ContextPrevious studies have reported that the number and distribution of trauma
centers are uneven across states, suggesting large differences in access to
trauma center care.ObjectiveTo estimate the proportion of US residents having access to trauma centers
within 45 and 60 minutes.Design and SettingCross-sectional study using data from 2 national databases as part of
the Trauma Resource Allocation Model for Ambulances and Hospitals (TRAMAH)
project. Trauma centers, base helipads, and block group population were counted
for all 50 states and the District of Columbia as of January 2005.Main Outcome MeasuresPercentages of national, regional, and state populations having access
to all 703 level I, II, and III trauma centers in the United States by either
ground ambulance or helicopter within 45 and 60 minutes.ResultsAn estimated 69.2% and 84.1% of all US residents had access to a level
I or II trauma center within 45 and 60 minutes, respectively. The 46.7 million
Americans who had no access within an hour lived mostly in rural areas, whereas
the 42.8 million Americans who had access to 20 or more level I or II trauma
centers within an hour lived mostly in urban areas. Within 45 and 60 minutes,
respectively, 26.7% and 27.7% of US residents had access to level I or II
trauma centers by helicopter only and 1.9% and 3.1% of US residents had access
to level I or II centers only from trauma centers or base helipads outside
their home states.ConclusionSelecting trauma centers based on geographic need, appropriately locating
medical helicopter bases, and establishing formal agreements for sharing trauma
care resources across states should be considered to improve access to trauma
care in the United States.

https://www.lifeflightmaine.org/Documents/EMS-and-Hospitals/Research/Access-to-Care/Access-to-Trauma-Centers-06_2005.aspx

Access to trauma centers in the United States.

Predictive policing is the use of analytical techniques to identify targets for police intervention with the goal of preventing crime, solving past crimes, or identifying potential offenders and victims. These tools are not a substitute for integrated approaches to policing, nor are they a crystal ball. This guide assesses some of the most promising technical tools and tactical approaches for acting on predictions in an effective way.

/pdf/predictive-policing-the-role-of-crime-forecasting-in-law-184zvfaw0n.pdf

Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations

refugee children, Watters’ book provides more generally significant insights into a wide array of issues relevant to contemporary refugees. Rather than concentrating on those who receive refugee status from host societies, Watters asserts “the focus of this book is not restricted to legal and administrative definitions of refugee children, but instead accords with what Zolberg has referred to as a ‘sociological’ definition ‘grounded in observable social realities’” (p. 2). In addition, Watters draws extensively from contemporary theorists of inequality, exclusion and domination—Michel Foucault, Aihwa Ong, Pierre Bourdieu, Homi Bhabha, Liisa Malkki among them—to create a refined appreciation of the ways that states and bureaucracies affect refugees’ understandings of themselves, their social position and their ability to act in their own interest. Refugee Children is based upon the analysis of refugees in several (mostly European) countries of settlement, including Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and especially the U.K., which according to the author is regarded by many stateless persons as the most desirable point of settlement. In addition, the book examines populations originating from and travelling through multiple world regions. Drawing from his own research as well as his reviews of journalistic and academic literature, Watters gives readers numerous first-hand accounts of the settings, interactions and assistance programs that refugee youth encounter. The author carefully attends to the origins of refugees, considering their history, religion and cultural background. Based on this, he questions both the assimilationist approach to refugee resettlement that would compel recent arrivals into the acceptance of host society practices in order to facilitate access to jobs and health care, as well as multicultural models that see refugees as inextricably immersed in the cultural and religious patterns of their country of origin, and as such, fundamentally unlike persons native to the host society. Championing neither, he regards both as paternalistic and potentially limiting to refugee children’s ability to make choices based upon their own outlooks, goals and understandings. In a like manner, Watters assesses models of resettlement in terms of their allocation of resources. He critiques both tight-fisted programs that fail to provide minimal levels of support as well as therapeutic regimes that assume all forced migrants to be deeply wounded and as such, in immediate need of culturally alien and sometimes unwanted rehabilitation. Despite its impressive scholarship, Refugee Children: Towards the Next Horizon is not simply an exercise in academic analysis. Rather, it offers valuable information with many practical examples drawn from successful programs devoted to refugee youth. If there is one downside to this book, it is that the volume is so rich in theories, examples, case studies, suggestions for practice and evaluations of the political and ethical implications of various approaches to working with young refugees, that readers may become overwhelmed. Its scholarly exuberance notwithstanding, Refugee Children: Towards the Next Horizon is a thought-provoking and sophisticated resource for scholars and practitioners interested in the experience of forced migrants in general and refugee youth in particular. The book does an impressive job of filling the conceptual, contextual and theoretical gaps that have, until recently, limited the breadth and quality of research on forced migrants.

Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse

Emergency medical services intervals and survival in trauma: assessment of the "golden hour" in a North American prospective cohort.

