About Crime Analysis

 Crime analysis is a systemic, analytical process which is directed at providing pertinent and timely information in relation to crime patterns, the trends which is correlates with the aim of assisting in operational and administrative in planning for the deployment of resources prevention and suppression of criminal activities thereby aiding in the investigative process thus increasing the apprehensions and the clearance of cases (Braga & Schnell, 2013). Through crime analysis law enforcement is enhanced by ensuring proper functioning, maintenance of crimes in acceptable levels depending on the sound understanding of the patterns, the distributions and the spatial, social aspects of crime which are within a jurisdiction.

 In Crime analysis organization is done depending on factors such as the source of the data, the regularity and frequency of the crimes, the audience and the purposed audience. Crime analysis is often categorized as administrative, tactical or strategic (Santos, 2016). Through the categorization of the different crime analysis, police agencies are able to identify the areas which might require development and analysis and response as well as ensuring that the agency takes in to consideration while offering variety of the services. In addition, the analyst are able to identify the areas requiring development of skills thus are able to plan daily, weekly, monthly and annually. Other benefits include helping the professional associations in planning, training, categorization of the products and plan schedules for product dissemination and finally highlight the techniques and the tools which works better for the different purposes (Braga & Schnell, 2013).

 Administrative crime analysis mainly deals with the operational or administrative issues.  The analysis therefore is directed in meeting the needs of the administrative agency, the government and the community. As such it helps in providing information to the citizens, city council members and the administrators .information gathered is used for grants with the recurring reports being completed using numbers and counts (Santos, 2016). Administrative analysis is considered as valid and valuable form of analysis since it supports the police agency in planning, providing funds for community purposes as well as establishing community relations.. The processes and techniques used in this form of analysis include the districting and redistricting analysis, patrol staffing analysis and cost benefit analysis.

 The strategic crime analysis mainly focuses on the long term and short term trends which involves forecasting and projecting the increase and reduction of crimes. Consequently, the development is aimed at developing and evaluating long term policies, strategies and prevention techniques (Santos, 2016). Further, it looks at the geographical changes by the crimes which are identified as hot spots or any other areas of concern. As such, the process and techniques use d include the trend, hot spot and the problem analysis.  Some of the factors that are taken into consideration include the population, demographics and any geographical changes since they play a pivotal role in the planning. Strategic analysis takes longer since it requires that the analysis collect their own data as they cannot rely solely on police reports. The main focus is to help in identifying the trends, deterring the potential causes and then working on the possible solutions.

 Tactical analysis takes into account the short term and the immediate problems such as the patterns of crime, the series and the sprees. This form of analysis helps the officers in developing the potential leads and or the suspects determine the crime /suspect relationships therefore, they are able to predict the exact date, the location and the next hit crime series (Bruce, 2014). Thus, the subject areas concentrated on in this type of analysis include the space, the time, the offender and the victim. Tactical crime analysis utilizes processes and techniques such as the prepeat incidence, the pattern of the crime which links the crime offenders with any past crime.  Identification and analysis of crimes are done daily with the of identifying  any emerging crime soonest  with comprehensive analysis, notification of the responsible agency  and finally working towards developing plans in dealing with the crimes (Santos, 2016). In tactical analysis of crimes, analyses view all the crimes reports, catalog them and then compare them with prior events. The most aspect in this form of analysis is linking. As such, the analysis’s often look at the commonalities between the past incidences with the present patterns and afterwards they are able to make a suggestion of a particular pattern. In this case, they focus on who, what, when, where and how while identifying the commonalities which matches the other. After the identification by the analyst, there is creation of the bulletin about the series which focus on the basics of the series with the aim of providing actionable information to stop the crime.

References                                                                            

Braga, A. A., & Schnell, C. (2013). Evaluating place-based policing strategies: Lessons learned from the smart policing initiative in Boston. Police Quarterly, 16(3), 339-357.

Bruce, C. W. (2014). Fundamentals of crime analysis. Exploring rime Analysis, 11-36.

Santos, R. B. (2016). Crime analysis with crime mapping. Sage publications.