Hot Spots of Gun Violence in the Era of Focused Deterrence: A Space-Time Analysis of Shootings in South Philadelphia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear author(s), I enjoyed reading the paper as it includes all the required components, from a literature review, method descriptions, results and discussion. It adds significantly to criminological literature on gun violence, law enforcement and GIS analyses. All sections of the paper are well written and make a good logical read for a professional reader. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also included. Therefore, I suggest publishing the paper. The study is useful for the development of criminological/crime science research and for police practitioners as well as municipal policymakers.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1, Thank for reviewing the paper and suggesting that it be published. We appreciate your time on this! 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors investigated gun violence using publicly available open data for shootings in Philadelphia. The research period was connected to the Philadelphia Focused Deterrence Intervention. They researched the period before and after the intervention. They used Getis-Ord Gi*-based statistics and space-time cubes for emerging hot spot analyses.

1.We found the research questions on pages 3 line 138-139, please in the conclusion exactly refer to these questions with your answers and findings.

2. In Figure 2 we can see the decreasing trend of shootings, how can you support that the interventions caused a decreasing trend in shootings if any way, the trend is downwards?

3. Figure 4. is practically invisible. please create a better figure focusing on the area between Delaware Str. and Schuylkill Str.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you so much for reviewing our paper and noting areas where it can be improved. We have revised the paper according to your suggestions as follows:

1.Please in the conclusion  refer to the research questions with your answers and findings.

We have added a few sentences to the beginning of the Discussion section. It now reads:

"This study sought to examine the extent to which the spatiotemporal patterns of shootings changed during and after the implementation of Philadelphia Focused Deterrence in South Philadelphia. We asked: What patterns emerged? Did any hot spots significantly diminish? Were there any unexpected findings such as new hot spots? We hypothesized that the intervention would be associated diminishing hot spots over time and little movement of hotspots (i.e., new hot spots appearing in other locations). An emerging hot spot analysis technique was employed to identify space-time clusters and categorize changes in clusters to facilitate interpretation. The analysis considered a wide range of patterns that can potentially occur. Apart from a “no-pattern detected category,” the method used tests 16 possible categories—providing a nuanced assessment of both hot and cold changes—that could show positive movement representing fewer, less dense and less stable areas of gun violence, or negative outcomes with regard to gun violence, signifying stable, more, more dense areas, or potential displacement of gun violence."

2. In Figure 2 we can see the decreasing trend of shootings, how can you support that the interventions caused a decreasing trend in shootings if any way, the trend is downwards?

We did not intend to assert that the intervention was causally associated with the downward trend. We have edited the manuscript to make sure we are not using any terms to suggest causality. We have included this as a limitation as well. We also have clarified that the statistic revealing the downward trend may not appear to to represent the visual in Figure 2, and added these sentences in lines 348-352: "A look back at Figure 2 might provide insight into why this statistic did not reach statistical significance—the annual mean of shootings, which had been decreasing early on in the time series across all of South Philadelphia, began to increase midway through the time series (but never reached the high mean seen at the beginning in 2009 and 2010)."  

3. Figure 4. is practically invisible. please create a better figure focusing on the area between Delaware Str. and Schuylkill Str.

We have revised Figure 4 for clarity and also provided an additional figure that is a close up of the area that witnessed the changes.

Thank you again for these suggested changes.