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1Fundamentals of

Crime AnalysisChristopher W. Bruce

nformationis the most valuable commodityin the world. Its more valuable thanmoney, for with it one can make money.

Its more valuable than power, for with it onecan achieve power. Its more valuable thangoods, for with it one can build, acquire, andimprove goods. In any business, in anyindustry, in any part of the world, the rightinformation is absolutely priceless.

Businesses invest a great deal of money, time,and resources in the quest to acquireinformationinformation about theirproducts, and how to improve them;information about their competitors, and whattheyre up to; information about customers

and what they want; information about thebusiness itself, and how its various divisionsare doing. Governments rise and fall oninformationinformation about the opinionsand attitudes of their citizens; informationabout allies; information about enemies.Information wins wars, builds cities, heals thesick, enriches the poor, andmost relevant toour purposessolves and prevents crime.

Industries, organizations, and companiesrealize these principles on an operational level.Consequently, they devote individuals, units,and sometimes entire divisions to collecting,processing, and disseminating information.Businesses have product researchers andtesters, budget analysts, management analysts,and market researchers. Every division ofgovernment has policy analysts, and the federalgovernment hires and trains spies andintelligence specialists. Insurance companies

employ actuaries and claims analysts. Every

time you see the word analyst in a personsjob titleresearch analyst, budget analyst,policy analyst, business analyst, market analyst,stock analyst, intelligence analyst, and so on

youre dealing with someone whose jobrevolves around informationinformationdesigned to help a company, agency, ororganization do its job better.

Such is the case with crime analysts. Crimeanalysts provide information to police agenciesabout crime, disorder, calls for service, policeactivity, and other areas of police interest, allwith the goal of helping the agencies do their

jobs better. Specifically, crime analysts helppolice agencies:

Solve crimes

Develop effective strategies and tactics toprevent future crimes

Find and apprehend offenders

Prosecute and convict offenders

Improve safety and quality of life

Optimize internal operations

Prioritize patrol and investigations Detect and solve chronic problems

Allocate resources

Plan for future resource needs

Enact effective policies

Educate the public

This list applies primarily to municipal policedepartments, but other law enforcement andcriminal justice agencies can enjoy the benefits

of crime analysis even if their charters do notinclude some of the goals listed above.Wherever a crime analyst is employed, his orher job is to provide information support forthe agencys overall mission.

Data, Information, and Knowledge

Information shares some characteristics withother commodities like metals, grain, or

automobiles. First, human effort has to go into

I


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the production of these commodities. Metalsmust be mined from the Earth, grain must beplanted and harvested, and automobiles mustbe manufactured on an assembly line. Second,

all commodities are created from rawmaterialsore, seeds, and parts in ourexamples. Third, the production of thesecommodities serves little purpose until they aredelivered to a consumer.

An analysts effort is what creates information,whether that information is built ormined. A metaphor that works well is to seethe analyst as a sculptor. Some sculptures are

created by combining and molding pieces ofclay, much as an analyst creates information bycombining pieces of data. Other sculptures arecreated by chipping away extraneous pieces ofstone to reveal a shape inside, much as ananalyst filters out extraneous pieces of data tofind the one that reveals a fact or truth.

Either way, the analysts raw material is data,which might come from numerous sources.Out of this data, the analyst seeks to create

information, which he then delivers to hisconsumerthe police agency. Thisinformation, once internalized, becomesknowledge that informs police action. Twoprocesses are at work:

1. Data becomes information when it iseffectivelyanalyzed.

2. Information becomes knowledge when it

is effectivelycommunicated.

Though the title crime analyst focuses on theanalysis process, both analysis andcommunication fall within the crime analystsarea of responsibility.

In Figure 1-1, note the lines fromInformation and Knowledge back toAnalysis. The transition of data into analysis

is a self-feeding loop, as new data is juxtaposedagainst existing information and knowledge tocreate further levels of analysis.

Figure 1-1: The transition from data to knowledge

Table 1-1 shows some ways in which thisprocess works in a typical municipal policeagency, with examples of tactical, strategic, andoperational applications.

A History of Crime Analysis

The practice of crime analysis probablypredates the profession. Some of the mostessential functions of crime analysissuch asidentifying hot spots for extra patrolwerelikely performed in ancient times. In themodern era, crime analysis techniques andproducts were used in the first modern police

force, the London Metropolitan Police, in the1800s. Detectives, who identified patterns ofcrime, were first assigned in London in the1840s; crime statistics were available for thecity as early as 1847; and it was within thisdepartment that the concept ofmodus operandi,and of classifying offenders and crimes basedon it, first appeared in the second half of thenineteenth century.


