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160 Criminal Justice Policy Review <br /> patrols in the village when the Lion's Den opened, for example, the effect reported <br /> in Table 1 might be a spurious artifact of heightened surveillance. Criminologists <br /> acknowledge that heightened surveillance can exaggerate "victimless" crime rates; <br /> proactive enforcement against prostitution and drugs invariably leads to higher vice <br /> crime rates. However, proactive enforcement against"serious"crime does not produce <br /> higher rates of homicide, assault, and robbery. On the contrary, criminologists gen- <br /> erally agree that heightened surveillance reduces the rate of"serious" crime. <br /> The detailed incident reports do not support an instrumentation hypothesis. <br /> During the 881 days that the Lion's Den was open, crime in the village grew more <br /> "serious." Although five "Personal Crimes" were reported during the 761 days that <br /> the Lion's Den was closed versus three when it was open, none of the five incidents <br /> involved a weapon or resulted in an injury.When the Lion's Den was open, in contrast, <br /> two of the three"Personal Crimes"reported in the Village were armed robberies,one <br /> committed by a gang of four men wearing ski masks and armed with shotguns. <br /> Moreover, both armed robberies were committed at the site of the Lion's Den and <br /> were the only robberies recorded in the village's modern history. <br /> The timing of the crime incidents is related to their seriousness. During the 761 <br /> days that the Lion's Den was closed,Montrose's modal crime incidents were"drive-off' <br /> thefts from the village's gasoline station and vandalism at the Village's motel. Most <br /> of these incidents occurred during the day and required no immediate response from <br /> the Sheriff's Office; and because the businesses were separated from residences by <br /> 1-70, the modal incidents attracted little attention. On the other hand, during the 881 <br /> days that the Lion's Den was open, a majority of incidents occurred at night and <br /> demanded immediate action; as more incidents began to occur on the residential side <br /> of L70, crime became more noticeable to village residents. <br /> Discussion <br /> Following the opening of an adult business on an interstate highway off-ramp into <br /> a sparsely populated rural village, total crime in the village rose by approximately <br /> 60%. Two years later, when the business closed, total crime in the village dropped <br /> by approximately 60%. In light of the strong quasi-experimental design, artifactual <br /> explanations for this effect, including maturation, history, and instrumentation are <br /> implausible. The only plausible explanation for the effect reported in Table 1 is that, <br /> like adult businesses in urban and suburban settings, adult businesses in sparsely <br /> populated rural areas generate ambient crime-related secondary effects. <br /> This finding was not unexpected. Although criminological theories are based <br /> largely on data collected in urban and suburban areas, the routine activity theory of <br /> hotspots(Sherman et al., 1989)generalizes to rural settings. Put simply,adult businesses <br /> attract patrons from wide catchment areas.Because these patrons are disproportionately <br /> male, open to vice overtures, and reluctant to report victimizations, their presence <br /> 0 2008 SDAow lobid c afom n sh.t tAOs eesuelyn mIFeOrcRiNaA u sIRe V oINr uE noan u tor i2ze5d 2 d00sr <br /> ibution. <br />