*Tarah Hodgkinson, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffth University, Australia 176 Messines Ridge Road, Mount Gravatt, QLD 4122, Australia; t.hodgkinson@griffth.edu.au; Gregory Saville, AlterNation Consulting, Denver, CO, USA; Martin A. Andresen, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com THE DIFFUSION OF DETRIMENT: TRACKING DISPLACEMENT USING A CITY-WIDE MIXED METHODS APPROACH Tarah Hodgkinson* , Gregory Saville and Martin A. Andresen Crime reduction strategies are often faced with the criticism of crime displacement. Conversely, crim- inologists fnd that reductions in crime in one area have a ‘diffusion of benefts’ to surrounding areas. However, these fndings are limited due to a lack of extensive longitudinal data and quali- tative data that provide context. We examine a natural experiment in displacement: the removal of a convergence setting in which calls for service immediately declined. However, other areas emerged as problematic and, in some places, crime increased dramatically. Using a qualitatively informed trajectory analysis, we examine whether the removal of a convergence setting results in displacement across the entire city. We discuss the implications for opportunity theories and prevention strategies. Key Words: displacement, opportunity theory, trajectory analysis, mixed methods, Canada Introduction Crime reduction strategies, such as situational crime prevention ( Clarke 1995), are often faced with criticism that when crime is reduced in one location it will displace to another. Despite this possibility, the crime prevention literature has consistently demonstrated that reductions in crime in one area do not inevitably displace to an- other area. Rather, reviews show that a diffusion of benefts is more common such that areas surrounding the targeted prevention/reduction area also experience de- creases in criminal activity (Barr and Pease 1990; Eck 1993; Hesseling 1994). However, most evaluations of crime prevention/reduction initiatives suffer from methodological limitations, often at no fault of the evaluators, because of issues arising from time, money and other resources (Weisburd et al . 2006). After addressing these methodo- logical issues, particularly interviews with offenders, Weisburd et al . (2006) fnd no evi- dence for displacement but a diffusion of benefts. The primary limitation of this, in the context of the current study, is that displacement/diffusion is only investigated as happening ‘around the corner’ in the areas immediately surrounding the crime pre- vention/reduction initiative location. If crime is displaced further away it would not be identifed in this research. This is an important consideration because Weisburd et al . (2017) , using an agent-based model, found that crime displaced further away in the context of robbery. We take advantage of a natural experiment that restructured the physical space of a problem area through the removal of a convergence setting for offenders to examine displacement more broadly. In the summer of 2013, a fast food restaurant, responsible doi:10.1093/bjc/azz025 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL Page 1 of 21 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bjc/azz025/5475403 by Griffith University user on 23 April 2019