Policing to prevent crime and disorder
The conceptual framework for the modern-day professional police force can be traced back to a 19th century British cabinet-level official named Sir Robert Peel. In the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829, Peel focused upon key tenets – legitimacy, community integration and use of force. However, the crux of the policing mission is found in the first of the abovementioned tenets: “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.”
Peel's philosophies provide a baseline for policing today, a baseline that serves as a compass for SAS' approach to advancing today's police force. Prevention is as sound an idea today as it was in 1829. Fortunately, law enforcement tools available to support the concept today are a bit more advanced.
Reality bites: The challenges
Many police agencies today struggle by running from call to call. The reactive "calls for service" model focuses on short-term responses, drains finite resources and prohibits longer-range strategic approaches to solving community problems.
Many law-enforcement challenges are the product of sea changes that have occurred within the last decade – most notably since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The changes include:
- The need to integrate data internally and share information externally. The linking of previously disparate data repositories serves as a core function of the nation's fusion center system.
- Law enforcement agencies grappling mightily with what to do with the data they derive from new and improved technologies.
- Staff cuts – both sworn and civilian – brought on by the global recession, while stakeholder and community demands have increased.
These changes have created significant cultural and operational challenges for law enforcement – data influx, decreased information stovepipes, reduced staffing and heightened community safety expectations.
Strategic opportunities abound
With challenges come opportunities. But how can we help police agencies move from theory to action? The potential future directions can be illustrated by the following questions:
- How can law enforcement change the existing business model?
- How do we move from the reactive "calls for service" model to a preventive policing approach?
- How do we best use the information that we already collect?
- What information do we need from others? How can we get it?
- How do we optimize our available resources?
- How do we prevent the next crime?The questions no longer focus solely on changing a business model for change's sake – the questions now, and the resultant opportunities, are driven by necessity.
Law enforcement agencies will not likely see an influx of funds or staffing anytime soon. Thus, leaders must think strategically about how to best prevent crime and disorder while managing fiscal realities. Further, data from today's policing technologies piles up in disparate databases to support disparate activities. For today's police leaders, these challenges are real, and it's essential for them to optimize their available resources – staffing and data.
SAS and preventive policing
SAS understands Peel’s theoretical underpinnings and the practical challenges facing our nation’s law enforcement agencies today. We also understand how to optimize available resources and support law enforcement’s prevention mission. How? We can accomplish both by:
- Integrating massive amounts of information in multiple disparate systems. SAS provides data-driven insights to help guide decision making.
- Applying advanced analytics to prevent crime by detecting and anticipating criminal activities, traffic crashes and other threats to civic life.
- Providing needed information in a meaningful format to decision makers – from police executives to line officers – and guiding resource allocation as well as prevention, intervention and/or suppression tactics.
SAS can help law enforcement agencies and practitioners establish a robust, information-led framework that supports innovative efforts to reduce crime, disorder, victimization, vehicle crashes and other threats to increase community and officer safety
Rooted in the foundation
SAS’ market-leading analytic capacity provides meaningful tools to support law enforcement’s strategic and tactical approaches – and to anticipate, and consequently forestall, criminal activity. Sir Robert Peel’s prevention focus still resounds today. SAS embraces this history, the challenges it poses, and the opportunity to help law enforcement agencies.
Bio: Vincent Talucci is a Senior Industry Consultant with SAS' State and Local Government practice, serving as primary liasion to the police community. A former director of the State and Provincial Police Division of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, he served on the executive leadership team, represented the policy interests of US state police organizations and maintained oversight of IACP's information-sharing, homeland-security and technology efforts.
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