U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services CRIME ANALYSIS FOR PROBLEM SOLVERS Ronald V. Clarke & John E. Eck This project was supported by cooperative agreement #2003CKWXK048 by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement of the product by the author or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues. Crime Analysis for Problem Solvers In 60 Small Steps Manager Place Handler OffenderCRIME Target/Victim Guardian Ronald V. Clarke John E. Eck T his is a revised and extended version of a manual, Become a Problem- Solving Crime Analyst, that we wrote for the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London, with financial support from the Home Office. We are most grateful to the Institute and to the Home Office for allowing us to produce this version for the United States. We ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS are also grateful to the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services for commissioning the work. In the Acknowledgements page of the earlier version we thanked many colleagues and friends on whose work we had freely drawn. Those who have materially assisted us in completing this version by supplying material for inclusion, commenting on drafts, or in other ways, include: Stacy Belledin, Rachel Boba, Barbie Brookover, Christopher Bruce, Andy Brumwell, Karen Bullock, Graham Farrell, Rob Guerette, Samantha Gwinn, Shane Johnson, Johannes Knutsson, Gloria Laycock, Nancy Leach, Deborah Loewen, Tamara Madensen, Mangai Natarajan, Cynthia Pappas, Ken Pease, Nanci Plouffe, Barry Poyner, Jerry Ratcliffe, George Rengert, Nick Ross, Kim Rossmo, Rana Sampson, Matthew Scheider, Karin Schmerler, Michael Scott, Nick Tilley, Susan Wernicke, Matt White, and Deborah Lamm Weisel. We thank all of them. Crime Analysis for Problem Solvers in 60 Small Steps RONALD V. CLARKE AUTHORS Ronald Clarke is university professor in the school of Criminal Justice at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and visiting professor at the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, University College London. He worked for many years in the Home Office Research and Planning Unit, where he contributed to the development of situational crime prevention and the British Crime Survey. He is associate director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing and chair of the judges for the annual Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem- Oriented Policing. He can be reached at: [email protected]. JOHN E. ECK John Eck is professor of criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati. He has contributed to the development of problem-oriented policing since 1984 when he studied the first full-scale attempt to implement the concept in the United States at Newport News, Virginia. He helped to develop a number of now standard techniques in problem-oriented policing, including the SARA model and the problem analysis triangle. Dr. Eck is an affiliate member of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. He is a judge for the Tilley Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing. Dr. Eck was a member of the Committee to Review Research on Police Policy and Practice (2000-2003) of the National Academy of Sciences. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Crime Analysis for Problem Solvers in 60 Small Steps foreword ne of the primary concerns in policing in the United Many advances have been realized under the umbrella States today — and for the foreseeable future — of problem-oriented policing since the concept was Ois the severe constraint on spending. The lion’s first introduced in 1979. But these have not been share of police budgets is consumed in personnel costs. mainstreamed within policing. Their implementation has As a result, many police agencies are already operating been spotty, uneven, and without deep and lasting roots. significantly below their authorized strength. Funds to They remain overshadowed by the dominant, continuing hire new officers to meet growing needs are hard to commitment to traditional policing and its heavy obtain. And, of special relevance here, traditional forms dependence on lots of police officers patrolling and of policing, because they are so heavily dependent on making arrests. personnel, are being curtailed. Calls cannot be handled as completely and quickly as in the past. Personnel cannot Greater concern about police effectiveness in dealing with be as freely assigned to increasing the police presence on specific behavioral problems need not start from scratch. the streets in labor-intensive tactics, such as crackdowns, Collectively, we know much about the wide range of sweeps, and special task forces. behavioral problems that constitute police business and how best to prevent them. This knowledge can be found This reality is a powerful new force for rethinking the in the substantial literature on crime and crime prevention, way in which we police. It connects with prior efforts to especially in the literature on situational crime prevention. promote greater concern for the effectiveness of the police. Much of value can be found, too, among the practices of And it lends fresh impetus to meeting a long-standing, police agencies and in the minds of experienced police neglected need, the need to equip the police with an officers, but this experience and expertise must be tapped institutionalized capacity to examine its work product; to and subjected to rigorous analysis. routinely ask, before committing to more of the same, what it is that the police are expected to accomplish and The Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (POP Center) how they can more effectively accomplish it. (www.popcenter.org) now serves as a locus for the collection of the growing body of knowledge regarding Rethinking current methods requires a new understanding problems commonly encountered by the police. It of the role of the police, both on the part of the police disseminates this material in various ways, but primarily and the public they serve. It is essential to recognize that through the publication of its problem-oriented guides. the police function is not as simple as it is sometimes Each guide synthesizes existing knowledge and evaluated portrayed. It is incredibly complex. It is not a singular practices regarding a specific problem, and stimulates function, commonly defined as enforcing the law. It police to advance their own thinking about how best to requires dealing with a broad range of behavioral handle the problem in its local context. problems, each quite different from the other. It does not consist simply of reacting to an endless array of incidents. While the POP Center has documented hundreds of Police are now expected to prevent them from occurring in successful cases in problem-oriented policing, a major the first instance. impediment to advancing the concept has been the absence of an analytical capacity within police agencies. A fresh perspective on policing requires that the police Many police agencies do employ one or more crime examine, in depth, each of the numerous behavioral analysts, but some of the largest and more advanced police problems that together constitute their business; that they organizations do not. When employed, the job of the crime consider a broader range of strategies on how best to analyst is often narrowly limited to tabulating crimes that prevent, reduce, or eliminate each of them; and that they occur. In others, it extends to identifying patterns of crimes weigh more precisely their effectiveness upon adopting a with the primary objective of identifying the likely offender new targeted response. This is the essence of problem- so that he/she can be apprehended. In its more ambitious oriented policing. form, the crime analyst’s job may include identifying factors contributing to a crime pattern, but the job of deciding how to respond to these factors is usually deferred to operational personnel, who then tend to use traditional means for dealing with them. foreword Meanwhile, the field of crime analysis itself has grown in a police agency, from officers on the beat to police much more sophisticated. A strong literature on its executives, and, more broadly, those in both the public potential is now available. The ability to electronically and private sector concerned about crime, will incorporate capture, store, and retrieve massive amounts of data that the line of thinking set forth in the manual into the police routinely collect is infinitely greater than it was just perspectives they bring to their work. a decade ago. The capacity to map crime geographically is stunning, and is now a major, indispensable tool in crime Herman Goldstein analysis. Standard approaches have been developed for Professor of Law Emeritus FOREWORD the collection, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence University of Wisconsin-Madison across jurisdictional lines. In this manual, Ronald Clarke and John Eck set out a much more ambitious and potentially productive agenda for the analyst. They outline a role in which the crime analyst invests heavily in seeking new responses to the problems that are diagnosed and participates directly in efforts to test and implement them. The analyst is expected to contribute to exploring new, more creative, and potentially