Israeli professor to receive international prize for research to cut crime

An Israeli researcher is to be awarded the 2010 Stockholm Prize in Criminology for a series of experiments he conducted that show that crimes depend not just on criminals, but on policing in key places. In his research, Prof. David Weisburd from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem encourages police around the world to concentrate crime prevention efforts at just five percent of all “hot spots” — street corners and addresses where over 50% of all urban crime occurs. Weisburd discovered that this approach yields far less total crime than conventional patrol patterns do. The research also shows that crime drops substantially in these hot spots without rising elsewhere. The prize jury noted that Weisburd, a professor of law and criminal justice at the university’s Institute of Criminology, is a leading criminologist helping to bridge the gap between criminology and police practice. His findings show that the application of research not only helps reduce crime, but also unnecessary impositions on public liberty from policing activities that do not address predictable crime risks. The Stockholm prize is awarded by the annual Stockholm Criminology Symposium, and will be presented to Weisburd in Stockholm in June next year.