A review of GIS-based information sharing systems

GIS-based information sharing systems have been implemented in many of England and Wales' Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs). The information sharing role of these systems is seen as being vital to help in the review of crime, disorder and misuse of drugs; to sustain strategic objectives, to monitor interventions and initiatives; and support action plans for service delivery. This evaluation into these systems aimed to identify the lessons learned from existing systems, identify how these systems can be best used to support the business functions of CDRPs, identify common weaknesses across the systems, and produce guidelines on how these systems should be further developed. At present there are in excess of 20 major systems distributed across England and Wales. This evaluation considered a representative sample of ten systems. To date, little documented evidence has been collected by the systems that demonstrate the direct impact they are having in reducing crime and disorder, and the misuse of drugs. All point to how they are contributing to more effective partnership working, but all systems must be encouraged to record how they are contributing to improving community safety. Demonstrating this impact will help them to assure their future role in their CDRPs. By reviewing the systems wholly, several key ingredients were identified that were evident in contributing to the effectiveness of these systems. These included the need for an effective partnership business model within which the system operates, and the generation of good quality multi-agency intelligence products from the system. In helping to determine the future development of GIS-based information sharing systems, four key community safety partnership business service functions have been identified that these systems can most effectively support. These functions support the performance review requirements of CDRPs, operate a problem solving scanning and analysis role, and offer an interface with the public. By following these business service functions as a template will provide for a more effective application of these systems nationally

Crime Mapping: Improving Performance. A good practice guide for front line officers

Improving performance remains central to the delivery of our objectives of reducing crime and the fear of crime. Crime mapping is an important and flexible way of supporting a wide range of policing functions at BCU and other levels. It can also provide the platform where data from the different partners in a Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnership can be meaningfully brought together. The intelligent use of crime mapping can provide a better understanding of crime and its location and enables improved targeting and resource deployment, improved intelligence products and facilitates tactical analysis. This guidance is not based on abstract theory and is written with a firm grip on reality. It sets out in a straightforward way how you can use crime mapping to support these activities and gives real examples from police forces who have applied crime mapping to successfully improve their performance

The management and retention of police recorded information. Academic research report: Version 2

The UK National Centre for Policing Excellence (NCPE) Management of Police Information (MoPI) Guidance (NCPE, 2006) advises on temporal periods for the review, retention and disposal of police information that is about individuals. There is concern that these temporal periods are not supported by a scientific evidence-base that provides the justification for these periods, based on the necessary purposes of this information for policing. Alongside this necessity of purpose for policing is the need to balance legislation that applies in the UK, in particular the Human Rights Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 1998. This research has explored the existing literature and consulted with a small but representative selection of key stakeholders on the rationale behind the lengths of the periods that should be applied to the review of police information to ensure they meet the principle condition of being ‘necessary’. This research has primarily drawn from the research on recidivism and desistance to identify the key factors that influence the future risk of offending. This research project has identified that age rather than offence type has a stronger and more consistent influence on when an offender may re-offend. It has also identified what is considered to be a useful methodology for determining when the risk posed by a person who has previously offended returns to a ‘normal’ level i.e. the same as for the general population, or more stringently the non-arrest population. This has shown the importance of age and recency of the last offence in influencing the risk of future offending, and that age appears to be a clear, more consistent and stronger influencing variable to recidivism (and desistance) than offence type. The age at which the offending population was considered to be statistically similar (in significance terms) showed variation in relation to the offence type, but that age was more consistent and clearer in determining the point at which the individual had become ‘redeemed’ and the length of ‘clear periods’ that should be set. This indicated that if reviews of information were to be purely based on recidivism and desistance research that has been published to date, then 3 – 8 year terms, depending on the age of the offender and offence type, may well be sufficient. However these need to be balanced with legislation, so the minimum retention period for all police information should be 6 years due to certain conditions in the Limitation Act that influence police information. It is shown that this balance between legislation and scientific evidence can be balanced, but that more scientific evidence needs to be developed in order to provide a good degree of justification and rationale behind the review periods that are applied and that inform the decision on whether to retain or dispose of information that can not be contested

