Police Information systems

This diagram is one I have devised to represent police information systems. The little stories, that I have persauded are not suitable for my thesis, that are posted below are design to explain this diagram. I hope some will find the information useful. The number of hits continues to grow on this blog much to my amazement, so I am confident that there is some interest out there.

A working day in the life safer neighbourhood team PC Khan

 

At 9.45 am PC Khan arrives at the locker room at the police community office which is a unit on a small trading estate which is shared by two ward safer neighbourhood teams. He switches on his radio and listens to the radio traffic as he changes into his uniform. He is particularly interested in anything that is happening on his ward as he or one of the two PCSOs on that day may not be the first officer to any incident but it will be their responsibility to deal with any matters that cannot be dealt with immediately by the response team. He walks into the office, logs onto one of the computer terminals that are free, he does not have his own computer, he hot desks with the other PCs and PCSO’s, the two sergeants try to maintain a system of their own desks and computer terminals but these are also up for grabs when they are not on duty. His life is very much ruled by his emails from supervisors, colleagues and members of the public and his calendar of his appointments. He prides himself that he knows what has been going on his beat whilst he has been off duty and has a system of searching various databases such as CRIS, CAD and CRIMINT to see what is relevant. He books on duty over the radio so the CAD operator can add him to the list of resources available for deployment. He is told there is a scheduled appointment to report burglary on his ward at 1130hrs, he says he will deal with it and gets the address and silently curses to himself, he knows that the burglary is a repeat victimisation, this is something he really needs to get to the bottom of. Last time it was just cash and a few computer games so it is likely to be kids who have done it. He decides he will walk down to the burglary address and take one of the PCSOs with him. On the way he will try to see the local park keeper to make sure that he is going to cut back the undergrowth around the trees like last year so that it is easy to see into the park from the road and hopefully discourage it being used as a place where some local youths to smoke cannabis; hopefully this will make it a safer environment for mums to bring their toddlers to use the play ground. He also needs to find time to visit one of the Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators on his ward to discuss crime prevention leaflet that that neighbourhood watch wants to put through residents doors about the recent spate of burglaries. Who knows he may even be able to nab that disqualified driver who seems to be still driving his car. He has put an information report on the PNC and created a CRIMINT entry but no luck yet.

A working day in the life of response team PC Jones

PC Jones arrives in the locker room in the basement of the police station at 13.40 hrs and changes into his uniform and clips on his personal radio on his belt. On the way upstairs he collects a charged battery and switches on his radio. His radio is now transmitting regular (at least once a minute) signals to a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) of his location. This signal is not being logged on any computer but if he pressed the emergency button on his radio the last signal of his radio will be flashed up on the screen of CAD terminals at the MPS call centre that covers his area. PC Jones knows from the duties database, Computer Aided Resource Management System (CARMS), that his posting for this month is to drive a response car and he knows there is a new one that is better than the rest so he wants to grab the keys and logbook before his colleagues. He saw it in the station yard as he walked in and sure enough the early turn driver is in the custody suite dealing with a prisoner. After a bit of banter that included a warning that there were new road works in the high street he managed to get the keys and quickly goes out to the station yard, checks over the vehicle and puts his bag of equipment inside, making sure that the early turn had taken all their stuff out. He rushes upstairs to the briefing room, arriving just in time for the late turn parade.

The parade is being taken by the section sergeant with about 15 of PC Jones’s colleagues present with the Duty Officer Inspector Shetty watching on. There are no surprises on the postings; he is posted to XX21 with PC Smith as the operator, refreshments at 6pm. The sergeant talks through the power-point briefing that has been prepared by the Borough Intelligence Unit (BIU) which has pictures of suspected active criminals and their modus operandi, maps of crime hotspots and officer safety instructions and advice. A short discussion takes place about missing child that the team had dealt with the previous day and which PC Smith had completed the necessary paperwork that included a Merlin entry and a referral to social services via the Borough’s community safety unit. Even though the parents had come into the police station to report the nine year old girl missing a CAD incident was created because it involved a number of urgent enquiries. Inspector Shetty thanked the team for their good co-ordinated work and said that fortunately the child had been found at a friend’s house by night duty. The parade ends and the section sergeant rings through the postings to the CAD operator at the MPS call centre so that the CAD system can be updated with who has been posted to which vehicle (by call-sign) and those that have been assigned to walk beats. She enquires which safer neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers are on-duty so she knows what resources are available if the need arises.

