Police collect many kinds of data and are expected to analyze it for problem-solving. But there’s insufficient capacity to analyze all data. We show how police can apply large language models (LLMs) to unstructured data for problem-solving. We do this by applying LLMs to unstructured residents’ reports of homeless camping. LLMs are prompted to code resident concerns from 2021 to 2024 in Boulder, Colorado. A total of 10,286 reports were coded to identify 10 kind of problems. Substantial agreement between LLM coding was found (Cohen’s K = 0.67). Longer reports more frequently had concerns. 1

Mayhew and colleagues (1976) showed that opportunities for crime matter, sparking a revolution in crime theory, research, and prevention. But they could not resolve a conflict between subjective and objective interpretations of opportunity: does a crime opportunity depend on an offender perceiving it, or is it an objective fact of a situation? We reconcile these interpretations. Using a vehicle theft example, we illustrate the conflict and suggest that the subjective interpretation helps describe opportunity exploitation by offenders; only an objective interpretation can account for opportunity creation. We review 62 ideas elaborating crime opportunities. These ideas show that crime scientists embrace both opportunity exploitation and opportunity creation, which we call the Janus-faced opportunity perspective. It requires us to replace the offender view of opportunity with three alternative views: one subjective and two objective. Each has strengths and weaknesses. We conclude that the assumed conflict disappears when we realize that we use subjective explanations and objective explanations for different purposes.

Since the Chicago School, neighborhoods have been a staple in criminology research. However, some criminologists argue that there is no consensus on the definition of a neighborhood. This is important because if criminologists cannot agree on the theoretical concept of neighborhoods, they cannot synthesize neighborhood research across multiple studies. To test the “no consensus” assertion, we conducted a concept consensus review of all articles using the term “neighborhood” in the top 10 journals in criminology from 2010 to 2020. We found 310 articles where the term neighborhood was an important concept in the study. Of these articles, only 15 provided an explicit conceptual definition. An additional 6 articles provided ambiguous conceptual definitions. We probed the content of conceptual definitions and found they varied widely, often omitting essential elements. Finally, we examined the operational definitions used in the 310 studies and found 50 unique operationalizations of neighborhood. Therefore, we conclude that there is no consensus about the theoretical meaning of neighborhood in criminology. Criminologists should either reach a consensus about the meaning of neighborhood or abandon the concept and use newer alternatives.