#6 Lessons From My Story

I will post a "lesson" from my life as an analyst once a week until I run out of them! Skip over these if they don't interest you. For those who read on, consider the power of your own stories and where they might take you. And if you want to follow these post threads, in the future click on the label "my story."

pol·i·cy
/ˈpäləsē/
noun
a course or principle of action adopted or proposed by a government, party, business, or individual.

Lesson: Policy doesn't have to make sense.

Before I started working as a crime analyst, I began coursework for pursuing a Master's Degree in Policy Studies, with a Cultural Studies emphasis. I quit the program halfway through because I just could not grasp the policy aspect of the program. I struggled intellectually with analyzing policies, although my grades were good. I chose this degree program because, at that time (the early 1990s), it was the only one I could do with a few weekend residencies and mostly in-between independent studies -  which was what I needed as a full-time working mother-of-four. This was before the wide-spread option of online degrees.

But once I started working at the Buffalo Police Department, I began to understand the nature of policy that had eluded me as I working in my previous job, wherein most policy I encountered seemed quite fair and sensible to me.

It did not make sense to me that there was so little analysis of crime. It appalled me as a mother that law enforcement was not systematically and intelligently analyzing crime and utilizing all the information available to make informed decisions to keep communities safe. To keep my family safe. To protect citizens.

It did not make sense to me that the same crime problems occurred in the same places over and over again without change over many consecutive years.

It did not make sense to me that the policing initiatives du jour depended on the grant-funding magic wand of the federal and/or state government and ended when the money was gone.

I just did not understand the world I had entered.

I then understood deeply that policy does not have to make sense.

Then I was able to finish my Master's Degree with an emphasis in Criminal Justice and write my thesis on crime analysis, which is posted on the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts website to download.

To download my thesis: Four Position Papers on the Role of Crime Analysis in Policing

Crime analysis, in whatever echelon of policing, under whatever other label you call it, makes sense.