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As other police around the world adapted oremulated the London model, they developedtheir own versions of these techniques.Methods of pattern identification and analysisare performed by every patrol officer in theregular course of his or her duties. As one earlycrime analysis manual observes:

Informal crime analysis, in its simplest sense,is performed by all officers as they

investigate crimes. Crime analysis is thequality of examining one crime occurrenceand comparing it with similar past events. Inessence, the officer is a walking crimeanalysis unit as he compares hisinvestigations with his past experiences and

with the experiences of others.1

American police reformers in the twentiethcentury began to formalize the use of crimeanalysis techniques. One early proponent of

the use of analysis, August Vollmer (1876-1955), has been called the father of Americanpolicing. Vollmer served as the Chief ofPolice of Berkeley, California, from 1905 to1932. His innovations range from police radiosto fingerprinting, and include (relevant to our

1Robert Austin et. al., Police Crime Analysis Unit Handbook(Washington, DC: Law Enforcement Assistance

Administration, 1973), 3. Note, though, that the text

implies a limited definition of the term crime analysisthat focuses only on pattern analysis.

purposes) pin mapping, the regular review ofpolice reports, and the formation of patroldistricts based on crime volume.

When Vollmer mobilized his beat officerson bicycles in 1909, he laid out beats inaccordance with the number of callsanticipated from each part of the city.2

Though the term crime analysis had not yet

appeared in law enforcement literature, onequote from Vollmers The Police Beatshows he was familiar with its concepts:

On the assumption of regularity of crimeand similar occurrences, it is possible totabulate these occurrences by areas within acity and thus determine the points whichhave the greatest danger of such crimes and

what points have the least danger.3

Vollmers protg, Orlando Winfield Wilson(1900-1972), served as a police executive in anumber of agencies, including the ChicagoPolice, where he was Superintendent from1960 to 1971. Wilson wrote several influentialbooks, including Police Records (1942), PoliceAdministration(1950), and Police Planning(1957).

2 G. Hobart Reiner et. al., Crime Analysis in Support ofPatrol(Washington, DC: Law Enforcement Assistance

Administration, 1977), 8.3 Quoted in Reiner, Support of Patrol, 9.

Table 1-1: Examples of the transition from data to knowledge in a typical police agencyData Information Knowledge Result

Individual IncidentReports in a recordsmanagement system

Analysis

Six of the reportsare related in aseries of robberies

Communication

Robbery series isprime topic ofdiscussion in next

detectives meeting

Strategy&Action

Robberyoffender isapprehended

Statistics showingnumber of officersper capita throughoutthe state

Your policedepartment has20% fewer officersper capita thanaverage

Chief has thisinformation in mindwhen preparing hisbudget proposal

Agency isgrantedadditionalofficers by city

Crime volume ofcurrent yearcompared to pastyears; individualrecords in RMS;

jurisdictionalinformation

Auto theft is up20%, with most ofthe increase inPolice Beat 5 onthe midnight shift,probably influencedby new sportsarena

Officers internalizethis information andconsider it whenpatrolling Beat 5

Auto theft isreduced


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It is in Wilsons second edition (1963) ofPoliceAdministration that we find the first writtencitation of crime analysis:

Crime Analysis. The crime-analysissection studies daily reports of seriouscrimes in order to determine the location,time, special characteristics, similarities toother criminal attacks, and varioussignificant facts that might help to identifyeither a criminal or the existence of apattern of criminal activity. Suchinformation is helpful in planning theoperations of a division or district.1

Though this is the earliest known source of theterm, Wilsons use suggests that there werealready crime analysis units in existence at thetime of his writing. His third edition of thebook offers several pages on crime analysisand contributed to the growth of theprofession in the late 1970s, when manyformal crime analysis programs developedacross the United States with funding from theLaw Enforcement Assistance Administration(LEAA). To support these programs, the

LEAA published a series of manuals on crimeanalysis between 1973 and 1977. Crimeanalysis became one of four facets of theLEAAs Integrated Criminal ApprehensionProgram (ICAP), and to this day, long after thedeath of ICAP, some crime analysis units areknown colloquially as the ICAP Unit.

When the LEAA lost the last of its funding in1982, the profession of crime analysis entered

a dry spell. Few new units developed, except incertain states where local support was strong,or in agencies trying to gain accreditationthrough the Commission on Accreditation forLaw Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). Manycrime analysts funded through the LEAA andICAP lost their jobs.

