Getting the Best Out of Crime Analysis

• NCJ Number: 113843
• Author(s): P Ekblom
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 42 pages
• Corporate Author: Great Britain Home Office
• Publication Format: Document
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: Paper 10 in a series of papers from the Home Office Crime Prevention Unit.

Annotation

This paper sets crime analysis in the context of the crime prevention process and provides a step-by-step guide both to the collection of information on offending and the analysis of that information.

Abstract

Crime analysis is discussed as the second step in the crime prevention process, following the obtaining of information on the crime problem at issue. The other crime prevention steps are the devising of preventive strategies, implementation, and evaluation. An examination of the preparatory work for crime analysis first discusses the type of information usually collected and its quality and then addresses aspects of coding the information. Then the process of searching for crime patterns is described, including the operations used, such as mapping and cross-tabulation, and the way in which the operations can be linked in exploring the crime information and developing it into a simple and consistent picture. The paper briefly considers the interpretation and presentation of results and assumes that a computer will be used to store and analyze the crime data. 10 figures, 45 references.