A mature body of evidence exists on the utility of clinical versus statistical-prediction of criminal behavior. Less is known about the predictive validity of either model in terms of spatial distribution of crime. How accurately do experts—i.e. frontline-officers—predict which geographic areas to target with preventative tactics? Research on crime and place shows distinctively that incidents concentrate spatially within “recidivist” hotspots. Statistical predictions based on this spatial persistence characteristic of hot spots can serve as a comparator for the prediction capacity based on professional judgment. We turn to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, where we compared “Waymarkers,” maps drawn as a predictive tool for deployment purposes, against recidivist street segments based on statistical analyses. While statistical “hot spots” and “harmspots” accurately predict future incidents, Waymarkers are nearly always misplaced. Professional judgement inaccurately locates future spatial crime concentrations, and is more suited to identifying appropriate responses. We conclude that preventative policing ought to be based on statistical forecasting, rather than on professional judgment.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Police Service of Northern Ireland and in particular the information and communication service. We would particularly like to express our gratitude to Chris Noble, Maura Muldoon and Keavy Sharkey. We would also like to thank Lawrence Sherman, Heather Strang and Sir Denis O’Connor for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Elizabeth Macbeth is a Business Improvement Coordinator for the Police Service of Northern Ireland. She has worked in policing since 2003, primarily as a Crime Analyst, in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Barak Ariel is a lecturer in Experimental Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University and associate professor at Hebrew University.