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PIJPSM
36,4
670
Received 20 August 2012
Revised 27 December 2012
21 January 2013
Accepted 22 January 2013
Policing: An International Journal of
Police Strategies & Management
Vol. 36 No. 4, 2013
pp. 670-682
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1363-951X
DOI 10.1108/PIJPSM-01-2012-0081
Problem framing in problem
solving: a case study
Troy C. Payne
Justice Center, University of Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska, USA
Kathleen Gallagher and John E. Eck
School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and
James Frank
Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how initial frameworks for understanding police
problems influence how police analyze and address those problems in the context of problem-oriented
policing. The paper shows why researchers, and police, should pay more attention to problem theories.
Design/methodology/approach – Data for this case study were obtained from the Middletown,
Ohio Police Department, the Middletown housing authority, and the Butler County auditor. Frequency
tables and simple graphs were used to identify patterns in the calls for service. Discussions with police
officials were used to describe how police originally conceptualized the problem described.
Findings – The paper found that initial problem framing has a significant impact on the available
interventions and that problem solvers should be vigilant against errors of problem identification.
Research limitations/implications – Caution must be taken when generalizing from a single case
study. Nevertheless, more attention needs to be placed on problem identification and framing in
the problem-solving process.
Practical implications – Police problem solvers should be vigilant against errors in problem
identification, particularly when the original problem identification is broad or when interventions
based on the original problem frame do not produce the desired effect.
Originality/value – There are few studies that specifically examine the problem identification and
definition process. This paper adds to the literature on problem-oriented policing by examining
the critical yet understudied process of problem framing. It also adds to our knowledge of
place-specific analysis.
Keywords Problem solving, Police, Crime places, Housing choice vouchers,
Problem-oriented policing, Risky facilities
Paper type Case study
The starting point for any problem-oriented policing strategy is determining the
nature of the problem. The standard approach to problem solving is organized around
the SARA model – Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment (Spelman and Eck,
1987). The specification of the problem shapes subsequent stages of problem solving.
While the original SARA model incorporated feedback, SARA is often erroneously
used as a linear process. Recent descriptions of SARA reiterate the importance of
incorporating feedback from later stages of problem solving into the scanning stage
This research was supported by funding from the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services (2009-
RA-EOR-2221). The findings and recommendations expressed within this paper are from the
authors and do not necessarily represent the official positions of the Office of Criminal Justice
Services.
The authors wish to thank Barbara Armstrong for her comments on an earlier revision of this
paper.
(Clarke and Eck, 2005). Even so, the initial conceptualization of the problem is likely to Problem framing
continue to influence the outcome of the problem-solving process. Adding to the in problem
primacy of the initial conceptualization of a problem is the likelihood that the problem
may have been framed by interest groups – community groups, elected officials, solving
the press, and even senior police management – who brought the problem to police
attention in the first place (Eck and Clarke, 2003).
The difficulty of identifying problems is not unique to policing. Newell and Simon 671
(1972) separate problem solving into: understanding and search. They claim that
understanding is building a representation of the problem, or creating a problem space
or problem frame. Search is finding the solution. Several experiments suggest that
previous knowledge affects how a person builds a problem space, which affects the
boundaries of their search. In fact, “a lack of understanding leads to superficial answers
to problems as well as blindly following procedure” (Robertson, 2001, p. 54). Humans can
search for a more appropriate problem space when their initial understanding fails to
provide solutions (Kaplan and Simon, 1990). Such a search, however, can only occur when
there is recognition that the initial understanding is incorrect. Unfortunately, police may
not get clear signals that their initial understanding is wrong, or such signals come after
police have expended substantial time and effort, or after some dramatic and costly
failure makes the initial misunderstanding obvious.
While considerable attention has been placed on analyzing police problems,
developing useful responses, or evaluating whether particular solutions work, much
less attention has been placed on problem scanning and the way problems get defined
based on preexisting frameworks (Clarke and Eck, 2005). A careful examination of
Goldstein’s (1979, 1990) original works on problem-oriented policing, or of Eck and
Spelman’s (1987) application of it reveal little exploration of the difficulty of defining
problems. Clarke and Schultze (2005) provide guidance on how to research a problem
and include a section titled “Defining Your Problem.” However, Clarke and Schultze
(2005) assume the problem has already been identified and merely needs to be
searched for. Even Sparrow’s (2011) recent expansion of problem orientation tacitly
assumes, like its predecessors, that the true nature of the problem will be revealed by
analysis. The exception is Eck and Clarke (2003) who discuss at length how police
might frame problems prior to analysis.
How does this problem framing affect the subsequent understanding? This paper
begins to answer this question by contrasting how a police agency originally framed
a problem with an alternative problem frame based on crime science (Laycock, 2005).
In making this contrast, we demonstrate the value of explicit theory in police problem
framing. The purpose of this paper is not to show how the Middletown Police
Department solved a problem, or to demonstrate any particular analytical technique.
Rather, our purpose is to draw attention to a larger and virtually unrecognized issue in
police problem solving – the role of implicit theories, or frameworks, in defining and
analyzing problems.

