Analyzing data in the field of criminal justice is important because it helps to identify trends that can be pertinent for officers and administration to know. Gathering and analyzing data can help officers find which problems need the most attention in which areas. Examples of such information include what types of crimes are being committed, what neighborhoods are experiencing the most criminal activity, what are the demographics of the offenders committing the crimes, what time of day are the most crimes committed, and how much has the crime activity changed over certain periods of time. “Having a strong foundation in research methods and data analysis techniques will help you to properly collect, analyze, and make sense of the data pertaining
to these types of questions.” (Blevins 2013) Knowing this type of information can help officers come to conclusions about how to best combat crimes. There are many different ways that law enforcement can analyze data. One of the best, in my opinion, is that they can develop crime maps, showing the rates of crimes in different geographical areas such as neighborhoods. “Current analytic tools and techniques like hot spots, data mining, crime mapping, geospatial prediction and social network analysis can be applied to a broad range of criminal justice problems.” (Pearsall, 2010) When officers take the time to analyze this type of information, they can physically see the problem on paper, and it becomes more real in a sense. For example, if officers gather data and analyze data about during what time of day most crimes are being committed, they will be able to put a strategy in place to best combat crimes during these times. If the neighborhood is having more burglaries during the early morning hours between 2 am and 5 am, they could make sure to patrol the area more frequently and in greater numbers during this time period.
The effective reduction of crime and quality of life abatement is of prime importance in the COMPSTAT model is and is one of the four core principles in the COMPSTAT paradigm. This essay will examine the impact that the implementation of COMPSTAT has had, specifically the process of Data-Driven Problem Identification and Assessment, and model it against the Newark Police Dept., New Jersey, USA. In doing so it will determine what changes in strategy, structure and operations have taken place as a result of the implementation process.
Crime data is a resource being used to help understand who the victims are, their age, race, what type of crime they have committed. The more information someone has about crime the more prepared they can be to deal with the victim, evaluate programs that help prevent crime. There are several official sources used UCR, NCVS, NIBRS that are used. There are pros and cons to each source and the following information will include some of the positive and some of the negatives points of each report. This is not inclusive by any means, there are many different various pros and cons of each report.
In chapter 3 of The Practice of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice there are four areas of focus. They are concepts, measurement operations, evaluation of measures, and levels of measurement. We are going to address conceptualization by using substance abuse and related ideas as examples. For measurement, let us review first how measures of substance abuse have been created, utilizing procedures as available data, questions, observations, and less direct and prominent measures. We will also explain how to assess the validity and reliability of these measures. Finally, the level of measurement reflected in unrelated measures is our last topic. Hopefully, at the end of this you will have a fine comprehension of measurement.
Because of budget constraints, the study only used one beat to collect data on the effects of increasing police patrol. Even though money was an issue, the experiment could have yielded better data by repeating the experiment multiple times to see if the data they collected would be reliable. The experiment also took place during the winter. The report of the study even noted that there was some evidence that crime activity levels declined, just as street activity does, because of colder weather. Although the design of the study contained weaknesses, some of the methods used by the researchers worked well for this type of study. One of the strengths of this experiment was the different methods used to acquire illegal guns in the beat. By using a variation of ways to seize illegal weapons in the “hot spot,” it allowed officers to increase their chances of finding more illegal guns. Using different methods of search also could have led to greater number of potential offenders to know that officers were looking for illegal weapons and refrained from offending. Another strength of the study includes the relatively inexpensive method to try to answer their hypothesis. Increasing police patrol is one of the more inexpensive methods and it did manage to decrease the number of gun crimes and homicide in the
The process of using behavioral evidence left at a crime scene to make inferences about the offender, including inferences about personality characteristics and psychopathology is called criminal profiling. Around the country, several agencies rely on the minds of criminal psychologists to lead them in the right direction to finding the correct offender. Criminal profiling provides investigators with knowledge of the appearance and behavior of a potential criminal.
Since the development of modern police forces in the 1820s, administrators have been on a constant search for better ways of solving crimes and preventing new crimes from being committed. With the advent of affordable desktop computers in the 1980s, the field of crime analysis emerged to track patterns, trends and series of criminal activity using maps and math. Today, the technology exists to make predictions on future criminal activity based on historical, geographical and sociological data in a variety of ways that are all referred to as predictive policing. The term “predictive policing” can be a bit intimidating at first, as it inspires haunting visions of people being arrested for crimes that they have not yet committed, much like the concept of “precrime” established in Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report. In reality, a basic predictive policing system is created by the combination of several methods of analysis that have ...
