NCJ Number
191003
Journal
Criminal Justice: The International Journal of Policy and Practice Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2001 Pages: 83-103
Date Published
February 2001
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article presents a case study of crime mapping and crime analysis in one American police department.
Abstract
The analytic potential of crime analysis and crime mapping is great and could reorient policing to anticipatory and preventative actions, rather than to response to calls for service. Problem solving, when combined with crime analysis could re-engineer policing. Most police work is the response to calls for service turned into assignments for officers. Crime mapping had been in place barely a year in the Western City Police Department. There were three problematic areas revealed in this case study: the need for an infrastructure; easy distribution of information; and integrated databases. This suggested the limitations of ecology, distribution of information, infrastructure, database dissonance, and lack of skills. What was needed was useful and actionable information gathered and analyzed with a purpose. The kinds and amount of data that could be entered, given modern fast, high-capacity computers, was almost infinite, but time was not. This study suggested that the ways of technology were many, and the argument for an information-based policing, focusing on risk management, and enhancing security was both premature and flawed. The potential of crime analysis and crime as means, combining a technology and a technique, is greater than any other innovation in policing in recent times. This is because they raise questions about the basic contradictions in the mandate -- that policing can control crime, reduce the fear of crime, and yet be an almost entirely responsive, demand-driven, situational force dispensing order maintenance. 7 notes and 23 references