Thinking Proactively on Police Innovation

Getting police to think more about using data in decision-making has become extremely important today, perhaps more than ever.

As a visiting fellow at the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), police innovation is an area I am focusing on, particularly predictive policing and smart policing, both of which involve analytics.

The era of proactive, problem-solving policing is here. Technology-based tools are in use in more and more communities across our nation to “pre-empt” crime by helping law enforcement predict, prevent, and reduce cross-jurisdictional violence. Modern crime fighting also helped police go from reacting to crimes to calculating where it is likely to happen and deploying personnel and resources there accordingly.