In recent years, crime scholars and practitioners have pointed to the potential benefits of focusing police crime prevention efforts on crime places. A number of studies suggest that there is significant clustering of crime in small places, or “hot spots”, that generate half of all criminal events. To be more effective in preventing crime, police should concentrate their resources on these high-activity crime places. This article reports the findings of a rigorous systematic review of the available empirical evidence on the effects of hot spots policing on crime. The extant evaluation research seems to provide fairly robust evidence that hot spots policing is an effective crime prevention strategy. The research also suggests that focusing police efforts on crime hot spots does not inevitably lead to crime displacement and crime control benefits may diffuse into the areas immediately surrounding the targeted locations.