Meaningful Analytical Tasks

How can you, as an analyst, focus on meaningful analytical tasks? If you are unable to do so in your role, it is likely because of a lack of understanding around what it is you can do for your law enforcement agency. Often it is because your agency does not truly understand and value law enforcement analysis at the front-line level of operations, where all true change takes place.

If law enforcement managers do not understand your role, you are most likely to be unable to focus on meaningful tasks. You might be relegated to producing automated reports that no one else can figure out how to do.

"Influencing decision-makers is a key component of intelligence-led policing. We have concentrated on decision-making with regard to intelligence managers and senior police command, and detectives or investigators working on specific cases. What is clear from both categories is that there is a great deal of inconsistency within law enforcement agencies when it comes knowledge of intelligence, including how it is produced and how it can inform decision-making. Interviewees repeatedly suggested that those managers with a greater understanding of intelligence were much more likely to appreciate its value and to therefore use intelligence as the basis of decision-making. In contrast, decision-makers with a limited understanding of intelligence were more likely to, intentionally or unintentionally, marginalise analysts, including allocating them much less meaningful tasks."
Burcher, Morgan & Whelan, Chad. (2018). Intelligence-Led Policing in Practice: Reflections From Intelligence Analysts. Police Quarterly. 109861111879689. 10.1177/1098611118796890.

What can you do about this?

From survey results in the 2007 article The Integration of Crime Analysis Into Law Enforcement Agencies:An Exploratory Study Into the Perceptions of Crime Analysts , we can infer that getting front line personnel to understand the value is a missing link.

"What we learned from our survey was that most analysts in our sample felt that management was fairly supportive of their work and that organizational fit was not a problem. However, the analysts’ perceptions of what patrol officers thought of themonly reached the middle-of-the-road level, contrary to the much more positive attitudesthey expressed about patrol officers. Also, most of the respondents in our survey indi-cated that they work in specialized investigative units or administrative areas and havesworn personnel as supervisors. Although these analysts seem to find that that theirwork is generally appreciated, the general level of interaction between analysts andfrontline patrol officers seems to be limited at best and one sided (i.e., analysts seek tounderstand officers, but the reverse does not happen often). The significance of this finding should not be understated, as the capacity to develop effective street-level crime reduction strategies can sometimes depend on the ability of analysts to work with frontline officers to quickly turn crime data into “actionable intelligence."" Taylor, Bruce & Kowalyk, Apollo & Boba, Rachel. (2007). The Integration of Crime Analysis Into Law Enforcement Agencies: An Exploratory Study Into the Perceptions of Crime Analysts. Police Quarterly. 10. 154-169. 10.1177/1098611107299393.

The United Nations office on Drugs and Crime produced the Criminal Intelligence
Manual for Front-line Law Enforcement; it appears to focus on the analysts role and ignores the importance of the front-line officer's mutuality with the analyst. The analyst NEEDS the officers to understand his or her role in order to be effective.

Training officers to understand the value of law enforcement analysis at every level of law enforcement is the key to change.