PC Jones is just settling into thinking there is time to have a quick cup of tea and a check of his emails when a call comes on the radio, “fight in progress, knife involved” and a location given as Acacia Avenue W13 outside The Eagle Public House. He acknowledges the call on his radio and shouts out to PC Smith and they both run down to the station yard and PC Jones jumps in the driver’s of the vehicle. PC Smith jumps into the front passenger seat and switches on the mobile data terminal. The mobile data terminal now if linked up to the CAD system and is transmitting GPS signals of the vehicles location, speed and direction every 15 seconds. This is logged and retrievable at a later stage. The call they are going to has been recorded on the CAD system by a CAD operator after a member of the public who has witnessed the fight has phone 999. The call has been graded “I” which means it is an emergency which warrants using blue lights and sirens. The target time is 12 minutes, which is measured as from the time the call was made. The operator has shown the type of call as “1” meaning violence against person and “69” meaning suspect armed and enters “knife” in comments field, the location is entered as “o/s Eagle Pub, Acacia Ave, W13; the computer confirms that as a unique location in London and automatically provides northing and easting coordinates of the centroid of 250 metre by 250 metre grid square that the Eagle Public House is located in. The callers details are enter and XX21 is shown assigned along with X4 and XX3. The free text of the incident is updated with the description of the suspects. PC Jones and Smith arrive at the scene of the Eagle Public House, there is no fight going on outside. PC Smith says “on scene” on her radio for the information of other units and the CAD operator who then updates CAD. Both PC Jones and Smith go into the Pub and look round, no fight. PC Jones says “All quiet on arrival” on his radio and then asks the CAD operator to phone back the caller asking them to make themselves known to police at the scene. This is all updated on the CAD system. The caller is found who explained that there had been a bad tempered row between three men who had just come out the public house; it looked like they were fighting over something that could have been a knife. Meanwhile the crew of X4 have stopped a person who meets the description of one of the suspects and are searching him for the knife. Another witness then is found by PC Jones who says all three men were seen to drive off in a vehicle and supplied the registration mark. PC Smith does a PNC check of the vehicle and obtains the registered owner details; there is an information report saying the owner of the vehicle is a disqualified driver. This information is circulated on the radio by PC Smith and unit is assigned to attend the home address. The end result of this incident is that the fight outside the Eagle Pub was for the car key, which was mistaken for a knife by the witness. The disqualified driver was not driving the car when it arrived at the owner’s house with police waiting. X4 let the person they stopped go after completing a search form, which would later be entered on the Stops database. The incident is resulted with “1” to show that the violence against the person had occurred and “77” entered to show that no offences had been disclosed; a comment “no knife” is also entered.

PC Jones and PC Smith attend various other incidents in their day’s work including a burglary for which PC Jones enters a crime report on CRIS. PC Smith arrests a shoplifter who it turns out has given a false name. The true name is identified after fingerprints are taken and reveals when a PNC names check is done that the person is wanted for failing to attend court on assault charges. There is a credit card in the arrested person’s possession that requires further investigation regarding his ownership.  The custody computer is updated by the custody sergeant, case papers completed, wanted missing report cancelled on the PNC, CRIS record updated regarding the assault and a new entry regarding the shoplifting: the credit card will be entered on the property computer and PC Jones helps by entering a CRIMINT report regarding the false name that the prisoner gave and tried to use the credit card to verify it. Lastly PC Jones obtains authorisation to claim overtime for himself and PC Smith so that all these information systems can be properly updated!

New Venn diagram for Orison

Orison left me a note saying he was fascinated by my Venn diagrams, but I have progressed. This is the one I have included in my thesis. Almost finished.

