CRIME ANALYSIS: CONSIDERATIONS FOR ESTABLISHING OR ENHANCING CAPACITY

 The National Public Safety Partnership's CRIME ANALYSIS: CONSIDERATIONS FOR ESTABLISHING OR ENHANCING CAPACITY by Julie Wartell, Problem Analysis Group Dr. Jessica Herbert, IDEA Analytics is available at this link.

While I think this publication is a great resource, I am also certain that the separation of analytical functions as described in the document, pasted below, is a barrier to the development of the law enforcement analyst profession:

CAUs are not intelligence or investigatory analysis centers or units that focus on researching specific persons or groups to support case development (versus using data to identify trends, patterns, and problems). Although an analyst is valuable for developing information and performing intelligence analysis techniques on complex criminal groups or organizations, crime intelligence techniques (e.g., social network analysis, telephone toll analysis) focus on the individual case level and do not drive the overall strategy of crime reduction and prevention for a jurisdiction.

So how do we integrate the two functions in agencies that do both? I think it is possible and optimal to have them working side by side. Why? Because the specific groups and criminal organizations are a manifestation of the crime problems in a jurisdiction. The crime analyst needs to know as much as possible about them, and the intelligence/investigative analyst needs to know about what other crimes these organizations/groups might have committed, which can be discovered through crime analysis.