Become a Problem Solving Crime Analyst In 55 small steps 1 Become a Problem Solving Crime Analyst In 55 small steps er M Handl Offender Place anager CRIME Target/victim Guardian Ronald V. Clarke John Eck Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science University College London Published by Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science University College London 29/30 Tavistock Square London WC1H 9QU © Ronald Clarke and John Eck 2003 All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence permitting copying in the UK issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 4LP First published 2003 ISBN 0-9545607-0-1 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Project management by Deer Park Productions Design and typeset by Pantek Arts Ltd Printed and bound by Ashford Colour Press Ronald Clarke Ronald Clarke is Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Visiting Professor at the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science. He worked for many years in the Home Office Research and Planning Unit where he con- tributed to the development of situational crime prevention and the British Crime Survey. He has recently undertaken case studies of problem-oriented policing together with Herman Goldstein. He helped to develop the Center for Problem- Oriented Policing and the Problem-Oriented Guide Series for the US Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Dr Clarke is chair of the judges for the annual Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing. He can be reached at: [email protected] John Eck John Eck is Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He has contributed to the development of problem- oriented policing since 1984 when he studied the first full scale attempt to implement the concept in the United States at Newport News, Virginia. He helped to develop a number of now standard techniques in problem solving, including the SARA model and the crime analysis triangle. He was a cofounder of the International Problem-Oriented Policing Conference held annually in San Diego. Dr Eck has served as consultant to the London Metropolitan Police and since 1999 has been a judge for the Tilley Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing. He can be reached at: [email protected] Acknowledgements In assembling this manual we have drawn freely on the work of many colleagues and friends to whom we owe a large debt of gratitude. Those who have commented on drafts of or supplied material for the manual include: Pat and Paul Brantingham, Andy Brumwell, Rachel Boba, Kate Bowers, Barbie Brookover, Spencer Chainey, Paul Ekblom, Graham Farrell, Bonnie Fisher, Herman Goldstein, Alex Hirschfield, Shane Johnson, Scott Keay, Johannes Knutsson, Gloria Laycock, Mangai Natarajan, Michael Maxfield, Ken Pease, Nanci Plouffe, Barry Poyner, Jerry Ratcliffe, George Rengert, Nick Ross, Kim Rossmo, Karin Schmerler, Nick Tilley, Julie Wartell, Barry Webb and John Wooldredge. We owe special thanks to Marcus Felson who helped design the manual and who supplied material for some of the sections. Finally, we thank the Home Office for sponsoring our work. The 55 Steps Prepare yourself 1. Read this first 2. Rethink your job 3. Be the local crime expert 4. Know the limits of conventional policing Learn about problem-oriented policing 5. Become a POP expert 6. Be true to POP 7. Be very crime specific 8. Be guided by SARA – but not led astray! Study environmental criminology 9. Use the crime triangle 10. Never forget opportunity makes the thief 11. Always ‘think thief’ 12. Expect offenders to react negatively 13. Don’t be ground down by the displacement pessimists 14. Expect diffusion of benefits Scan for crime problems 15. Say Cheers! when defining a problem 16. Know what kind of problem you have 17. Study the journey to crime 18. Know how hot spots develop 19. Learn if the 80–20 rule applies Analyse in depth 20. Formulate hypotheses 21. Diagnose your hot spot 22. Know when to use high-definition maps 23. Pay attention to daily and weekly rhythms 24. Take account of long-term change 25. Know how to use rates and denominators 26. Identify risky facilities 27. Be ready for repeat victimisation 28. Consider repeat offending 29. Know which products are CRAVED by thieves 30. Look for crime facilitators 31. Check you have answered the five ‘W’ (and one ‘H’) questions Find a practical response 32. Accept your key role at response 33. Increase the effort of crime 34. Increase the risks of crime 35. Reduce the rewards of crime 36. Reduce provocations 37. Remove excuses for crime 38. Find the owner of the problem 39. Choose responses likely to be implemented Assess the impact 40. Conduct a process evaluation 41. Know how to use controls 42. Consider geographical and temporal displacement 43. Examine displacement to other targets, tactics and crime types 44. Watch for other offenders moving in 45. Be alert to unexpected benefits 46. Expect premature falls in crime 47. Test for significance 48. Calculate costs Communicate effectively 49. Tell a clear story 50. Make clear maps 51. Use simple tables 52. Use simple figures 53. Design powerful presentations 54. Become a good presenter 55. Contribute to the store of knowledge Foreword You who read this manual are more important than perhaps you think. Crime analysts are not well-known to the general public. You don’t star in peak-time TV series or big-screen movies as do behavioural profilers or forensic scientists. Even some of your colleagues