Become a problem solving crime analyst
55 steps in 55 minutes
Sarah Czarnomski and Ben Marshall
UCL’s Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science
Introduction
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Thinking about crime
Scanning
Analysis
Response
Assessment
Presentation
Embrace your current skills (Step 1)
• There are many skills you need to become a problem
solving crime analyst – some of these skill sets you
already have
– Computing and data manipulation abilities
– Use software to map crime and hotspots
– Produce weekly/monthly reports and charts on crime
levels
– Carried out small investigations into crime topics
– Evaluations
– Some knowledge of statistics
Rethink your job
(Step 2)
• Become a crime expert
– Know what works in policing
– Learn about environmental criminology/crime
science
– Hone your research skills
• Promote problem solving
• Seek a place on the project team
• Communicate effectively
• Enhance your profession
• GIVE YOURSELF TIME TO THINK
Be the local crime expert (Step 3)
• You’re the expert – no-one else has the time
– The individual officer on the beat is too busy with local
crime
– The detective has specific cases to solve
• Ask the right questions
– Which are the most troublesome pubs?
– Is there something unusual about this crime pattern ?
• Ask the right people – communication
– Talk to officers about what they are seeing and about
specific crime problems
– Exchange information with business and private
security
– Get away from your computer
Know the limits of conventional policing
(Step 4)
• General deterrence
– Creates public perception that risks and penalties
for offending are high
• Specific deterrence
– Communicates a perception of high risk and
penalty to specific individuals
• Incapacitation
– Removes active offenders from society
Know the limits of conventional policing
(Step 4 cont)
• Conventional policing relies heavily on patrolling,
rapid response, and follow-up investigations
• Random patrolling has little or no effect on crime
• Rapid response to reports of crime has a negligible
effect on arrests
• Follow up investigations by detectives are not much
more effective at producing arrests
Become a POP expert (Step 5)
• Policing should be about changing the conditions that give
rise to recurring crime problems
• Police often have to return repeatedly to the same place or
deal repeatedly with the same problems caused by the
same small group of offenders
• Police must adopt a problem-solving approach
• Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment (SARA)
Practical application - problem-oriented crime
analysis (Step 6)
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What’s the problem?
How do we work out what to do about it?
How will we ensure it gets implemented?
Did it work?
What’s the problem? The need for specificity: (Step 7)
Residential burglary problems (Northampton, n/1000 households)
1982
1987
House burglary
Luxury goods
Electrical goods
Cash and jewellery
Trivial
Aggravated burglary
Burglary involving major damage
Unsuccessful attempts
Other
Not yet known what was stolen
0.0
4.0
4.7
1.0
0.0
0.2
5.3
0.4
-
0.6
17.0
7.4
0.6
0.1
0.1
10.6
0.7
2.2
Total house burglary
15.6
39.3
Flats and residential institutions
0.9
1.0
Coin Meters
Associated with a break-in
No signs of forced entry to dwelling
1.4
6.7
1.4
1.8
Total residential burglary
24.6
43.5
Being specific reveals the influence of context
and opportunity – burglary (Step 7)
Become a problem solving crime analyst
(Step 8)
• Be guided by SARA but not lead astray!
• SARA can mislead in suggesting that the four
problem solving stages follow one another in a strictly
linear fashion
• Projects rarely follow a linear path, the process is
iterative so that an unfolding analysis can result in
refocusing the project
• The longer and more complicated the project, the
more iterations are likely to occur
SARA and the ‘5I’s’ (Step 8)
• The 5I’s should be considered alongside SARA
– Intelligence
– Intervention
– Implementation
– Involvement
– Impact and process evaluation
Extending the notion of guardianship
(Step 9)
Study environmental Criminology (Step 10)
• Understand the theory
– Routine Activity Theory
– Rational Choice Theory
– Crime Pattern Theory
– Importance of context and mechanisms
• Opportunity reduction
www.crimereduction.gov.uk
Think Thief (Step 11)
• Try to discover the reasons why crimes are committed –
not the psychological or social causes – but the immediate
benefits
• Knowing which of these reasons is dominant can help
define a focus of a problem solving project and unravel the
contributory factors
• Example: The New York City Subway
Expect offenders to react negatively (Step 12)
• In many cases preventative measures will deter offenders
from further activity. They can also have further
unintended effects which can be either positive or negative
• Negative adjustments include the following
– Defiance
– Displacement
– Adaptation
Theory of displacement (Step 13) and diffusion
of benefits (Step 14)
• Types: Geographical, Temporal, Target, Tactical, Crime
type
• Displacement is always a threat but there are strong
theoretical reasons for believing it is far from inevitable
• Even when displacement does occur it may be far from
complete
• Diffusion of benefits is the complete opposite to
displacement
• Offenders may be aware that prevention measures have
been introduced, but unsure of the precise scope
• diffusion is important as a counter argument
Defining a problem (Step 15)
• Say CHEERS! to define your problem
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Community: Who is experiencing the problem?