I have looked at the statistics. I am still getting over 50 visits a day and I have not published much for almost a year. Once I have submitted my thesis I intend to start publishing again. I have a lot to write about.

Does the National Statistician understand crime data?

I have broken my silence because I am seriously concerned. The National Statistician's Review of Crime Statistics in England and Wales  was published yesterday. This is what my last post but one referred to. I got the person of the National Statistician wrong. It is now Jil Matheson pictured above with Prime minister David Cameron and on her own.

Unsurprising she has recommended that the Office of National Statistics should take responsibility for crime statistics away from the Home Office. This recommendation 5. Recommendation 1 is:

"The body responsible for the publication of crime statistics should seek to improve the presentation of the statistics to give users and the public a clearer understanding of the overall picture of crime, by providing the major and other sources of crime statistics together with additional contextual information."

This will only happen if the statisticians understand the raw data they present. Figure 1 shown above of the report and the explanatory paragraph, clearly shows they do not understand the scope of police incidents. At best the paragraph and figure present a confusing, unclear explanation. In fact it is totally wrong, worryingly wrong, because whoever wrote paragraph and compiled the figure does not have the first clue about the reporting mechanisms resulting in police recorded crime and the contents of the incident database.

The incident database has details of less than 50% of notifiable offences that end up being counted as police recorded crime but contains hundreds of thousands of incidents that come within recorded crime categories that are not counted as police recorded crime. Additionally not all of the 4.3 million notifiable offences are mapped because either they have no mappable location or the fall outside the categorises that are mapped.

What is Geographic Information Science (GISc)?

I am aware that I have not posted for sometime. This is because I have been trying to get my thoughts together to start writing my PhD thesis. I thought I would post part of my introductory section discussing Science and Geographic Information Science (GISc). Without GISc there would be no crime maps so it is quite important. Everything I know about the subject and a lot more is contained in the excellent bestselling book in the world on the subject, that has recently been published in its 3rd edition - "Geographic Information Systems and Science" whose lead author just happens to be one of my supervisors - Professor Paul Longley.

What I am trying to do is explain why GISc is undoubtaby a science (something I needed to be convinced about when I first approached the subject) and to start laying the ground work to justify creating and comparing classifications between areas using crime and policing data.

Science

This section discusses the scientific context of the research. The discussion adopts a simplified approach, guided by others who have studied and written about the nature of science, its definitions and its academic divisions. These processes of definition, simplification, clustering and classification, often in an inexact and overlapping way, are of course central to the scientific method and central to the research carried out in this thesis.

The word ‘science’ is derived from the Latin via Old French and Middle English to denote ‘knowledge’ (Oxford online Dictionary). The purpose of all science is to transform raw data by analysis and/or experimentation into knowledge (Oxford online Dictionary, Longley et al 2010). Knowledge in this sense is an understanding of the system that is being studied so that it can be described by relationships, laws or theories that model its key dynamics. This is a process that goes further than describing a system by providing an insight into how it works. Part and parcel of understanding a system is to be able to identify uncertainties and where possible quantify them; the statistical use of confidence levels of results is an example of this. This quantification of variables and relationships allows research to be reviewed by peers with a view to validation and the generation of new knowledge through further scientific research.

Geographic Information Science (GISc)

The over-arching methodology used by this thesis is Geographic Information Science (GISc). Geography is defined by the (Oxford online Dictionary) as;

“the study of the physical features of the earth and its atmosphere, and of human activity as it affects and is affected by these, including the distribution of populations and resources and political and economic activities.”

The use of the word ‘Information’ refers to the organised collection of data, for instance in a database. GISc relies on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for the storage of geographic data and organising it so that it can be used for scientific purposes. The data in GIS come from a myriad of different sources, some of which are specific to the creation of mapping the surface of the earth such as satellite imagery and others that are by-products of other data gathering activities such as census data and land-ownership. The data from the disparate data sources are linked by the fact that each row of data in every data set in the system is geo-referenced. This allows the joining of the different data by location or the keeping the data sets separate by layering the data by location or a combination of both. This leads to mentioning the special nature of spatial data that is based on the Tobler’s first law of geography;

“Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things” (Tobler 1970).