Thinking About Crime

The research presented here has two key objectives. The first is to apply risk terrain modeling (RTM) to forecast the crime of shootings. The risk terrain maps that were produced from RTM use a range of contextual information relevant to the opportunity structure of shootings to estimate risks of future shootings as they are distributed throughout a geography. The second objective was to test the predictive power of the risk terrain maps over two six‐month time periods, and to compare them against the predictive ability of retrospective hot spot maps. Results suggest that risk terrains provide a statistically significant forecast of future shootings across a range of cut points and are substantially more accurate than retrospective hot spot mapping. In addition, risk terrain maps produce information that can be operationalized by police administrators easily and efficiently, such as for directing police patrols to coalesced high‐risk areas.

Risk Terrain Modeling: Brokering Criminological Theory and GIS Methods for Crime Forecasting

A meta-analysis of prehospital care times for trauma.

The study reported here follows the suggestion by Caplan et al. (Justice Q, 2010) that risk terrain modeling (RTM) be developed by doing more work to elaborate, operationalize, and test variables that would provide added value to its application in police operations. Building on the ideas presented by Caplan et al., we address three important issues related to RTM that sets it apart from current approaches to spatial crime analysis. First, we address the selection criteria used in determining which risk layers to include in risk terrain models. Second, we compare the “best model” risk terrain derived from our analysis to the traditional hotspot density mapping technique by considering both the statistical power and overall usefulness of each approach. Third, we test for “risk clusters” in risk terrain maps to determine how they can be used to target police resources in a way that improves upon the current practice of using density maps of past crime in determining future locations of crime occurrence. This paper concludes with an in depth exploration of how one might develop strategies for incorporating risk terrains into police decision-making. RTM can be developed to the point where it may be more readily adopted by police crime analysts and enable police to be more effectively proactive and identify areas with the greatest probability of becoming locations for crime in the future. The targeting of police interventions that emerges would be based on a sound understanding of geographic attributes and qualities of space that connect to crime outcomes and would not be the result of identifying individuals from specific groups or characteristics of people as likely candidates for crime, a tactic that has led police agencies to be accused of profiling. In addition, place-based interventions may offer a more efficient method of impacting crime than efforts focused on individuals.

/pdf/risk-clusters-hotspots-and-spatial-intelligence-risk-terrain-3h4fkj53hs.pdf

Risk Clusters, Hotspots, and Spatial Intelligence: Risk Terrain Modeling as an Algorithm for Police Resource Allocation Strategies

We present a test of the crime-deterrent effect of police-monitored street-viewing CCTV cameras using viewsheds of areas that were visible by cameras via direct line-of-sight and that were digitized using easily replicable methods, Google Maps, and standard GIS tools. A quasi-experimental research design, using camera installation sites and randomly selected control sites, assessed the impact of CCTV on the crimes of shootings, auto thefts, and thefts from autos in Newark, NJ, for 13 months before and after camera installation dates. Strategically-placed cameras were not any different from randomly-placed cameras at deterring crime within their viewsheds; there were statistically significant reductions in auto thefts within viewsheds after camera installations; there were significant improvements to location quotient values for shootings and auto thefts after camera installations. There was no significant displacement and there was a small diffusion of benefits, which was greater for auto thefts than shootings. The system of cameras in Newark is not as efficient as it could be at deterring certain street crimes; some camera locations are significantly more effective than others. Results of a system-wide evaluation of CCTV cameras should not be the only basis for endorsing or contesting the use of CCTV cameras for crime control or prevention within a city. Future research should test whether the effectiveness of CCTV cameras are dependent upon the micro-level attributes of environments within which they are installed.

Police-monitored CCTV cameras in Newark, NJ: A quasi-experimental test of crime deterrence

Prior research has applied risk assessment and spatial analysis techniques to the study of violence. This paper builds on those results, tying the practical outcomes of spatial risk analysis methods to broader spatial issues on the articulation of risky places for aggravated assault. We begin by conceptualizing key relationships, addressing the effects of environmental factors on creating distinct, identifiable areas that are conducive to crime. Propositions of the theory of risky places are posed and then empirically tested using a GIS based program, RTMDx, on aggravated assault data in an urban area. Given the current thinking about crime vulnerability based on concentration and spatial influence of features and events, this paper offers an analytical strategy to model risky places that combines the conceptual insights of crime emergence and persistence, advances in geo-spatial analytical techniques, and micro-level data.

/pdf/vulnerability-and-exposure-to-crime-applying-risk-terrain-4r4y9l78gm.pdf

Joel M. Caplan

Papers

Risk Terrain Modeling: Brokering Criminological Theory and GIS Methods for Crime Forecasting

A meta-analysis of prehospital care times for trauma.

Risk Clusters, Hotspots, and Spatial Intelligence: Risk Terrain Modeling as an Algorithm for Police Resource Allocation Strategies

Police-monitored CCTV cameras in Newark, NJ: A quasi-experimental test of crime deterrence

Vulnerability and Exposure to Crime: Applying Risk Terrain Modeling to the Study of Assault in Chicago