Why? Hot spot neighborhoods work as crime attractors: they draw offenders from surrounding neighborhoods. On the other hand key player neighborhoods function as crime dissipators: offenders are more likely to commit crimes elsewhere. Sociodemographic and built environment characteristics matter.

Is hot spot policing the most effective strategy to reduce crime? We show that re-targeting resources from some hot spots to neighborhoods with higher intercentrality produces more significant disruptions to property crime (but not to violent crime, which spreads less through the network).