Tobler’s law refers to spatial autocorrelation which affects the independence of variables which are analysed spatially. This spatial autocorrelation is two dimensional (unlike temporal autocorrelation which is one dimensional) because it radiates out from a fixed point. Both these facts necessitate the use of spatial statistics if the spatial nature of variables is being assessed. The complex nature of the application of Toblar’s Law to crime and policing data is discussed further in this thesis.

The creation of maps is a scientific process, representing the real world is a process of scale selection, data choice and emphasis based on purpose, generalisation and geovisualistion. These methods of representation are by their nature incomplete and imperfect as the only way to perfectly represent the real world is using a 1:1 scale which is pointless and totally impractical. This means that irregular lines on maps, such as coastlines and roads are simplified by excluding the smaller twists and turns; polygon zones are created to show features that are pertinent to the purpose of the map that generalise or amalgamate entities being represented. This can either be completely objective based on measurement and statistical criteria or purely subjective based on the eye of the mapmaker; often it is a combination, this where science meets art. Maps are designed to be intuitive (once the spatial language is understood) by duplicating how human-beings perceive and make sense of the real world both visually and intellectually. Our perception of things goes from the general to the more and more specific as the resolution increases; in a geographical sense, without the aid of maps, this involves travel, for instance moving from seeing a wood in the distance to entering the wood and only being able to see the trees. This raises the question, “Is it better to see the wood or the trees?” The answer is of course “It depends on your purpose.” The conclusion is that, in line with the saying “You cannot see the wood for the trees”, in many circumstances the general can be more important and informative than the specific.

Imperfect clustering and classification are fundamental to GISc. They can be applied to label areas on a map as forests even though there are areas within them of agricultural land or showing the residents of an area as “small town seniors” even though youth offenders are known to live there. The importance of this methodology to this thesis is that it allows hypotheses of relationships between different layers at the same locations to be proposed and comparisons between different locations to be investigated on a single or multi-layer basis. To continue with the tree example, it would be logical to have a polygon denoting timber production on a layer to spatially coincide with a polygon on a separate layer denoting forest but not necessarily all forest polygons spatially coinciding with timber production: If a polygon denoting timber production is nowhere near a forest polygon, this is worth further investigation and explanation.

GISc is a pure science because it is used to empirically measure and represent geographic characteristics and attempts to understand how they interact with each other. It is also an applied science because much of this knowledge is put to practical use, for example Internet crime maps for the public.

Crime Statistics, are the Statisticians to blame for lack of confidence?

Sir Michael Scholar, the UK's National Statistician, pictured above, has been asked by the Home Secretary to carry out a review of crime statistics with the purpose of increasing public confidence in them. He has published a questionaire that can be found here that anyone can complete and submit. Below are my thoughts. I probably have not started off very well by putting some of the blame for low confidence in the crime statistics on the statisticians themselves, but I try to tell it as I see it. Having heard Sir Michael speak at the Royal Statistical Society I am sure he and his staff will be receptive to my views.

Q1: Responsibility for the publication of crime statistics is to be moved out of the Home Office. Who should now assume this responsibility to increase public trust in the crime statistics?

It should be the responsibility of a body independent of government but reports to the Home Office in a similar way that the Bank of England is independent of the Treasury but reports to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

It would a mistake for it to be given to the UK Statistics Authority as I think that one of the major problems that needs to addressed is the fact that it is obvious that the statisticians do not understand the data fully, given its legal and procedural subtleties and have difficulty in producing reports that the policy makers or the public properly understand.

There is far more to crime statistics than just statistics, a major part of it is understanding crime and policing; which are the domains of criminology and police science. With the increasing use of maps to communicate the statistics to the public the discipline of Geographic Information Science is becoming more and more important.

Q2: Is there also a case for transferring responsibility for the management and/or compilation of data collected from the British Crime Survey and the police ? If so, where?