1 Orlando W. Wilson, Police Administration, 2nd ed. (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 103.

The 1990s brought a Golden Age of CrimeAnalysis in the U.S., characterized by:

The 1990 publication of Problem-Oriented

Policingby Herman Goldstein, who workedwith O.W. Wilson in Chicago.

The formation of the InternationalAssociation of Crime Analysts (IACA) in1990, and its first conference in 1991.

A certificate program in crime analysisoffered by the California Department ofJustice, starting in 1992.

New and plentiful funding from the U.S.Department of Justice. Much of it focusedon community policing and problem-oriented policing.

Powerful, affordable technology, includingcrime mapping applications, desktoppublishing, and relational databases.

The development of the CompStatsystem of strategy development andmanagement accountability within theNew York City Police Department. (Thefirst CompStat meetings were held in1994.) The CompStat process relies heavilyon mapping and analysis.

The foundation of the National Instituteof Justice Crime Mapping Research Center(now called the Mapping & Analysis forPublic Safety program) in 1997.

The foundation of the National Law

Enforcement and Corrections TechnologyCenters Crime Mapping and AnalysisProgram (CMAP) in 1998.

This combination of factors caused aproliferation of new U.S. crime analysts andcrime analysis units throughout the 1990s. Atthe same time, in the United Kingdom, theCrime and Disorder Act of 1998 created a hostof new local-level analysts by requiring local

governments to set measurable crime


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reduction goals and produce regular audits andstatistical reports. New analysts in all countrieshad access to new ideas, literature, professionalstandards, support, and training that were not

available to their 1970s counterparts.

The homeland security era of the 2000s has insome ways been difficult for local-level U.S.crime analysts, as time, funding, and attentionhave diverted away from local-level crimes andinto terrorism prevention and war. A recessionhas reduced the amount of money available tolocal police agencies, and the development ofnew crime analysis programs has slowed. But

at the same time, the professionals within thefield have banded together to develop training,literature, and certification.

Conversely, many other countries have seenexponential growth in crime analysis duringthe 2000s, especially in regions in which thereis no distinction between intelligence andcrime analysis (see page 12). In the U.K.,Australia, and Canada, the homeland securityera has coincided with the adoption of

intelligence-led policing models and the U.K.-originated National Intelligence Model. Unlikethe U.S., where dedication to crime analysisvaries between states and individual agencies,these nations and others have shown a nationalcommitment to the profession.

This book is being published shortly after theelection of Barack Obama to the presidency.He has expressed the wish to restore local law

enforcement community policing funding toits 1990s levels, but the global economicrecession bodes ill for government agencies. Itremains to be seen which factors will prevail.

Classifications ofLaw Enforcement Analysis

Crime analysis is one of several types ofanalysis that fall under a macro-headingvariously called law enforcement analysis,public safety analysis, or police analysis.

Law enforcement analysis is probably themost common. We may define it as follows:

Law enforcement analysis: Processes,

techniques, and products that provideinformation support to the various missions oflaw enforcement agencies.

(Law enforcement agency is a common termthat comprises municipal police, state police,and investigative or special-purpose agencieswith local, state, national, or internationaljurisdiction. It is generally understood thatthese agenciesparticularly local policedomuch more than simply enforce the law. Thedifferent types of analysis under this headingsupport allmissions of these agencies, and notjust those geared toward law enforcement.)

Within this overall field, we find crimeanalysts, criminal intelligence analysts, andcriminal investigative analysts.1

Crime analysts study crime and disorderdata; identify and analyze patterns, trends, and

problems; and create and disseminateinformation that helps police agencies solve,reduce, and prevent them.

Criminal intelligence analysts concentrateon the collection and dissemination ofinformation about criminals, particularlyorganizations and conspiracies. Intelligenceanalysts hunt for leads on the structure andhierarchy of criminal organizations, the flowof money and goods, relationships, current

activities and plans, and personal informationabout the participantsusually with the goalof arrest, prosecution, and conviction of theoffenders involved.

1 Steven Gottlieb, Sheldon Arenberg, and Raj Singh,Crime Analysis: from First Report to Final Arrest (Montclair,CA: Alpha Publishing, 1994), 11-13. This is the earliestknown text to divide the functions of analysis this way.

The authors include operations analysis as a categoryof law enforcement analysis, but other crime analysts

seem to recognize operations analysis as a functionspecific to crime analysis; it is presented that way here.

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