This article describes CATCH--the Crime Analysis Tactical Clearing House--which supports law enforcement agencies in analyzing crime series and patterns.
Sponsored by the National Institute of Justice's Crime Mapping and Analysis Program (CMAP), CATCH has the threefold mission of providing technical assistance in addressing serial crime, storing serial-crime data, and making the data available for use in research and methodology development. The CATCH project evolved from a graduate student's thesis on next-event forecasting, which differs from geographic profiling. Whereas geographic profiling analyzes the locations of a series of crimes to determine where the offender most likely lives, next-event forecasting determines where previous crimes occurred and where they will most likely be repeated. CATCH staff uses a number of crime mapping and analysis software applications and techniques to show agencies how to analyze identified crime series so they can perform their own crime analysis in the future. CATCH also encourages agencies to have personnel take advanced CMAP training. An important part of CATCH is to impress on agencies the need to share information across agencies, since many serial offenders operate across jurisdictions. CATCH is now available to law enforcement agencies nationwide following its pilot testing in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona in 2005.