The National Audit Office should be seriously considered for police recorded crime. Even though the data is not financial per se, the skill sets of auditors are very compatible. One of the main challenges to the accuracy and integrity of police recorded crime statistics is that they are used as primary measures of police performance. The procedures for managing and collecting crime statistics to ensure uniformity within and between police forces needs to be overseen by people who have the forensic skills to identify deliberate under recording. As crime reduction and clear-up rates are directly related to individual police officers promotion prospects and pay the auditors should also have sanctions that they can enforce on individuals.

The British Crime Survey (BCS) should be totally independent of the police recorded crime statistics and pressure from the government. It has been a mistake to have one official publication trying to link police recorded crime with the BCS because it makes it look that the two sets of data can be compared directly. In most cases there are reasons why they cannot (due to business and youth crimes not being included for instance) the only notable exception is residential burglaries (but the fact that the BCS uses a rolling 12 month period and the police statistics use a fixed 12 month period affects this and the others crimes). As far more data is collected by the BCS than are published in the resulting dual publication it has the feel that the BCS data is being used to put a political spin on the police recorded crime data. This is at the hub of the need for independence. As important is the long term funding of the BCS so there is not a pressure to please the funding master/mistress to gain continued support.

The linking of different crime data sets should be done independently by academics and those putting them to practical use.

Another solution is to make the two data sets directly comparable which is preferable – see the 4th paragraph of the answer to Q5.

Q3: Currently, the Home Secretary determines what is recorded by the police as a crime and approves the Home Office Counting Rules for crime and statutory data requirements from the police. Should this continue or would public trust in the statistics be enhanced if this responsibility moved elsewhere? If so, where and why?

The Home Office should determine police priorities and ensure that bureaucracy is minimised; these are levers for doing this. The agency managing the collection of the police recorded data, my suggestion the National Audit Office, should be required to comment on whether the rules and requirements properly reflect the level and nature crime in the country.

Q4: The Terms of Reference for the review asks for consideration of the current definitions of crime. Do you have any comments?

Crimes in crime statistics always have a legal definition and sometimes in addition a descriptive label. For instance in law there is no offence of burglary dwelling, snatch, armed robbery, it is burglary, theft and robbery (with firearms offences). The labelling in the main allows offences against vehicles to be distinguished and with a bit of delving those offences against people; this should be made clearer. Equally important are those crimes that occurred in a private place or a public place. Under the present labelling it is often not possible to make any inferences in this regard. I think this is vital to understanding the crime problem and police performance.

There are ten Home Office (HO) crime types. The one that leads to the most misunderstanding, confusion and distrust is HO crime type 1 – violence against the person. It is not helped by the fact that statistics that are derived from it are referred as ‘violent crime’ by Home Office publications and politicians. The public order offence of violent disorder (that usually includes violence against the person but not necessarily) which is not included in HO crime type1, shows that violent crime in law applies to criminal damage as well as assaults. This aside, robberies, sexual assaults, aggravated burglaries, kidnapping and arson endangering life which are specifically violence against the person offences are not included in HO crime type 1. The inclusion of common assault (section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988) in the sub-type of ’without injury’ is misleading because there almost always is an injury but not of a permanent nature; only assaults without battery should be included in this sub-type.

If the category of violent crime is important to the public and politicians, which I believe it rightly is, then all crimes that are violent should be included in that category with sub-categories as necessary. If this means double counting of certain crimes because they also meet the criteria of another category, this should not be a problem as long as it is properly explained.

Q5: It has been said that the crime statistics provide a partial picture. What, if any, are the main gaps in Home Office crime statistics that you feel should be addressed as a priority?

Official Crime Statistics have taken advantage of police computerisation of crime records in the collection of data but not in the scope of what data is collected.

Police accountability and crime prevention would be aided by counts of characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, geodemographic group for instance) of victims of crime and suspected offenders broken down by crime types and offences. Advances have been made in providing location data about crimes through the medium of maps on the Internet, the accountability and crime prevention advantage could be further enhanced by the provision of data of when (date, day, hour) offences had been committed and/or discovered.