Harmful: What is the nature of the harm involved?
Expectation: How do the public expect the police to act?
Events: What types of event contribute to the problem?
Recurring: Where and when do these events recur?
Similarity: How are the events similar and/or related?
Classify your problem (Step 16)
• Specifying a problem allows comparisons to be
made with past problems or those experienced by
others. In particular:
– Know the behaviour; and
– Know the environment
Study journey to crime (Step 17)
Source: Brantingham and Jeffery (1981)
Know your hot spots (Step 18)
• Crime generators – places where large numbers of
people are attracted, generating opportunities for crime
(e.g.. shopping areas, festivals, etc)
• Crime attractors – places affording many criminal
opportunities that are well known to offenders (e.g..
prostitution and drug areas)
• Crime enablers – places where there is little regulation of
behaviour, no rules of conduct or no enforcement of rules
(e.g.. removal of car parking attendants)
The 80/20 rule (Step 19)
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20% of things are responsible for 80% of the outcomes (or
thereabouts)
A small number of people, places and/or products are responsible for
a large amount of crime
Identifies places that need most intervention
Offenders that need most attention
Victims that need most assistance
Examples,
– 72% of assaults were concentrated in 20% of pubs in a town in
England
– 18% of robbery in Croydon, London was concentrated into 0.6% of
the town’s area
– 55% of vehicle crime committed in Bromley, London) were
committed by 14 to 17 year olds (7% of the population)
– 73% of vehicle theft in Hatton Garden, London was scooter or
motorcycle theft
Formulate hypotheses (Step 20)
• What’s a hypothesis?
– An answer to a problem, can be either true or false
– Hypotheses come from experience or theory
Question: Why is there a particular problem with car thefts in
one area during the day
Hypothesis: ‘The problem is due to the large number of
offices and their car parks’
Test: Compare the counts of vehicle crime thefts in office car
parks in relation to other parking areas. Compare if these
trends differ between daytime and night time hours.
Diagnose your hot spot (Step 21)
• Distinguish between acute and chronic hot spots
• Is the problem a particular place, street or area (hot dots,
hot lines or hot areas)?
• Knowing this will help determine your response
• Start narrow then broaden your analysis
• Hot spot analysis provides early indicators of where to
focus attention but analysis mustn’t end there
Using high definition maps (Step 22)
• Most buildings, however, large, have only one street
address
• To understand why a particular building is insecure, crimes
need to be divided into specific categories and their
precise locations charted
• Examples:
– Car parks (Rengert, 2001)
– Housing estates (Poyner, 1997)
Consider daily/weekly rhythms (Step 23)
Time of day analysis of robberies in the London Borough of Hackney
(July 1997 to June 1998)
Day of w ee k analysis of roberries in the London Borough of Hackney
(July 1997 to June 1998)
120
• Day of week
• Time of day
Number of reported incidents
250
200
150
100
50
100
80
60
40
20
Day of week
Time of day
2301-0000
2201-2300
2101-2200
2001-2100
1901-2000
1801-1900
1701-1800
1601-1700
1501-1600
1401-1500
1301-1400
1201-1300
1101-1200
1001-1100
0901-1000
Saturday
0801-0900
Friday
0701-0800
Thursday
0601-0700
Wednesday
0501-0600
Tuesday
0401-0500
Monday
0301-0400
Sunday
0201-0300
0
0101-0200
0
0001-0100
Number of reported incidents
300
Consider long term trends too (Step 24)
Rates and denominators (Step 25)
British Crime Survey
• Two-thirds (64%) of all vehicle
crime happens when vehicles
are parked in the vicinity of the
victim's home.
• 36% of incidents take place on
the street outside the victim's
home
• 17% of all vehicle-related crime
takes place in public car parks
• But what about risk?
No. incidents
Thefts per 100,000
cars per day parked
in location
Home Garage
22
1.5
Home Drive
826
40.4
Home Street
1344
117.2
Other Street
534
327.4
Public Car
Park
711
454.1
Source: Clarke & Mayhew (1998)
Identify risky facilities (Step 26)
• Seven reasons for risky facilities:
– Many targets
– Hot products
– Location
– Repeat victimisation
– Crime attractors
– Weak controls (crime enablers)
– Provocations
Be ready for repeat victimisation (Step 27)
• 4% of victims account for 40% of victimisations
• It can be easy to miss the extent of RV because:
– Many victims do not report crime to the police
– Inaccurate address information in police records
– A ‘time window’ effect
• Knowledge of RV enables crime prevention resources to
be focused on people at the highest risk when they are at
most risk
Consider repeat offending (Step 28)
• A small proportion of offenders commit a large proportion
of crime
• Understanding repeat offenders’ objectives and motives
can help create prevention strategies
• When there is specific information that a few people are
responsible for most of a problem it can be productive to
focus on these individuals (though avoid harassing them!)