Computer hardware used by criminal analysts are similar to those that are used in other professions that depend on computers to help complete their work. Crime analysts use desktop computers to complete a majority of their work and use laptop computers for work in the field and also for presentations. In many cases police department’s crime analysis units have their own servers to house tabular data stream, geographic data, and software applications that are shared by users. An example of why computers are important to crime analysis, if the information about every location in which a crime has occurred is properly entered into a data...
Traditionally police departments in the United States and throughout the rest of the world have reacted to crime rather than using proactive practices to reduce crime. However, a new era of policing is beginning to dawn, the era of problem-oriented policing. According to Professor Herman Goldstein, problem-oriented policing is a policing strategy that involves the identification and analysis of specific crime and disorder problems in order to develop effective response strategies in conjunction with ongoing assessment. Police agencies throughout the world are beginning to focus on the underlying problems that cause criminal activity rather than just pursuing criminals who have already acted illegally. With that being said, there have been many challenges which have stalled the progress and implementation of problem-oriented policing. Some of these challenges include the lack of understanding of the problem-oriented policing method, lack of officer participation, lack of community involvement, time management problems, and the lack of interagency cooperation.
Crime Analysis has many benefits to the community. Community engagement, targeted initiatives, strategic use of resources, and data-driven decision-making contribute to decreasing crime. Crime prevention and community satisfaction with police services, while linked to the number of officers on the streets, does not depend entirely on the visibility of patrol officers. Community engagement, targeted initiatives, strategic use of resources, and data-driven decision-making contribute to decreasing crime. So in closing I believe that departments that take the positive elements of foot patrols and combine their efforts with crime analysis that focuses on the time, location, and type of crime, may use the findings to develop strategies to decrease crime and enhance the quality of life in their communities.
During my summer internship at the Charlotte- Mecklenburg Police Department, I was assigned to the Crime Analysis Division. As an intern in this division I was assigned a multitude of tasks that varied from day to day and I was responsible for completing them in a timely and accurate manner. Upon first arriving I was giving a long term project where I periodically updated and improved upon a PowerPoint slide show that contained all of the pictures of suspects in numerous fraud cases. This PowerPoint was sent out bi-weekly to the fraud detectives to assist them in connecting cases and identifying subjects. In addition to this project I was trained and educated in various programs that the CMPD utilizes. I spent a large amount of time on the department’s incident report database, KBCOPS where I read through cases and determined if they should be reexamined for UCR reclassification. This database was also useful for looking up incident reports in connection with other tasks I was assigned.
There has been a debate on whether the data from reported crime statistics is credible for many years. Researchers feel that data is contaminated by differences in law enforcement reporting practices, advancements in technology per agency, and changes in whether victims report or do not report crimes (Levitt, 1998). But still crime reports are still used when determining if current policing practices are effective.
Criminal Investigative Analysis is an investigative tool used by law enforcement officials to help determine the unknown offender of a specific crime, usually involving violent crimes. The purpose of Criminal Investigative Analysis is to create a profile containing characteristics of the offender who committed a certain crime. Law enforcement then uses this profile to help determine a possible suspect that fits into that profile. The Criminal Investigative Analysis has been crucial in solving some very large cases, where law enforcement had no leads and used this tool to come up with a possible suspect. The media has influenced the view that the public has between what the media portrays how law enforcement conducts an investigation
The community would benefit from the police enhancing their relationship, through a community-oriented policing approach, and raising awareness about the criminal activities taking place in that area so they can be avoided. The community may also see an initiative to improve their public areas (parks, schools, etc.) because a crime analysis may show these areas are targeted due to a poor design that needs to be changed. Law enforcement benefits because crime analysis encourages communication and builds relationships between departments and other government entities. Crime analysis also allows police departments to review trends and adjust their staffing accordingly in order to counter act potential criminal activities. Due to these reasons, you can see why crime analysis is a benefit to both the community and law
In addition, some scholars said that crime mapping and crime analysis are identical; it could be a form individual level of analysis, which analyze only one subject matter and it could be also ecological analyses which analyze two or more subject matter (Erk et al., 2005). Law enforcement management (e.g. chief of police and street problem-solver) used crime mapping for spatiotemporal (space+time) analysis to support crime analysis. Law enforcement agencies are required to record all data pertaining to criminal-activities, particularly the spatial and temporal of such activities for various analyses from information which described by Harries (1999) as calls for service, crime reports, vehicular recoveries, field reports and external information sources. Calls for service are logged, which law enforcement agencies are call for their service by electronic device like phones. Spelman (1995) considered this as ‘’ demand for police services within
Ellis, L., Walsh, A., & Hartley, R. D. (2010). Research Methods in Criminal Justice and