The dark figure of unreported and unrecorded crimes is very important to assessing police performance and confidence in police. I would argue the best proxy measure of confidence in police and police efficiency is the size of that dark figure which is known to vary from offence to offence. The BCS was originally set-up to shed light on this dark figure but as I have mentioned in my answer to Q2 the lack of direct comparability of the two data sets affects the confidence in the accuracy of the estimates produced. A reliable figure can be produced of unreported and reported BCS crimes but the figure for reported and unreported police recorded crime is less reliable. This makes the important figure of those crimes reported to the police but not recorded by the police also unreliable.

The solution to this is not to change the methodology of the BCS but to extract only those crimes that are covered by BCS from the police crime computers for comparison purposes. This is feasible given the data contained within each police crime record and the modern searching power of computers. If the characteristics of victims was also included then very useful assessments of police engagement with different communities would result and provide a good proxy indicator of the level of confidence different communities have in the police. The accurate assessment of the nature of the dark figure for different offences would provide a good measure of police effectiveness and efficiency. This would balance police recorded crime reduction targets that can be achieved through the public feeling that it is not worthwhile reporting crimes to the police.

The Reassurance Gap that led police to realign resources from response policing to neighbourhood policing arose because the public perceived that the crime problem was getting worse even though the official crime figures were showing year on year improvements. The analysis of this included an assessment that one of the reasons for this was that the official crime figures did not match the experiences of people. Drawing on Incivility Theory from the USA and the newly developed Signal Crime Perspective in the UK it is generally agreed that the observable nature of crime and disorder rather than officially collected crime figures influence people’s perception of crime and therefore their level of fear of crime. The all pervasive low level disorder (antisocial behaviour or incivilities) has as much influence, if not more, than the observation of serious crime on people’s perception. Police recorded crime, because of the way it is collected and legally categorised will never be totally in tune with people’s perceptions. My research includes analysing police incident data to see if the data can be used to produce maps that more closely match people’s observations of crime and disorder. The importance of this is that if policy makers and police have a view of the policing problem in a neighbourhood that is not matched by the communities living and frequenting there then there will be a mismatch of priorities and expectations. Research has shown that trust is based on good engagement and communication, crime statistics and maps based on them can either alienate or engage. Police incident data is being used to map anti-social behaviour but it should be used much more widely to reflect the nature and levels of violent crime. Police incident data has the added value of having good temporal attributes and shows details of the police response and priorities, and also the priorities and engagement of the public.

Q6: What are the most important considerations for trustworthy crime statistics?

The most important consideration for trustworthy crime statistics is that they are understood. The Home Office Counting rules, legal definitions, Home Office Crime Types, especially in relationship to violent crime are all barriers to proper understanding of police recorded crime. The intricacies of methodology and statistical techniques are barriers to properly understanding, evaluating and therefore trusting the BCS statistics.

The police incident data set is in everyday language, it reflects what people observe and it is easy to explain the origins and validity of the data. It cannot replace the police recorded crime statistics or the BCS but it enables the public to know and understand what the police in their local area are dealing with on a day to day basis. My evaluation of police incident data shows that police recorded crime probably accounts for fewer than 50% of their workload of crime and disorder related. This means that crime statistics would be considerably enhanced as a performance measure if police incident data were included.

Q7: What do you consider to be the main strengths of crime statistics?

The main strength of crime statistics especially when applied to a local level through mapping is that they are extremely popular. This provides an excellent communication and engagement tool that should be used positively and honestly.

Police need to exploit this popularity by including police activity data within their maps to reassure the public and demonstrate their worth to society that is far more than what is revealed in the present crime statistics.

Q8: Do you have any other views you wish to feed into this review?

The spatio-temporal characteristics of offences are extremely important to crime prevention as are the characteristics of victim and offenders for crime prevention and public engagement. This points to an integrated system of maps using police recorded crime, police crime system, police incident management system and BCS as source data. My PhD research involves designing such a system with spatio-temporal clustering and classification at its heart.