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	Randomized Controlled Trial in Criminology	Propensity Weighting in Criminology
Field	Criminology	Criminology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1995	1983
Originator	Lawrence W. Sherman & David Weisburd	Paul R. Rosenbaum & Donald B. Rubin (propensity score); Robert Apel & Gary Sweeten (criminological adaptation)
Type	Experimental impact evaluation of justice interventions	Observational causal estimator for justice exposures
Seminal source	Sherman, L. W., & Weisburd, D. (1995). General deterrent effects of police patrol in crime hot spots: A randomized, controlled trial. Justice Quarterly, 12(4), 625–648.	Apel, R. J., & Sweeten, G. (2010). Propensity score matching in criminology and criminal justice. In A. R. Piquero & D. Weisburd (Eds.), Handbook of Quantitative Criminology (pp. 543–562). Springer.
Aliases	Criminological Field Experiment, Experimental Criminology Trial, Place-Based Randomized Trial, Justice RCT	IPTW for Justice Exposures, Inverse-Probability Weighting in Criminology, Propensity-Weighted Crime Effects, Observational Treatment-Effect Weighting
Related	4	4
Summary	A randomized controlled trial (RCT) in criminology evaluates a justice intervention — such as hot-spots policing, a deterrence message, or a reentry program — by randomly assigning units (places, people, or cases) to receive the intervention or to serve as controls. Because assignment is by chance, treatment and control groups are statistically equivalent at baseline, so any later difference in crime or reoffending can be attributed to the intervention rather than to selection. Sherman and Weisburd's 1995 Minneapolis hot-spots patrol experiment helped establish the design as the gold standard of experimental criminology.	Propensity weighting estimates the causal effect of a justice exposure — incarceration, gang membership, a program, or a sanction — from observational data when randomization was impossible. It models each unit's probability of receiving the exposure given measured confounders (the propensity score) and then weights units by the inverse of that probability, creating a pseudo-population in which the exposure is unrelated to those confounders. Rosenbaum and Rubin introduced the propensity score in 1983, and Apel and Sweeten adapted it for criminology, where ethical and practical barriers make experiments rare.