Police practitioners and academics alike have heralded hot spots policing as evidence-based practice. It has encountered few hurdles in its path to widespread implementation in the United States. Examining the social construction of its diffusion, including the empirical, theoretical, social-political, technological, and media contexts that converged to promote its diffusion, reveals a partial, positively skewed image perpetuated among the public, scholars, and policymakers. Through a different lens, hot spots policing might have led to concerns about legitimacy, discussion of bias, and lack of public support. Instead, the infectious popularity of this reform may thus far have buffered it from critical consideration of the potentially disproportionate impact of hot spots policing on disadvantaged community members and its consequences for police legitimacy—evidence that should be important to evidence-based practice. This article promotes a research agenda that extends beyond short term crime-reduction to investigate these important unstudied consequences.
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