First frame: the Section 8 problem

Middletown, Ohio, is a small Midwestern city located between Cincinnati and
Dayton with a population of 48,694 as of the 2010 US Census. The city covers almost
26 square miles with a population that is 83.3 percent Caucasian and 11.7 percent
African-American. There are over 15,000 residential addresses[1] in the city, including
1,349 residential addresses with tenants receiving Housing Choice Vouchers, often
disparagingly referred to as Section 8, after its location in the 1970s legislation
PIJPSM overhauling federal housing assistance. Almost 9 percent of the residential properties in
36,4 the city have tenants receiving vouchers.
Housing Choice Vouchers were created in the 1970s in part to address concerns
about concentrated disadvantage, crime, and public health problems at large
public housing projects. The nature of vouchers makes empirical assessment more
methodologically complicated, due to their dispersal throughout the community and
672 their portability. Recent research is mixed, with some finding that vouchers are
positively related to crime (Rephaun, 2009; Suresh and Vito, 2009) and others finding
that vouchers appear related to crime because landlords in low-crime neighborhoods
are less likely to accept vouchers than landlords in high-crime neighborhoods due to
market dynamics (Van Zandt and Mhatre, 2009; Ellen et al., 2011).
In the early 2000s the City of Middletown maintained a policy of proactively
acquiring federally subsidized Housing Choice Vouchers in order to fill vacant rental
units. As a result, the city now houses more than 50 percent of Housing Choice Voucher
holders in Butler County, but has only 5 percent of the total land area and 13 percent
of the population in 2010 (Middletown, Ohio City Resolution No. R2004-09, 2004;
US Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, 2010). The city also maintains its own
municipal public housing authority, just one of ten municipal public housing agencies
that does not operate as part of a county or greater metropolitan area agency in the
USA (Frank et al., 2010). In all, 19 percent of city residents live below the federal
poverty level, compared to 13 percent of Ohio residents living below the poverty level
(US Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, 2010). Although Middletown had
maintained a policy of encouraging growth of subsidized housing at the start of the
decade, economic concerns led the city to reevaluate that policy. Their reevaluation
included both the direct cost of administering the Housing Choice Voucher program on
behalf of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and indirect
costs such as police services.
During the past decade, the number of tenants with housing vouchers in the city has
more than doubled (Richter, 2009). Rental properties accepting Housing Choice
Vouchers are largely concentrated in the western and southern segments of the city,
with the greatest proportion of voucher recipients within or close to the downtown area
of the city. Few tenants with vouchers live in the eastern section of the city, which is
largely comprised of newer, higher value properties. Voucher recipients are constrained
in their choice of living quarters, because landlords can choose to accept or not accept
vouchers. This constrained choice is regularly noted in the larger literature on
subsidized housing (Van Zandt and Mhatre, 2009; Ellen et al., 2011).
In 2009, Middletown, Ohio police and city officials had identified Housing Choice
Voucher recipients as a “problem” due to increasing police calls for service at
subsidized housing throughout the city. Middletown’s diagnosis of the problem was
based on their reading of research linking public housing and crime rates. The police
sergeant tasked with addressing the “Section 8 Problem” combined the findings of this
general literature with anecdotal and impressionistic evidence he collected from
officers within the police department.
Middletown Police Department’s concerns about crime in subsidized housing stem
from their experiences on the ground and the historically criminogenic reputation of
public housing projects throughout the USA (Roncek, 1981; Roncek et al., 1981;
Dunworth and Saiger, 1994; but see Farley, 1982 for null findings; also see Mazerolle
and Terrill, 1997 for a problem-oriented approach to crime in public housing projects).
In addition to empirical support, a multitude of criminological theories could suggest
higher crime rates at subsidized housing, such as broken windows (Kelling and Wilson, Problem framing
1982), social disorganization (Shaw and McKay, 1942/1969), general strain theory in problem
(Agnew, 1992), defensible space ( Jacobs, 1961; Newman, 1972), routine activities
(Cohen and Felson, 1979), and offender search (Brantingham and Brantingham, 2003). solving
Defining the problem as “Section 8” suggested that the problem was synonymous
with poverty – the large number of Housing Choice Voucher recipients was the source
of the calls so the appropriate response was to deal with concentrations of vouchers 673
and the government agency that was responsible for the vouchers. The police
department first tried reducing calls for service with traditional approaches
(e.g. increased patrol) but was unsuccessful. The police also attempted to work with
the local housing authority to reduce the number of Housing Choice Voucher recipients
but were unsuccessful. Through these efforts, the police did determine that there was
confusion over who was providing background checks for Housing Choice Voucher
recipients. Based on the findings by the police, the city was then able to work with the
housing authority and landlords to ensure that Housing Choice Voucher recipients
were properly screened in the future. Yet this did not reduce call volume at existing
voucher recipient households.
Let us pause and consider the implicit framework that had guided the police efforts
so far. The “poverty causes crime” frame is widespread among the public, police, and
among criminologists. Social disorganization theories (Shaw and McKay, 1942/1969;
Kornhauser, 1978), for example, contain this frame. Common constructs used to test
social disorganization theory typically involve measures of socioeconomic status,
poverty or economic distress (see e.g. Sampson and Groves, 1989; Lowenkamp et al.,
2003; Sampson et al., 1997). Given this frame, it is a short step to imagine that a
government policy that seeks to increase Housing Choice Vouchers would increase the
number of economically distressed families in a city, and that this will lead to crime.
The natural response of police is to try to confront the crime directly by patrols, and
indirectly by working with the local housing authority to reduce Housing Choice
Voucher use.
Faced with evidence that their initial response was not working, the police
sergeant working on the problem did something extraordinary. He reached out to
academics (the authors) with whom he had no previous working relationship and
asked them to assist him with the problem. His expectations were not that these
academics would reframe the problem, but that they could reanalyze the problem, with
better data and analytical techniques, and reveal some heretofore hidden solution to
the Section 8 problem.

