Police Crime Analysis Unit Handbook

Successfully analyze crime at any level of law enforcement! This book is a practical resource guide for the development of crime analysis in local law enforcement. The tragedy of September 11, 2001, has raised awareness on how crucial it is to analyze information and intelligence. Smaller agencies that cannot financially justify hiring a full-time analyst will find strategies and techniques to teach officers the methods of analysis. Introduction to Crime Analysis: Basic Resources for Criminal Justice Practice provides basic tools and step-by-step directions that will improve the skills and knowledge of new crime analysts. From the editors: “Military strategists have used analysis for centuries; it makes sense to know as much as possible about the enemy and about the conditions and causes of a situation if we hope to institute any kind of significant change for the better. Career criminals are the enemies of a community's well being. Now that advances in information technology give us the means and methods to fully examine and find meaningful knowledge in the vast amounts of existing information on crimes and criminals, we have an obligation to use our technological strength to protect innocent people. Systematic crime analysis as a law enforcement and public safety asset has become not only possible, but also truly necessary as a weapon in the war against crime.” Along with defining the various roles of the crime analyst, Introduction to Crime Analysis demonstrates how to: improve the personal skills necessary to make you a good crime analyst successfully work through the five stages—collection, collation, analysis, dissemination, and feedback and evaluation—of analysis select the appropriate crime mapping software for your agency evaluate the usefulness of your crime analysis products benefit from email discussion groups and professional associations create a crime analysis unit-including policies and procedures as well as marketing and funding This clearly written resource includes case studies, figures, and appendixes that will simplify the learning process. Links to Internet pages also offer resources and information beneficial to both new and experienced crime analysts. Introduction to Crime Analysis will benefit crime analysts, police officers, intelligence analysts, community groups focused on crime prevention, criminal justice students, and police departments and sheriff’s agencies.

Crime analysis is an emerging profession in policing and a growing topic of interest in the criminal justice field. This book offers a thorough introduction to the field as well as guidelines for its practice, making it a useful asset for current and future crime analysts and police practitioners as well as for students.

Crime Analysis With Crime Mapping, Fifth Edition provides students and practitioners with a solid introduction to the conceptual nature and practice of crime analysis and how it assists police in crime reduction. Author Rachel Boba Santos delves into this emerging field, providing guidelines and techniques for conducting crime analysis supported by evidence-based research, real world application, and recent innovations in the field. As the only introductory core text for crime analysis, this must-have resource presents readers with opportunities to apply theory, research methods, and statistics to careers that support and enhance the effectiveness of modern policing.

This volume presents a summary of a comprehensive survey, conducted in 1975, of the state-of-the-art of crime analysis in support of traditional preventive patrol, team policing, and specialized patrol. This volume is the result of a national evaluation program effort on crime analysis. Methods utilized during the study included an extensive review of the literature on crime analysis, site visits to 23 police departments, and an investigation of evaluation strategies for crime analysis. An overview of the procedures and results of the literature review and on-site visits is first presented. In general, the authors found that both these approaches provided little insight into the actual value of crime analysis, although police intuitively believe in its value. The report then turns to an analysis of the relation between program goals and objectives and crime analysis. Objectives and assumptions relating to patrol and crime analysis are listed, and for each a suggested measurement for the impact of crime analysis is given. Most of the measures suggested are of a qualitative nature. The findings of the study indicate that crime analysis has no value in and of itself. The authors conclude that because crime analysis programs are so inseparable from the patrol programs they support and have such a variety of potential forms, evaluation of crime analysis, apart from the patrol programs, would seem to have little value. It is suggested that the evaluation frameworks developed in this project be incorporated into larger evaluation efforts targeted toward selected patrol programs.