About a year ago, my team at Justice & Security Strategies started getting questions from police departments.
Administrators at smaller departments were asking: “What is the value of crime analysis and how do we defend the requests we want to make for these civilian positions?”
Before long, administrators from medium and large departments, facing budget cuts, were inquiring about similar dilemmas: “How do we keep crime analysts, justify them, make sure people understand what they do—and how do we work with the city budget people who don’t understand crime analysis and its value?”
And many chiefs and other senior administrators had questions of their own: “Why don’t we have something on cost-benefit analysis (CBA)? We know what the costs and the benefits are. Will that help us justify the positions and ask for more analysts?”
These are all great questions. In the budget scenarios that many cities are now facing, they’re trying to justify people and technology. Law enforcement is concerned about having the right type of analysts on the job, as well as keeping civilians, and not having these positions cut.
All of this coincides with a national effort by Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) to enhance the whole field of crime analysis.
Right now, the director of BJA, Denise O’Donnell, and the deputy director, Kristen Mahoney, are pursuing this idea of having analytics and analysis more and more within policing. And they’re pushing programs for training and technical assistance, improving curricula for crime analysts.
I’ve assisted with a new paper, Putting a Value on Crime Analysts, that explores these timely matters. This document is useful to members of Law Enforcement Forecasting Group (LEFG) and the BJA staff and grantees working on crime analysis-related issues.
The paper raises three key questions on the value of crime analysis.
First: What is the purpose? Why do we have crime analysts and what do we use them for? In some cases, analysts aren’t used for analytic purposes, and that doesn’t make any sense.
Second: What are the costs associated with crime analysis? We don’t think about the costs. It’s important for police to hone in on that and on the added value that crime analysts provide for them.
And third: Are there feasible alternatives to having a crime analyst on staff? That raises other questions: Do we use contractors; do we use researchers—and still get what we need but not necessarily have a staffer?
If people focus on those three areas, it will get them thinking about what crime analysts do, what their costs are, and what other ways there are to do this kind of work. And ultimately, that kind of thinking will buttress the arguments for crime analysts.
