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Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


This tumultuous period saw the police fighting riots, growing crime rates, and social problems associated with drugs and poverty in inner-city neighbourhoods. The old, professional police model was ill equipped to deal with these issues and the era of the community policing model began to take hold (Angell, 1971; Germann, 1969)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


Global Information Systems (GIS) is a mapping technology that was first developed in the 1990's and became a key component of Compstat and is now becoming widely used nationally by both large and small agencies (Bueermann, Markovic, and Smith, 2006; Chainey & Ratcliffe, 2005). GIS is used from the initial stages of data collection, recording and collecting crime and accident activity, identifying hot spots, and then in the monitoring stages to measure the success of operations (Braga, 2008; Cameron, Chainey, Eck, Leitner, & Wilson, 2005)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


[2: There is some disagreement about what the acronym "Compstat" actually means. Former NYPD police commissioner William Bratton suggests that it stands for "computer-statistics meetings" (Bratton 1998, 233), but Silverman attributes the term to "Compare Stats" -- a computer filename (Silverman 1999, 98)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


It was during this same time period, that researcher's began to question what motivated criminals to engage in deviant behaviours. This analysis of the criminal decision making process came to be known as Rational Choice Theory, the essential points being that human behaviour is rational, that choices are calculated through a cost-benefit analysis, and that, all choices being equal, a criminal will evaluate the risk factors (getting caught, the potential seriousness of the punishment) against the expected gain (Clarke and Cornish, 1983; Siegel, 1992)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


Other research, such as Cohen and Felson's landmark 1979 study on Routine Activity Theory (RAT) concentrated on the analysis of crime trends and the circumstances that lead to crime rather than the offenders who committed crime. RAT states that for a crime to occur there must be three conditions present: an appropriate target, a lack of suitable guardian to prevent the crime from happening, and the presence9of a motivated offender to take advantage of the first two conditions (Cohen and Felson,1979)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


Gradually, the professional crime-fighting model began to be replaced by a new set of strategies and programs that would come to be known as community policing. Community policing made the police officer a part of the community again and made him a problem solver instead of an outsider who only responded to calls for service (Goldstein, 1990)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


Conclusion To understand intelligence-led policing and the data-driven approach to enforcement, one must look at the methods and evolution of policing and the various models of policing that have been used. Richard Mayne, the head of the London Metropolitan Police in 1829 declared that "the primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime: the next that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed (Mayne, 1829)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


In the early 1990's, beginning in New York City, law enforcement agencies and departments all over the United States began using computerized systems, known as Comp stat (computerized statistics).[footnoteRef:2] These computers could be used to plot and map specific incidents of crime by time, day, and location, and then, by revealing previously unnoticed patterns in criminal activity, Comp stat enabled police departments to distribute their resources more effectively (McDonald, 2002)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


The theory behind DDACTS is that traffic enforcement increases law enforcement visibility and therefore increases the perceived risk among offenders that they may be arrested (National Institute of Justice, 2009).Previous studies have found that high-visibility traffic enforcement is an effective way to control illegal drug markets and gun violence in high-crime areas (McGarrell, Chernak, & Weiss, 2002; Weiss & Morckel, 2007)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


Some commentators have collapsed these meanings and argue that Compstat refers to "computer comparison statistics" (Willis, Mastrofski & Weisburd, 2003)] This latest model of policing has become known as intelligence-led policing and it focuses on intelligence gathering and analysis of data in determining police objectives and resource allocation. Originally, it was meant to spotlight criminal activity, focusing on active and repeat offenders by using informants, interviews, analysis of calls for service, and community information (Ratcliffe, 2008)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


Community policing attempted a return to crime prevention instead of crime reaction by encouraging officers to become a part of the communities in which they worked. Police agencies tried to reduce the fear of crime by reintroducing foot patrols and the creation of neighbourhood substations to give police a notable presence within the community (Trojanowicz, & Bucqueroux, 1990)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


Previous studies have found that high-visibility traffic enforcement is an effective way to control illegal drug markets and gun violence in high-crime areas (McGarrell, Chernak, & Weiss, 2002; Weiss & Morckel, 2007). In Dayton, Ohio and Kansas City, Kansas, researchers found that when officers assigned to routine patrol increased the number of12traffic stops that they made during discretionary time, there was a statistically significant drop in the number of arrests made for drugs and weapons (Weiss & Freels, 1996; Sherman & Rogan, 1995; Sherman, Shaw, & Rogan, 1995)

Police Intelligence Rapidly Changing the Way Police Organizations Fight Crime


Community policing made the police officer a part of the community again and made him a problem solver instead of an outsider who only responded to calls for service (Goldstein, 1990). The broken windows theory that maintained that crime and the fear of crime are related to the existence of poor living conditions became prominent (Wilson & Kelling, 1982)