The geography of sex offenders - the modern day lepers

This is a very difficult subject to write about without being misunderstood. Fortunately this excellent article does not need explanation other than to say it is all about fear, crime and mapping.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23063492

Replacing CRIS and CAD and all that

Multi-million pound first generation operational police information systems are coming to end of their natural lives. These legacy systems are based on 1970-90s mainframe technology and software. They are characterised by the way they duplicated functionality of the paper-based systems which they replaced. This is the reason why there are entirely separate systems for crime, major investigations, criminal records, vehicles, police response to incidents, custody, missing persons, property, case papers and intelligence to name the more obvious. They cause operational police officers to spend so much time in police stations doing paperwork  because each system is updated separately.

There is good news and good news. The replacement of the legacy systems provide a unique opportunity for police forces to save money and make policing more efficient and effective at the same time.

How do police save money? Simple, they have an opportunity to get out of the multi-million pound annual cost of running and maintaining the legacy systems. New systems are much cheaper to run than old ones. We all know that. I can remember back in the mid 1980s when houses that now sell for over £300,000 went for £30,000 and video recorders cost £700 each. Police forces are maintaining the equivalent of £7,000 video recorder information systems when something far better can be purchased for £50.

Secondly, how can police become more efficient and effective? This is equally simple and obvious. Operational policing is not actually separated into different functions. Policing is one big consistent function. The reason why an incident is deemed to be a policing matter is because there is a crime or disorder aspect to that incident. Incidents are therefore the front end of crime recording and investigation. Crime investigation is a fundamental source of intelligence. Crime investigation and proactive policing requires intelligence and both require prevention strategies to be efficient and effective. Crime, custody, intelligence and case papers are equally all part of the same overall process. This leads to the second generation concept of big data and a single database  in the “cloud”. The cloud architecture  allows police information systems to be developed and maintained as a service, again reducing costs, and importantly enabling changes to be made with improvements in technology.

In the past computer performance and memory capacity  encouraged silo databases; lack of confidence, expertise and imagination resulted computerised paper-base systems.  These systems where not based on policing in the round.  Policing in the round has basic building blocks.  Firstly those described by Problem Oriented Policing (POP) of the essential elements crime/disorder , Offender, Victim and Location.  Secondly those described by the National Intelligence Model  (NIM) of the interlocking processes of Intelligence, Prevention and Enforcement as methods of tackling that crime/disorder.

These building blocks need to be the basis of the big single dataset. All data should be collected and used for all three NIM processes; Intelligence, Prevention and Enforcement. The databases should follow the POP model of Offender, Victim and Location in an expanded form to include time, commodity (e.g. stolen property and controlled drug), and evidence (including identification and forensic) with the connecting strand of police investigation and case management and prosecution.

Crime/disorder and policing are geographic. One of the elements sacrificed in the first generation of police information  systems was the precise and accurate recording the occurrence of crime/disorder and policing activities. Location and time information are essential to the three elements of the NIM; Intelligence, Prevention and Enforcement. New mobile tablets enable locations and time relating to police activity be precisely and accurately recorded with the aid of Global Positioning Systems (GPS). These mobile tablets allow real time recording of investigations providing push/pull information and the efficiency of single entry information. This means that police officers can be provided with details the victim of crime that has been recorded at a police call centre and given other background information (situational awareness) –the push: and request more specific information - the pull. The process of reporting is a simple series of screens appropriate to the crime and gathering of photographs and sound as appropriate by the tablet. Once that is entered into the big database in real time it is available for supervision and further work by colleagues.

This leads to another important aspect of modern policing: police performance and police accountability to the general public. The real time situation awareness obviously aids appropriate responses to vulnerable and repeat victims but this goes beyond that to spatial-temporal analysis of the public’s demand for policing and the way in which police respond to that demand. The comprehensive recording of that public demand and the police activity in response to it that is feasible in second generation big data systems allows sophisticated analysis to take place that can be made available to the public.

Lastly the real challenge in the next two to five years is the transition phase between the first and second generation systems. On the technical side, legacy systems need to be phased out seamlessly to the user. This requires bespoke software systems that allow data to be migrated to new hardware whilst maintaining 24/7 functionality. This software ideally needs to be open-source to minimise licensing costs and allow co-operation between service providers.

These are exciting times.

