Do Police Stations Really Deter Crime?

Many believe that the presence of a police station deters crime in the surrounding area. The source article tested this deterrence hypothesis and determined that when police stations were closed in a large metropolitan area, crime did not increase in the surrounding area (and numerous types of crime decreased). Some of these crime decreases may be a result of decreased crime reporting by the public when local police stations close, due to increased inconvenience, which suggests an easy to access online platform may assist in crime reporting if local police stations do close. This study suggests that a focus on other, more proven crime deterrence methods (e.g., hotspot policing) is more likely to reduce crime compared to a reliance on the simple presence of police stations in the area.