• Tackle repeat offending by:
– Removing facilitating environments
– Focusing on repeat victimisation
Which products are CRAVED? (Step 29)
• Crime is also concentrated on particular products that are
likely to be stolen. These ‘hot products’ include cars,
bicycles, and mobile phones. These products are
CRAVED:
– Concealable
– Removable
– Available
– Valuable
– Enjoyable
– Disposable
Look for crime facilitators (Step 30)
• Crime facilitators help offenders commit crimes or acts of
disorder. There are three types of facilitators:
– Physical
– Social
– Chemical
• If facilitators do play a role in the problem, then the next
step is to address the sources of the facilitators. Various
mixtures of facilitators are common, particularly social and
chemical in entertainment venues.
• It is important to identify the role of facilitators in a crime
problem since they may blunt crime prevention efforts
The five Ws (and one H!) (Step 31)
• A complete crime analysis should answer the six
questions: What, where, when, who, why and how
• Try to be as specific as possible
• Asking yourself these questions will help you better
understand the offence, identify where more analysis is
needed and ultimately plan more effective responses.
Accept your role at response (Step 32)
• Many police officers think they know what works in crime
prevention. Many are wrong. Be the authority on crime
prevention. Be the expert.
• Useful resources:
– Websites: Home Office, Australian Institute of
Criminology, National Institute of Justice, Office of
Community-Oriented Policing (COPS)
– Journals: Criminal Justice Abstracts, Security Journal,
Crime Prevention and Community Safety, Crime
Prevention Studies
• Know about situational crime prevention (the next five
steps will help!)
Increase the effort of crime (Step 33)
• The most basic category of SCP – these measures are
designed to make committing the crime more difficult to
achieve. These include:
– Target hardening – e.g. locks, screens, etc.
– Control access to facilities
– Screen exits
– Deflect offenders
– Control tools and weapons
Increase the risks of crime (Step 34)
• These measures are designed to increase the risk, or the
perceived risk, of committing crime:
– Extend guardianship
– Assist natural surveillance
– Reduce anonymity
– Utilise place managers
– Strengthen formal surveillance
Reduce the rewards of crime (Step 35)
• These measures are designed to make, crime less
rewarding or profitable:
– Conceal targets
– Remove targets
– Identify property
– Disrupt markets
– Deny benefits
Reduce provocations (Step 36)
• These measures aim to reduce features of a situation that
precipitate or induce crime:
– Reduce frustration and stress
– Avoid disputes
– Reduce emotional arousal
– Neutralise peer pressure
– Discourage imitation
Remove excuses for crime (Step 37)
• The fifth category of SCP recognises that offenders often
make moral judgments about their behaviour to ‘neutralise’
feelings of guilt or shame. These measures are all
designed to remove these excuses:
– Set rules
– Post instructions
– Alert conscience
– Assist compliance
– Control drugs and alcohol
Find the owner of the problem (Step 38)
• In developing a response you need to answer these three
questions:
– Who should have ownership of the problem?
– Why has the owner allowed the problem to develop?
– What is required to get the owner to undertake prevention?
Choose responses likely to be implemented
(Step 39)
• A responses is more likely to be implemented if it:
– is not too ambitious or costly
– Focuses on near, direct causes rather than distant, indirect ones
– Can be clearly articulated how the measure should impact the
problem (which mechanism is it using?)
• Five main obstacles to successful implementation:
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Unanticipated technical difficulties
Inadequate supervision of implementation
Failure to coordinate action among different agencies
Competing priorities
Unanticipated costs
Conduct a process evaluation (Step 40)
• A process evaluation asks the question, “was the
intervention put into place as planned and what alterations
were required”
• When responses are not implemented as planned, you
need to ask the question of why? This may be for a
number of reasons:
– You may have an inadequate understanding of the
problem
– Components of the project have failed
– Offenders may negatively adapt to your response
– There are unexpected external changes that impact on
the response
Use controls (Step 41)
• In order to be sure that the response caused the effect,
and not something else. You need to control for:
– Changes in size
– Cycles of activity
– Trends in the problem
– Other unexpected events
– Change in problem measurement
– Natural decline from an extreme high
Consider geographical and temporal
displacement (Step 42)
Look for displacement to other targets,
tactics and crime types (Step 43)
• In addition to geographical and temporal displacement,
offenders can switch targets, change their tactics or
change crimes.
