Historical Aspect of Crime Analysis
By: Banuka N. De Silva
Tags: Criminal Justice, Crime

K. Banuka N. De Silva

BA (SP) Criminology and Criminal Justice

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice,

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,

The University of Sri Jayewardenepura,

Gangodawila, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka.

Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=3736416.

Crime analysis is a law enforcement function that requires structural examination of patterns and trends of crime and disorder to define and interpret. Pattern information will help law enforcement departments deploy staff more efficiently and help detectives locate and arrest criminals. Crime analysis can be conducted at a variety of levels, including tactical, operational and strategic. Crime researchers review crime news, arrest reports, and police call for service to recognise evolving events, series, and trends as soon as possible. They analyse these events for any possible causes, often forecast or predict potential events, and issue updates, reports and warnings to their departments. They then collaborate with their police departments to develop appropriate plans and methods to deal with crime and disorder. Other responsibilities of crime analysts can include planning statistics, data requests or on-demand maps; reviewing beat and change configurations; preparing information for neighbourhood or court presentations; answering questions from the public and the press; delivering data and information resources to the CompStat police department. The main purpose of this article was to identify the historical development of crime analysis. Keywords: Crime, Crime Analysis, Crime Patterns

O. W. Wilson expanded Vollmer’s beat analysis methodology to incorporate threat formulae or the assignment of weighting criteria to various types of incidents and service calls, in an attempt to include a standardised solution to the distribution of patrol services. However, it was not until the second version of Wilson’s Police Management (1963). By the end of the 1960s, criminal investigation divisions started to be formed in broader national police departments. These units were mainly responsible for the detection of illegal modus operandi, the exploration of trends of criminality within geographical regions, and the recognition of associations between suspected criminals and offences. 2 The growth of the criminal investigation was further motivated by the creation of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration’s Comprehensive Criminal Apprehension Initiative in the 1970s. Pioneered by President Richard M. Nixon, this federal agency was founded by the Omnibus Crime Prevention and Safe Streets Act, and the initiative was focused around the assumption that specific illegal issues should be traced to chronic individuals, and thus professional offenders or at least. Repeat the perpetrator. Founders of the LEAP Initiative understood that citizens who had devoted for a life of crime (career criminals) would often come into touch with law enforcement officers. Often they will be detained, and a study on their detention would be done. They might be the focus of a field interview or collect a traffic quotation on other occasions. In each scenario, the police must give a physical description of the suspect, his or her identity, a description of the car (if applicable) and a notation of how the offence was perpetrated. Before the age of computerisation, however, this knowledge was of little use, because anything relating to the person was usually filed according to the last name of the subject. Officers may react to crime scenes and provide victim information, but when they have no names. Officers have little means to view departmental documents for future matches. LEAP aimed to update the record-keeping processes of the police departments and to allow effective use of the large volume of data generated by the record offices. As a consequence of these reforms, security officers are also entitled to capture physical images of the offenders and have the identities of the suspects returned to them via phone. In the same manner, MO patterns may be entered and compared to those used by criminals who have recently been convicted. LEAP has admitted that serial criminals are always people of habit. They also perform offences at the same moment — days of the week or the same process. ICAP also proposed that crime monitoring teams be set up to track trends and patterns. And to report the same to the patrol and investigation teams. It was also suggested that patrol powers establish tailored patrols or operational action plans to resolve the concerns brought to their attention by the Crime Investigation Team.

Ses ideas, coupled with those stemming from the famous Kansas City Police Report of the 1970s, dealt with the death blow to the time-honoured practise of fielding police divisions under the “random patrol” doctrine. For years, the visible appearance of police officers was considered to be a significant barrier to violence, and the only solution to solve crime issues was to recruit more police officers. This was a costly conviction to maintain; most significantly, it proved to be incorrect. The Kansas City report told us that it was not only how many cops the department had, but what they achieved for those officers, that was of the utmost significance. Although the department had stationed its police on the east side of the city when all the crooks were on the west side, nothing in the way of crime prevention may have been done. The analysis thus found that the optimal usage of the patrol force was made as officers were deployed in the right places at the right moment. Subsequently, the Crime Investigation Unit began to be seen as an aspect of a force that might offer substantial assistance to patrol supervisors as a growing number of organisations continued to embrace this definition, new data accumulated to indicate that random patrols mirrored random outcomes. Instead of dwelling on the procurement of capital, the concentration has been diverted to the correct distribution of resources. Officers will no doubt climb into a police vehicle, fly around for thirty years and eventually resign. From this point forward, managers will remind their operations of the knowledge given to them by the Crime Investigation Team. Under the LeAP initiative, this term came under the heading “Management of Patrol Operations. Also, the policy promoted several improvements that had contributed to the efficient usage of patrol services. Call prioritisation programmes, mail-in response systems, and the utilisation of non-sworn community service officers to conduct non-hazardous tasks have been utilised to enable officers to focus on crime reduction and criminal apprehension. Often under ICAP, “Management of Criminal Investigations aimed to enhance the standard of case planning, better strengthen police and prosecutorial ties, classify career criminals and raise the amount and percentage of career criminals convicted. At the same period, MCI was built to offer the same form of reliability to patrol managers for investigations. ICAP proposed improved event screening protocols and the use of solvency considerations in early crime records. Patrol officers were allowed to engage entirely in the original inquiries by collecting much of the details that may have been gathered during the first suspect and witness the interaction. Finally, the ICAP initiative suggested that crime intelligence teams include perpetrator lead officers, MO trend analyses and other such supports to help the agency in detecting suspects and potential future areas of illegal activity.

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