Second frame: a problem of place management

The sergeant reached out to these academics because they were running a larger
project, funded by the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, providing data analysis
to small- and mid-sized police agencies. The sergeant asked the authors to examine
calls for service at federally subsidized housing in 2009. We started the analysis of the
problem after discussing the problem framework with the sergeant. The authors were
not predisposed to think of the problem as one of poverty and vouchers. One important
reason was that two of the authors had already written about place management
(Eck, 1994) and the concentration of crimes among a few property owners (Payne and
Eck, 2007). So rather than looking at the characteristics of Housing Choice Voucher
recipients, criminality among recipients, or the way the local housing authority
allocated vouchers, we decided to look at which landlords had tenants with vouchers.
PIJPSM We used four sources of data from the city in our analysis. First, the Butler County
36,4 GIS department provided base map data regarding land parcels, city boundaries,
and streets. Second, the Butler County auditor provided ownership information for
each land parcel[2]. Third, the public housing authority provided addresses at which
Housing Choice Vouchers had been redeemed. Finally, the city police department
provided calls for service data from their computer-aided dispatch system.
674 The primary unit of analysis for our study was residential property, which is
defined by land parcel information in the auditor records[3].
The purpose of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services grant we were operating
under was to increase the analytical capacity of small- and mid-sized police
departments throughout Ohio. We therefore designed the analysis method to be simple,
easy to explain, and repeatable by the police department staff without further
assistance. We purposefully avoided relying on complex statistical methods that
require specialized software and a high degree of technical knowledge. Our analysis
focussed on simple maps, counts, and frequency distributions guided by experience
and theory. In doing so, we found that the police may have framed the problem in a way
that inhibited effective solutions.
We do not claim to have found the correct framework for understanding the
problem faced by Middletown. Rather, we show that the framework the police were
using impeded finding a practical solution and the alternative framework opened up
solution options that had not been previously considered. This case study gives a
concrete example of Goldstein’s (1990, p. 77) claim that careful analysis often requires
that police “rediagnose” the problem. Changing how a problem is framed requires
knowledge, creativity, and flexibility. Ohlsson (1992) suggests ways to reframe
problems: elaboration, where subjects notice features that were previously unnoticed;
re-encoding, where mistaken representations are corrected; and constraint relaxation,
where previous assumptions about the rules are changed. Our analysis of calls for
service in Middletown provided these elements to police while encouraging them to
seek practicable solutions to the reframed problem.