in the police aren’t sure what you’re about. But you are the new face of policing. For years the police have contented themselves with chasing individual crimes after they have taken place. Crimes have been regarded as episodes to be detected, and if they result in a conviction the case is thought to be ‘solved’. This is manifestly mad. So mad, in fact, it is astonishing that soci- ety hasn’t rumbled it, complained very loudly and demanded a smarter approach. Running after crooks relentlessly is too late, like catching the horse (if you’re lucky) after it has bolted for the hundredth time rather than learning how to lock the stable door. It is as though when aircraft crashed we contented ourselves with finding someone to blame rather than changing procedures or amending designs. When people do consider causes of crime they tend to talk of distant issues that cannot be changed quickly (like parenting or poverty); they neglect the more immediate causes – things that it is often quite easy to influence. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that answers to crime are lying all around us waiting to be picked up. That is what this manual is all about. But who will champion this new approach when almost all those in the crime industry have a vested interest in the status quo? The media prefer to see crime as a series of individual human dramas which every now and then reward them with juicy headlines. Lawyers are steeped in tradi- tional ways of doing things (indeed they are taught that precedence is a virtue) and are broadly content with a system which puts them at the centre and feathers their nests. Most politicians, shuffling from one policy portfolio to another, reckon crime can be tackled intuitively which, for them, means being tougher if they’re of conservative inclination, and softer if they’re liberal. And many criminologists have been too interested in theorising to be of any practical value to anyone but themselves. It has been left to a new breed of thoughtful police officers, plus a few diligent and unsung civil servants, and one or two enlightened politicians in high places, to recognise that a new approach is needed. This smarter way is based on the work of a precious minority of academics, many of whose names you will come across in these pages. They are mostly criminologists, but their brand of criminology is distinctive. For one thing it is intensely practical. It is concerned with outcomes. For another, it is much more truly scientific and evidence-driven than the impenetrable analysis that sometimes passes for good work in social science essays. In short, they are consultants in crime reduction. Yet there has been nothing to distinguish these intensely practical people from the great majority of sociological theorists that populate schools of criminology and criminal justice. This led me to coin a term for them and for the new approach they champion: crime science. Crime science has three features. Its sole purpose is to reduce crime and so reduce victimisation. It is scientific in its methodology, by which I mean it aims for the same high standards of evidence that would be accepted by physicists or aeronautical engineers. And thirdly it is multidisciplinary: Foreword it recruits every possible skill towards its cause. That is why in the following pages you will see ideas that come from geography, psychology, mathematics, epidemiology (the study of how dis- ease spreads), economics and many other schools of knowledge. Not all the academics I admire call themselves crime scientists, though I hope one day they will, and as in any discipline there are healthy disagreements, not least about scientific methodologies. But the concept of crime science groups together those who care about hard evidence, who are concerned with how to change things, not merely theorise. Crime scientists look for patterns in crime so that they can find ways to disrupt it. One of the most important breakthroughs has been in rethinking the role of the police them- selves. It involves a change in emphasis from chasing criminals to outwitting them. The idea, developed by Herman Goldstein, is wonderfully simple: instead of being reactive to crime, con- centrate on your biggest problems and seize the initiative. The name given to the idea is equally straightforward: problem oriented policing, or simpler still, POP. In reality POP involves some pretty sophisticated stuff. It requires smart thinking. Crime science can create new tools to make POP possible, but who are the professionals who will do the analysis of data and identify patterns at the local level? Who will construct hypotheses on how to intervene and put those ideas to the test? Who will create strategies that the police and other crime reduc- tion partners can then act on? Who can gently but firmly lead society away from being so reactive to the new smart way of detecting baddies quickly and heading off trouble before it starts? Need I say it? You. Police analysts will become more important, indeed increasingly will be seen as crucial, if we are to tackle crime more intelligently. You are the brains, the expert, the specialist, the boffin. Your role requires three qualities that do not always come naturally: application, scepticism, and persistence. Application because much of what follows on these pages has to be learned and understood; it is counterintuitive, or at any rate is only self-evident once you have worked your way through it. And application is essential in