Divisions | Administration | Crime Analysis
During its history in the New Haven Police Department, Crime Analysis has gone through several transitions. In the 1980's, a crime analysis team combed through police reports and police records, looking for trends by location, by the name of a person or a gang, by crime type, or by a combination of these elements. The information collected took a long time to analyze and was often misused or under-used. Nevertheless, there was an appreciation for the significance of this data and its usefulness, and these early efforts laid the foundation for more sophisticated analysis.
In the early 1990's, the New Haven Police Department underwent a transformation toward community based policing. Crime analysis as a formal unit was disbanded. It was believed that Patrol Officers, working in conjunction with the community, would individually and intuitively analyze crime based on their own knowledge and the input of the community. Under this approach, however, there was no mechanism to share individual observations with the organization as a whole, and the Department could not use crime analysis as a tool for planning or developing policy.
Today, the New Haven Police Department is in the process of re-creating the Crime Analysis unit to augment and compliment what Officers do in the field. It is hoped and intended that crime analysis will serve as a resource for district managers and administration with long-term problem solving and planning for the allocation and implementation of police service.
Thanks to computerized tracking of calls for service, computerized arrest and offense information, and computer tools to analyze this information, what would have normally taken the crime analyst weeks to review can be accomplished within hours. Soon, Crime Analysis may have the capacity to redraw police beat boundaries every eight hours (every shift), to reflect what is needed within the community to fight crime, maintain good order, and help increase the standard of living for all citizens.