Redefining the problem through analysis

In Middletown there were 20,755 calls for service to the police at residential
properties[4] in 2009, comprising 38.38 percent of the total 57,764 calls for service in the
city. Table I shows calls for service at residential properties, average calls for service,
and a two-sample t-test for differences between the mean count of calls for service at
Housing Choice Voucher recipients vs non-subsidized residential properties[5].
As shown by Table I, properties receiving vouchers have a significantly higher rate
of calls for service than non-subsidized residential properties. The average number of
calls for service at subsidized properties is 1.65 calls higher than non-subsidized
properties. Moreover, while properties with Housing Choice Voucher holders comprise
8.9 percent of all residential addresses, 23.1 percent of residential calls for service
occurred at subsidized addresses.

Addresses % (No.) CFS % (No.) Average CFS SE t-value ( p-value)

Table I.
Residential addresses Subsidized 8.9 (1,349) 23.1 (4,806) 3.56 0.498 8.62 (0.0000)
and calls for service Non-subsidized 91.1 (13,826) 76.87 (15,969) 1.91 0.185
(CFS), 2009 All residential 100 (15,175) 100 (20,775) 1.99 0.482
 Higher average calls for service at subsidized properties supports the city’s Problem framing
contention that Housing Choice Voucher recipients were the problem. In short, so far in problem
the data analysis did not contradict the original problem frame that had structured the
initial efforts to deal with the problem. The original frame was not wrong, in the sense solving
of scientific falsification. However, it had not led to a useful solution. One reason has to
do with the original statistical frame: pay attention to the central tendency, what is
true on average. We framed the problem with regard to the distribution as a whole, and 675
ignored the central tendency. Examining the entire distribution is at the core of risky
facility analysis (Clarke and Eck, 2007), the next step in our analysis.
While subsidized properties are more likely to have calls for service than non-
subsidized properties on average, not all subsidized properties are equally at risk for
becoming problems. Figure 1 plots calls for service for Housing Choice Voucher
properties. The properties are ranked from those with the highest levels of calls for
service to the least (left to right). Panel A shows the 100 Housing Choice Voucher
properties with the most calls for service. Each bar represents one property. Panel B is
a similar bar chart showing the top 100 from Panel A as well as all other Housing
Choice Voucher properties. The forms of the distributions in Figure 1 are like those
typically found when examining levels of crime at places (Sherman et al., 1989; Eck
et al., 2007), including apartments (Payne, 2010).
It is clear from Figure 1 that an average would not describe the “typical” property
that accepts Housing Choice Vouchers. The typical Housing Choice Voucher property
had zero or one call for service in 2009. In total, 32 percent of subsidized properties had
zero calls for service; another 18 percent had one call for service. In fact, 77 percent
of Housing Choice Voucher properties had four or fewer calls for service in 2009.
Not shown in Figure 1 are non-subsidized properties. Over 57 percent of
non-subsidized residential property had zero calls for service; another 19 percent