• These are more difficult to detect and measure than
geographical or temporal displacement.
• You cannot find some forms of displacement unless you
look for it. Looking for displacement opportunities prior to
finalising a response gives you two advantages:
– you can develop measures for detecting it; and
– you can develop countermeasures that may prevent it.
Watch for other offenders (Step 44)
• Focusing on only removing offenders and leaving
opportunities to offender remain is not good practice and
has limited effects on problems
• However, combining enforcement work to remove
offenders with efforts to reduce the opportunities can have
a dramatic effect on crime.
Be alert to unexpected benefits (Step 45)
Expect premature falls in crime (Step 46)
• Sometimes responses appear to have positive effects
before they are officially put in place.
• Six possible explanations:
– Preparation-anticipation
– Publicity/disinformation
– Preparation-disruption
– Creeping implementation
– Preparation-training
– Motivation
Test for significance (Step 47)
• Crime fluctuates
• How do we know if the change in the problem is within
normal variation?
• Use a significance test to:
– Inform decision making by knowing the exact probability
the change is due to chance
– Reject or accept whether a response worked
• You can also use significance levels to estimate
confidence limits
Calculate costs (Step 48)
• Include all costs:
– capital and revenue
– Police costs, government costs, community costs
– Costs of the response and costs of the crime
• Property crimes, for example, have three costs:
– Monetary loss of items stolen
– Repair costs of damages incurred
– Intangible costs to the property owner
• Cost effectiveness
• Cost benefit
Tell a clear story (Step 49)
• NIM Problem Profile
– What is the nature of the problem?
– What causes the problem?
– What should be done about this problem?
• NIM Tactical Assessment
– Has the response brought about a reduction in the
problem?
• Logical format
• Use NIM guidelines
Make clear maps (Step 50)
• Keep maps simple – eliminate features that do not
contribute to understanding the problem
• Always include a scale and compass orientation (North is
to the top)
• Use meaningful gradations to show intensity of hot spots –
show colours becoming increasingly hot (yellow to red)
• Apply the correct dimensions of crime concentration
• Avoid graphics that draw more attention to themselves
than the data
• Make use of tables and figures along with maps
Use simple tables (Step 51)
• Percentages are made central to the story
• It is better to put causal factors in the column –
comparisons are then made across rows
• Instead of lines space is used to guide the readers eye
• The title informs the reader percentages are being used so
no need for percent sign
Table 2: Percentage of off-licences with reported beer thefts
(numbers in brackets)
Location of display
Thefts in June
0
1-2
3 or more
Total
Front
29.2 (7)
25.0 (6)
45.8 (11)
100.0 (24)
Rear
82.5 (33)
29.2 (7)
0.0 (0)
100.1 (40)
Use simple figures (Step 52)
Figure 3: Methods of entry
45
40
Percentage
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Front
Door
Rear
Door
Other
Rear
window
Unknown
Front
window
0
Unknown
Rear
window
Rear door
Other
Front
window
Front door
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
Front door
15%
3%
40%
25%
Front window
12%
5%
Other
Rear door
Rear window
Unknown
R
U
w
n
ow
ow
in
d
er
or
O
th
do
oo
r
do
w
td
tw
in
ea
r
nk
n
ea
r
R
Fr
on
Fr
on
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Design powerful presentations (Step 53)
• Begin with a basic question
• Move through a description of findings within a framework
• End with a set of specific conclusions
• The main focus of your presentation should be to answer
specific questions that will aid decision making and it
should consist of:
– A set of slides organised around your story
– A graphical motif or outline slide to keep your audience
focussed on the story
Become a good presenter (Step 54)
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Preparation
Check out the room on the presentation day
Projector
Presentation style
Power point
Be safe
Build experience
Contribute to the store of knowledge (Step 55)
• Two approaches to communicating with your peers
– Written reports
– Conferences
• A comprehensive communication strategy should include
– For those interested in the details: a technical report
published on a website
– For general interest: short articles in professional or
popular periodicals
– For professional colleagues and academics: a longer
article in a professional journal
– For small group of influential group of professionals: At
least one presentation at a professional conference
Summary
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Thinking about crime
Scanning
Analysis
Response
Assessment
Presentation
“How to become an effective problem solving police analyst”.
5 day course which takes you from being able to describe
crime to being able to explain crime – very interactive and
hands-on
Thank you
www.jdi.ucl.ac.uk