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Studies of gang violence typically use police reports to investigate the structure of gang conflict, but overreliance on a singular data source could impede crime control efforts. Extending networked criminology, this study aims to explore what court records reveal about the directionality of gang conflicts.

Controlling for the presence of a civil gang injunction (CGI), the authors use multivariate quadratic assignment procedure regression models to disentangle factors thought to account for structural patterns of gang violence mapped from 933 prosecutions involving 307 gangs associated with violent conflict affecting the City of Los Angeles (1998–2013). Specifically, the authors compare competitive advantage to the explanatory power of turf proximity.

One measure of turf proximity outperforms all other explanatory factors – gangs with turf centrally positioned in a turf adjacency matrix are significantly more likely to launch attacks, be victimized and exhibit the highest levels of imbalance in their violent involvements. Regarding competitive advantage, the number of cliques and level of internal conflict are significant. Finally, being subject to a CGI is associated with initiating violence.

Court cases offer a feasible alternative to police data when investigating patterns of intergroup street gang violence.

The purpose of this paper is to show that despite the critical importance of using accurate data when identifying geographic patterns and studying hotspots, few have explored the data quality issues introduced by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software applications. While software manufacturers provide some information about the address matching process, critical details are left out or are buried in technical, and sometimes proprietary, jargon. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

The paper demonstrates, with three datasets of 100 cases each, how the assumptions built into popular GIS software produce systematically missing data during the data importing process commonly referred to as address matching.

Inclusion of directional indicators and zip codes are more important than previously thought. The results highlight the critical need to provide complete descriptions of research methodology. All geographic analyses must be accompanied with: information about the hit rate (percent of cases plotted), details about the software and process used to import tabular crime data, information about the software parameters set for the importation process (geocoding preferences), reference information about the street file used; and, an examination of the missing cases to identify some of the sampling error. When forecasting crime issues or identifying hot spots, analysts must be cognizant of the differential impact this bias will have on the generalizability of the results.

The paper explores previously neglected issues in data quality introduced by GIS software applications.

This paper aims to evaluate a problem‐oriented policing project that used regulatory policy to foster responsible place management among operators of nuisance motels located in Southern California.

A mixed‐methodological approach was used to ensure that a comprehensive assessment captured substantive outcomes, as well as implementation issues and displacement effects.

Each component of the initiative generated some success, with the greatest crime reduction achieved when all motels were in full compliance with the permit‐to‐operate ordinance. Consistency in key project staff was critical to maintaining program integrity.

The displacement analysis suggests that crime prevention evaluations would benefit from a facilities orientation that identifies locations that might host crime if the targeted sites are rendered inopportune. And, net effects can be applied to facilities research using standardized crime rates.

Ends‐based regulatory policy offers law enforcement an alternative to conventional crime control strategies. Responsibility for crime prevention can be shifted to place managers to reduce the incidents of crime and disorder (reported and unreported to police). Ancillary benefits include better city‐industry communication and more efficient use of city resources.

This research is valuable to police agencies considering the use of ordinances to address crime and disorder problems plaguing risky facilities.