(a) Panel A
100
Calls for service

80
60
40
20
0
1 20 40 60 80 100
Property rank

(b) Panel B
100
Calls for service

80
60
40
20
0
1 500 1,000 1,349
Property rank Figure 1.
Calls for service at each
Note: Panel A, top 100 Housing Choice Voucher properties; Panel B, all Housing property ranked for CFS
Choice Voucher properties
PIJPSM had one call for service. Nine out of ten (91 percent) of non-subsidized residential
36,4 properties had four or fewer calls for service in 2009.
Similar to Sherman et al. (1989), Spelman (1992), Eck et al. (2007) and Payne (2010),
we found that calls for service are highly concentrated at a relative handful of
properties. That is, most residential properties show no evidence of having recurring
problems regardless of Housing Choice Voucher status. Spelman (1992) found in
676 studying public places that the worst 10 percent of locations were responsible for 30
percent of the calls for service. In Middletown, just 1.1 percent of all residential
properties have 15 or more calls for service, but account for over 20 percent of the total
calls for service in the city. The 10 percent of properties (1,517 properties) with the
highest level of calls for service accounted for 62 percent of all residential calls to the
police for service (13,023 calls for service).
There are a number of reasons that crime can be concentrated at a few
places – target concentration, offender concentration, persistent lack of guardianship at
a few places, and other opportunity-related explanations. An important new theory
suggests that poor place management may be responsible (Eck, 1994; Madensen and
Eck, 2008). This theory is particularly important because property owners have some
control over target availability and offender access, as well as guardianship and other
opportunity producing characteristics at their places.
Following earlier work (Payne and Eck, 2007) we next evaluated whether the city
could further focus their interventions on particular landlords instead of properties or
tenants. Due to common management practices across their properties, a relative
handful of landlords can have an unusually large number of calls for service compared
to other landlords. The large call volumes of a few owners may simply be the
result of owning a large number of properties with a large number of dwelling units.
That is, the more dwelling units a property owner has, the greater the risk that calls for
service will originate from the properties. This would be true if crime were randomly
distributed.
Figure 2 plots the number of units owned on the horizontal axis, with the number of
calls for service on the vertical axis. The x’s in Figure 2 represent the 20 owners who
had the highest numbers of calls for service at all of their properties. The dots are the
other owners. Until the number of units exceeds 100, we find owners with both low and
high calls for service. Only at the extreme is the number of units a good explanation of
the number of calls.

300
Calls for service

200

100

Figure 2. 0
Calls for service at each 1 50 100 150
owner’s properties by
Number of Units Owned
number of dwelling
units owned Property owners
Property owners in the top 20 by calls for service
Just three owners out of the 12,630 residential property owners in the city own over Problem framing
100 dwelling units. All three of these owners are among the 20 residential owners with in problem
the highest number of calls for service in the city. As Figure 2 demonstrates, one
of these three owners of over 100 units has a level of calls for service that falls well solving
below the other two. For the remaining owners in the worst 20 there is also at least one
other owner with a similar number of properties, but with fewer calls for service.
Based on this distribution, it is not true that calls for service are simply the result of 677
number of dwelling units owned in Middletown – several owners hold dozens of units
with very few calls for service. While size matters at the extreme, it is far from a
complete explanation. Put another way, if we ignore the owners with the most units, we
would be unable to explain why a few owners with less than 100 units still have many
calls for service when most of their colleagues have few calls. For example, of the 17
owners who have more than 50 units, five had fewer than one call per unit; another four
had fewer than two calls per unit.
The Middletown Police Department used the new problem frame to refocus their
efforts on a few particularly troublesome places and owners. Our analysis allowed
for elaboration – the heavily skewed distribution of calls for service at residential
properties was previously unnoticed. This skewed distribution also allowed for
re-encoding by pointing out that only a relatively small proportion of the subsidized
housing was problematic, not all of it. Our recommendations also relaxed constraints.
Because crime was heavily concentrated among both places and owners, there was no
need to treat all places and all owners the same. The police department could easily
argue that a rational basis exists for treating high-crime properties and owners
differently from low-crime properties and owners, allowing for new intervention
possibilities.
Our analysis also provided a new intervention point – owners – that had previously
been overlooked. By reframing the problem to one of properties and owners, we gave
the police department considerable leverage in discussions with apartment owners.
Recalcitrant owners found it more difficult to deny responsibility when it was shown
how many of their colleagues’ properties never came to the attention of the police.
Given the small number of places where the police were able to intervene due to
budgetary constraints, a formal evaluation of the police department’s efforts would not
have enough statistical power to detect an effect. However, the police did perceive some
success with resolving problems using this approach. Property owners who chose to
work with the police gained more awareness of their rights and responsibilities in
dealing with crime on their properties. The police noted that some property owners
began to communicate more with the police so that they could jointly work on crime
and disorder problems. Further, although not every property owner targeted for
intervention wanted to work with the police, all property owners who were targeted
became aware of the fact that the police were monitoring activities on their properties.