Technical note: Introducing geographic profiling crime analysis in Mexico: principles of geographic profiling, examples of its use, training and challenges in its implementation

Geographic profiling is an investigative method that uses the locations of connected group or series of crimes to determine the most probable area of offender residence, or some other location (e.g., place of work) from which offender anchors their activities. Geographic profiling can help investigators to better understand offending behaviour, and from this help identify the offender (or suspects), or determine where to target an investigate strategy. Geographic profiling has been applied to a wide range of crime types including murder, rape, assaults, robbery, vehicle theft, fuel theft, metal theft, kidnapping and abductions, and criminal damage. To introduce skills in geographic profiling in Mexico, a certified geographic profiling analysis program was introduced in 2018, with 12 analysts from federal police and security agencies attending. The two-week course included exams and practical exercises, and was followed by a four-month period within which analysts were required to complete an operational report to achieve full certification. Due to changes in the government in Mexico over this time that affected the employment of those who completed the two-week training, only two analysts completed the full certified operational program by completing operational reports. Although, the current level of skills in geographic profiling in the federal police and security agencies is still very low, the training program and the operational reports that were completed have shown the potential in how geographic profiling can be used to assist criminal investigation in Mexico. Of note is that the analysts who attended the course have gone on to use the skills they acquired to analyze where missing people have disappeared to, to help target the deployment of highway patrols for reducing cargo thefts, and inspire a new research theme that is examining how geographic profiling can be used for generating geographic intelligence about organised crime groups that can help in their detection, disruption and the deterrence of their criminal activity

Project MARGIN: Cartography of survey-based experiences of victimisation and police recorded crime data for Catalunya, England and Wales, France, Hungary and Italy, and Barcelona, Budapest, London, Milan and Paris

This report is designed to meet deliverable D3.1: Cartography of objective and subjective measures of insecurity: a digital map showing the results of the comparison between CVSs data and police recorded crime. Crime victimisation survey (CVS) data and police recorded crime (PRC) data were provided to UCL from the other MARGIN project partners for the Spanish region of Catalunya, England and Wales, France, Hungary and Italy. In addition, CVS and PRC data were provided for Barcelona and London, and PRC data were provided for Budapest, Florence, Milan and Paris. Even though further research (WP4 and WP5) is only planned for one Italian city (Milan), this report also includes information from Florence to offer further comparisons with the five MARGIN city study areas. Section 2 of the report provides information on the crime categories chosen for analysis and cartographic presentation. Section 3 illustrates the differences in incidence rates determined from CVS and PRC data for the five MARGIN countries for each crime category, and also illustrates differences in the dark figure of crime for these countries. In addition, as data on CVS and PRC were provided for Barcelona and London, the dark figure for these two cities are also presented. Section 4 illustrates differences in the incidence rates from PRC data for each city, by each crime categor

The impact of Section 60 stops and searches on crime

Extract from 'The police targeting of stop and search' core research report. In order to help further understand the deterrent effect that searches may have, s60 search powers were examined due to the objective of their targeted impact to certain offences and their tendency of aiming to disrupt criminal behaviour rather than generate arrests. The results revealed that s60 searches had little general impact on drugs and weapons offences, and compounded the disproportionate targeting of searches to young people

A quasi-experimental evaluation of the impact of forensic property marking in decreasing burglaries

Property marking is a popular tool used by police agencies in burglary prevention programmes. 345 property marking kits were distributed to households in a treatment area in an English city. Changes in burglary in the treatment area were compared to three control areas. Crime type displacement to vehicle crime, criminal damage and violent crime, and changes in crime while controlling for geographic displacement were examined. Burglary decreased significantly by 82% in the treatment area in comparison to control areas during the first six months of the intervention. A significant diffusion of benefit effect to vehicle crime and criminal damage was also observed. The decreases, however, were short-lived with burglary levels returning to pre-intervention levels in the treatment area after 12 months