counts increased significantly from 2005 to 2009 by approximately 25 percent. Thefts clustered in the central city areas, near business and retail activity. A hot spot was found in the Dupont Circle neighborhood in 2000, but by 2009, thefts clustered strongly in Columbia Heights. A drop in thefts in two central-city neighborhoods also raised questions about what caused those drops.

This brief looks at crime at the Census block level. Most crime is concentrated in a relatively small number of blocks in the District—in any given year, more than one-quarter of the crimes occur in just five percent of the blocks. The largest clusters of high crime blocks are found in the center of the city and on the eastern edge of the city, in the Third, Sixth, and Seventh Police Districts.

Over the past 50 years, nationwide rates of motor vehicle thefts rose slowly and steadily to a peak in 1990 and then declined to a low in 2009. Rates in Washington, D.C. were higher and more volatile, averaging three to four times the national rate for two decades. Recently, however, rates in D.C. dropped to their lowest level in 25 years. While the Sixth Police District (6D) had the highest rates and counts of motor vehicle theft over the study period, the Seventh Police District (7D) had the largest percentage increase. Hot spots in 6D were located along major thoroughfares.

This brief describes the steady decline in burglary in Washington, D.C., to levels below the national average. Washington, D.C.’s burglary rates were more volatile than the nationwide pattern, declining in the mid-1990s and stabilizing in the mid-2000s. Analyses by police district found that while most mirrored the citywide pattern of a decline across the period, burglaries in 7D increased significantly. Hot spots maps reveal the dissipation of one anomalous hotspot in the Second Police District as well as the increasing burglary rates in the Seventh Police District, highlighting the need for micro-level responses to local crime trends.

While the use official statistics to understand sexual offenses presents a number of challenges, an analysis of data from the last decade (2000—2009) in Washington, D.C. reveals some interesting patterns. A long-term downward trend in reports of forcible rape since 1960 stabilized in recent years. More recently (2000—2009), the number of sex abuse reports was volatile with no clear pattern of increase or decline. Police districts 6D and 7D accounted for a disproportionate share of the city’s sex abuse reports, a pattern that may have begun to change at the very end of the series, at least in 7D.