Discussion and conclusion

In two recent articles, Weisburd and Neyroud (2011) and Sparrow (2011) offer
competing visions for how crime science should contribute to policing. There is much
discussion about the rigor of evaluation methods in these and other studies of problem
solving, but little discussion of how to determine what the problem to be solved is.
Sparrow does correctly note that evaluation can only come at the end of an intervention,
but appears to suggest that data speaks for itself. Our analysis demonstrates this is not
necessarily the case. A naı̈ve scanning of Middletown’s calls for service would have found
PIJPSM the same problem that Middletown’s anecdotal evidence showed: that Housing Choice
36,4 Voucher recipients were a “problem.” Put simply, we found that the data can tell multiple,
conflicting stories. Further, these perspectives can lead to multiple responses. We present
just two of those perspectives here, but that does not exhaust the list. For example, we
could have used a geographic perspective that may have framed the problem in a
different light. We also could have evaluated the impact of all calls for service on the
678 police department, not just residential calls. There are a variety of frames that could have
been applied to this problem. Here, we demonstrate the differences between two
perspectives that suggest two different problem stories.
This illustrates the importance of both explicit and implicit theory in data analysis.
The city defined the problem as Housing Choice Voucher recipients, based on anecdotal
evidence and an implicit theory that poor people are more likely to be criminogenic
than non-poor people: since Housing Choice Voucher recipients are poor, places with
vouchers would have more calls. While this is true on average, the average obscures
critical details. We found that: the vast majority of voucher recipients do not cause
problems for the police; ownership patterns may be key to understanding calls to the
police from residential properties; and a large proportion of owners are not problematic –
they are doing something right.
Our work in Middletown is a specific example of a common problem with how
humans engage in problem solving: framing the problem usefully. In our meetings
with city staff, we were repeatedly told that “subsidized housing is a problem.”
This common refrain is an example of defining a problem by the status of people
thought to be involved instead of examining the actions of people in particular contexts
(Eck and Clarke, 2003). Researchers, crime analysts, and policy makers should
always seek alternative definitions when initial solutions do not appear to work.
In Middletown, the police department sought our help precisely for this reason.
Initial meetings with police officers and command staff revealed an understandable
level of frustration. The city had previously made several attempts to solve the
“subsidized housing problem” with little effect because the problem frame was not
specific enough.
This paper’s purpose was to draw attention to essential, but often neglected, aspects
of police problem solving: problem scanning and problem framing. Inattention to
framing can limit the capability of police to address the problems. It is unlikely that
there ever will be a simple algorithm for finding the best frame. However, it is possible
to consider a few alternative frames when addressing a problem. Where do alternative
frames come from? A helpful technique is to seek the help of others. Getting fresh eyes
to look at the problem can help reveal alternative ways of framing the problem. In this
case study, the Middletown Police Department partnered with academic researchers.
But other partnerships are also possible. Another valuable resource for problem
solvers is the International Association of Crime Analysts e-mail distribution list[6].
We would like to offer more concrete practical advice to practitioners at this stage.
However, as problem framing has received very little attention, there is very little
specific advice we can give. Once researchers have examined this topic in greater
detail, we are optimistic that such advice will be available. In the meanwhile, research
should seek more concrete methods for identifying problem frames, including how to
train police problem solvers to identify productive frames. This will require more
comparisons among problem frames in a variety of contexts. A useful starting point
may be contrasts between crime problem frames based on standard criminology
theories and frames based on crime science.
Notes Problem framing
1. This number of addresses is derived from the land parcel records from the Butler County in problem
auditor data files and is not synonymous with population or households (i.e. several
households may live on the same parcel, as is the case with apartment buildings). solving