your day-to-day work because good science needs good evidence and good evidence usually means hard work in finding, understanding and pro- cessing the data. Cutting corners is almost certain to turn you from a crime scientist into a con artist. You will need scepticism because that is the very foundation of good science. Never take anything for granted. Beliefs come free, but evidence is costly, sometimes challenging our own prejudices. Be sceptical reading this manual, be sceptical about what colleagues tell you (how do they know, how reliable is their evidence, how much do they really understand the issues?), be sceptical about data (do they really tell you what they purport to tell you?) and remember that sci- ence is not a set of subjects like physics or biology, but a rigorous methodology for testing and re-testing things we believe to be true. And you must be persistentbecause these are early days in crime science; some people will disregard you, others will think you are meddling in things that don’t concern you, most will need persuading. Forgive us if you know much of this already. To those who are already well-versed in crime science this manual may seem simplistic. But the truth is very few people yet understand these concepts, and to most readers nearly all of what follows will be new. I hope it will be not only extremely useful to you as a handbook, but exhilarating too. Nick Ross BBC Crimewatch UK Chairman, the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, UCL 1 Read this first This manual assumes that you are already job, and the early sections of the manual working as an analyst and that you are accus- explain how you must take a more proactive tomed to providing the kind of information approach. You cannot simply wait for your needed to support police operations. This police colleagues to come to you with means that: requests for information. Instead you must take the initiative at every stage of the project 1. you know how to use modern computing in defining the scope of the problem-solving facilities and how to access and manipulate effort, in trying to analyse the causes of the comprehensive databases; problem, in helping to find an effective 2. you know how to use software to map response and in setting up the project so that crime, to identify hot spots and to relate it can be evaluated and the police can learn these to demographic and other data; from the results. 3. you routinely produce charts showing weekly or monthly changes in crime at The manual also assumes that analysts who force and beat level, perhaps to support take on this new role are interested in con- Compstat-style operations; tributing to the development of their 4. you are accustomed to carrying out small profession. Assisted by vastly improved data- investigations into such topics as the rela- bases and powerful computing hardware and tionship between the addresses of known software, crime analysis is on the verge of offenders and local outbreaks of car theft becoming an exciting new specialty. Indeed, it and burglary; has already begun to attract a cadre of well- 5. you have probably carried out some before- trained and highly motivated professionals and-after evaluations of crackdowns, say on who are vital to the development of policing in residential burglaries or car thefts; and the twenty-first century. You can make your 6. you have some basic knowledge of statistics contribution by communicating the results of and research methodology such as pro- your work in professional meetings and in the vided by an undergraduate social science journals. By doing so, you will not only help degree. your profession and policing in general, but you will become a more informed and valu- This manual builds on this experience to pre- able resource to your own force. pare you for a different analytic role as a key member of a problem-solving team. Indeed, the The manual is short enough to get through in a latest writings on problem-oriented policing weekend. It would be hard work and probably see crime analysts as central to this new way of worth doing, but it was not designed to be read policing communities. They argue that many of and then shelved. Instead, we hope that you will the weaknesses of current practice in problem- find it to be an indispensable reference source oriented policing result from the insufficient that you will keep near your desk, consulting it involvement of well-trained crime analysts at whenever you need in the course of a problem- each stage of the problem-solving process. solving project. This is why it is designed to be robust, allowing for continuous use. When open The manual prepares you for this new role by at a particular step it is designed to lie flat on providing you with a basic knowledge of prob- your desk so that you can consult it easily when lem-oriented policing and the related fields working at your computer. of environmental criminology and situational crime prevention. These fields are encom- We have arranged the steps to follow logically passed by the new discipline of crime science one from another, in line with the SARA model and you cannot adequately function as a (Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment), problem-solving crime analyst without being though each is self-contained and deals with a conversant with them. Nor can you adequately specific topic. This should avoid your having to function in this role unless you rethink your leaf through the manual, jumping from place to