NCJ Number
72448
Journal
Training Key Issue: 291 Dated: (1980) Pages: complete issue
Date Published
1980
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This training key for police officers shows that analysis of crime-related information can serve a police department in three ways: to evaluate past performance of operational personnel, to identify current activity for tactical intervention, and to plan for long-term or strategic purposes.
Abstract
Crime analysis is a relatively new police discipline that is not yet standardized and must be fit to meet the individual needs of each department. The crime analysis process requires the active participation of all personnel at all levels of the department, with decisions made on the basis of an entire agency's experiences rather than on the isolated experience of individual personnel or units. Effective crime analysis requires teamwork and cooperation. The function of crime analysis is information, the primary source of which is the patrol officer through the reporting system. What officers encounter on the street, as reflected in field reports, is evaluated to deter or prevent further criminal occurrences. The formal process involves data collection, data collation into an organized format for analysis, analysis, report dissemination regarding the findings of crime analysis, and officer feedback and evaluation with regard to the information that has been analyzed and disseminated. The functions of analysis are to detect crime patterns, geographic crime patterns, similar offense patterns, and crime-suspect correlations; to forecast crimes so as to maximize preventive deployment of officers; and to allocate resources. Resource allocation and distribution deal with mode of patrol, number of officers assigned to each unit, location of each unit, case priority structure, number of units assigned to each case, and personnel scheduling. Typical performance measures of police resources allocation include workload imbalances, response time, frequency of preventive patrol, apprehension probability, nature of geographical area, population density and land use patterns, spatial and temporal distribution of calls-for-service, and service times. Questions and answers regarding the material are provided.