Policy: Oh Where Oh Where Are New Ideas?

A Dearth of Fresh Ideas - Money & Technology Will Not Save Us: Clear, Original Thinking Will by Michael Tanji January 16, 2008

In the above article, Michael Tanji states "the government’s general approach to any sufficiently challenging problem is to throw money and technology at it, as if what is accounted for in a quantitative sense will overcome very real qualitative problems."

This holds true for analysis in local policing up to the levels of national security. In local policing technology is often mistaken for analysis. Agencies may have nice computerized crime maps and great access to all sorts of data (although not as common as it should be by any means), but very often investment in analysts and analysis is sorely lacking and undervalued.

Expanding on what Tanji writes in his article, we already have tons of data in local level policing - what is missing is vision in how to use it in new ways. (For a look at just some of the data we have available to us in policing, see The Geoarchive Handbook.) Besides new technologies, the way we look at how we work doesn't result in much innovation. Academia looks for new theories of crime but remains abstract and quantitative. We need qualitative answers - things that work in real situations. Why? Because crime occurs in the real, chaotic world and, as any one who has been a victim of a crime knows, we need to prevent actual crimes rather than theoretical crimes. Crime and intelligence analysts can help do that.