2. Our analysis includes places that exist inside of Middletown city limits and Butler County.
Middletown, Ohio is in Butler and Warren Counties, with 94.5 percent of the total 25,147 land
parcels existing in Butler County. We exclude Warren County from our analysis because: 679
no Housing Choice Vouchers were redeemed at land parcels in the Warren County area of
Middletown; and differences in the data provided by Butler and Warren counties made
integrating the two counties’ base data difficult. Most important for our analyses, street
layers and parcel layers for both counties have different creation and last edited dates, as well
as differences in street naming conventions.
3. Parcels that contained multiple dwelling units on one parcel, such as apartment buildings,
were aggregated to the shared street address of the parcel. We aggregated dwelling
unit-specific data to parcels for three reasons. First, we matched calls for service, Housing
Choice Voucher, and parcel/owner data by address. Ideally, we would attribute calls for
service to individual units. However, the common field between all data sources was
address. We lacked dwelling-unit level detail in some data sources. Second, even when
all data sets contained dwelling unit identifiers, the police calls for service, Housing Choice
Voucher, and parcel data often contained irreconcilable differences. For example,
police data may identify a property as 5 First Street, Rear, but such an address was not
present in the county parcel and GIS data, although 5 First Street, A and 5 First Street, B
were both listed as valid addresses. We were unable to systematically reconcile such
discrepancies among the data sources. Finally, crime prevention theory suggests focusing
education and enforcement efforts on both the tenants and the persons who control the
entire building: the landlord or owner. Landlords are the agents of social control for the entire
building. In routine activities terms, landlords are place managers (Eck, 1994). Landlords
generally do not have different policies and practices for different units within the same
building (Campbell, 2000).
4. “Residential property” was defined as a land parcel with apartment, mobile home,
commercial housing, or residential usage land use codes.
5. “Residential property” includes both owner-occupied and rental properties. We are unable to
distinguish between owner-occupied and renter-occupied properties in Middletown. There is
no comprehensive list of rental properties in the city. Ownership data did include a mailing
address, but examination of the data suggested this mailing address often pointed to the
mortgage holder or tax preparer and not the individual owner. Further complicating matters,
Housing Choice Vouchers were often redeemed at single-family residences in Middletown.
Data from the Housing Authority included an apartment or unit number for only 17 percent
of the Housing Choice Voucher recipients.
6. Available at: www.iaca.net, the International Association of Crime Analysts provides a wide
variety of resources including an active e-mail discussion list.

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682 About the authors
Dr Troy C. Payne is an Assistant Professor of Justice at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
He received his PhD in 2010 from the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati.
His research interests include place management, crime prevention, policing, and criminal
justice systems. Dr Troy C. Payne is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
tpayne9@uaa.alaska.edu
Kathleen Gallagher received her MS in Justice, Law, and Society from the American
University and is currently a Doctoral Student in the School of Criminal Justice at the University
of Cincinnati. Her current research interests include crime prevention, policing, and the role of
environmental criminology in practical police problem solving.
Dr John E. Eck is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati.
Professor Eck received his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1994, and a masters
degree in public policy from the University of Michigan in 1977. He has written extensively on
problem-oriented policing, crime mapping, drug markets, computer simulation of crime patterns,
and crime prevention.
Dr James Frank is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati.
Professor Frank obtained his PhD in 1993 from the School of Criminal Justice at the Michigan
State University. His primary research interests include understanding police behavior at the
street level, the formation of citizen attitudes toward the police, and the use of evolving
technology by patrol officers. He has published articles in Justice Quarterly, Police Quarterly,
Journal of Criminal Justice, Crime and Delinquency, and Policing: An International Journal of
Police Strategy and Management.

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