Police Accountability

Unlike the previous survey this is one I designed myself and should take you less that 5 minutes to do. It will help me in my research so please complete it Click here to take survey It is about Police accountability and the need for my geo-policing classifications. Thanks

crime map survey

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGtMWmdwR3ktalZTcFJDR1I1UG5tOFE6MQ

Best Police in the World?

The British Crime Survey is now called the the Crime Survey of England and Wales, which it always was because it never included Scotland. On 29th of November the Home produced a detailed analysis of the public's perception of the police which be found here.

This is an interesting document for various reasons;

• It is produced by a coalition government which has scrapped police perception targets as police performance indicators.
• It is clear that in that all the measures have improved after the Labour Government introduced Neighbourhood Policing (NP), reversing a downward trend in the Tory years on the 1980-90s.
• The public's confidence in the police continues to rise in the recent coalition years, but this is in a period where policing style has not changed. The real test is is in the years to come with reduced budgets and pressures on NP to perform to the same standard with fewer resources.
• It is amazing to me that police manage to serve all members of society in a way that within broader parameters they have similar responses to quetions, the biggest difference is between adults and young people but that is no surprise.

Over all this report is a ringing endorsement of the professionalism of police in England and Wales, long may it continue.

Situational Awareness - Where do criminals live?

This is a carry on from the previous discussion. Situational awareness is a location based tool that allows as police officers to have the heads up regarding dangers and policing opportunities in the area in which they are working.

I am really thinking outloud so I am allowed to disagree with myself or clarify what I have previously said once I have had time to think about things.

I think most people would agree that if a police officer is to attend a home to deal with an incident it is useful in a situational awareness sense to know if for instance a known dangerous criminal lives there or is otherwise associated with the address (girlfriend, parents, etc).

It will not surprise you to learn that criminals especially career criminals do not lead conventional livestyles so when they get arrested they try to hide where they really live from police. Now this is where things get really difficult; what if a violent dangerous criminal is under surveillance by a police team and knows that he frequents and address not recorded on the police database, should they compromise their operation to enhance the situational awareness of the patrolling officer and how is this information meant to be conveyed to the officer and how should they react to ensure this information is not compromised. This is A1 intelligence what if it is not, say from an informant, does that make a difference. Should the dessemination grading (the third 5) be honoured even when it is assessed that police officers lives are at risk.

Increased situational awareness is accompanied by new dilemas. Some may argue ignorance is bliss, treat every situation of its merits; that what we had to do in my day etc, etc. The police are looking for technology to fill the created by budget cuts, there is no higher priority than protecting the protectors.

Police Intelligence Systems

I have am very fortunate to be involved with a consortium that is working to design the next generation of police information systems. Part of this project is to give police officers relevant real time information based on their location and assignment that keeps them safe and makes them more effective in their work, whether it be catching criminals or dealing with victims. The term for this is situation awareness.

The key to this is mobile tablet devices similar to iphones or ipads (that will replace the officers note book and pen) that through GPS signals knows exactly where the officer is located and through geo-coding of  incidents knows exactly where the officer is going.

The next question is what the officer needs to know. This is where semantics come into play  - are we going to supply the officer with data, information or intelligence? I think we can first rid of the notion that we may supply the officer with data. There is no exact universally accepted definition of the word data (or even whether it should be used as a plural or singular) but "facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis" (Oxford Dictionaries) seem to be as good as any. This is not what the officer wants s/he needs stuff that is specific and location/time based.

OK here we get into more semantics. I have been taught in the police that intelligence is actionable information. This does not work for me because it misunderstands the nature of information. Information is "facts provided or learned about something or someone" (Oxford Dictionaries). Intelligence by its nature needs to be accompanied by an assessment of how likely it is to be fact. Therefore only A1 (see above) information can regarded as information the rest is intelligence. That is why I have shown the 5x5x5 intelligence grading above that I obtained here.

Fortunately there is a wealth of A1 intelligence or information available to the operational officer. This information is a by-product of the force incident, crime and welfare systems and national criminal records, warning signals and wanted/missing records. I would argue that this is the type of information the officer needs for situational awareness. Graded intelligence should only be included if there is an over-whelming officer or public safety consideration.

This is where the circle is completed. Who collects this information? The answer is the same uniform operational officer that needs it for situational awareness. And how is it collected? Through "Apps" on the mobile device that provide the officer with the situational awareness information. Why do we know that the information is geo-located accurately? Because exact GPS locations are collected through the mobile device by the reporting officer.