Predictive analytics and Policing: Translating cutting-edge academic research into actionable intelligence and developing useable software tools

Summary

Criminological research has for some time focused on the types of people that commit crime and why they might do so. However, over the last decade, there has been substantial progress in research concerned with the complimentary question of whether there exist regularities in how, where and when crimes are committed. Such research has demonstrated that the risk of crime is not random, but that the risk of crime is greater for some people, in particular neighbourhoods, and at some homes. Similarly, research demonstrates that the risk of crime varies over time. For instance, crime is more likely at certain times of the day and months of the year. These findings have clear implications for operational policing and currently inform the crime reduction strategies adopted by many UK police forces.

More recent academic research conducted by the applicants demonstrates that other regularities in crime patterns exist and that their identification can inform police decision-making in such a way so as to lead to the more effective use of police (and other) resources. For example, our research shows that when a burglary occurs at one location, others are more likely to occur at the same location or nearby in the near future. Put another way, the risk of burglary spreads in much the same ways as a communicable disease. Importantly, the identification of such regularities can provide intelligence that can inform what the police might do to prevent or detect crime. Furthermore, based on such findings, it is possible to develop mathematical models to generate predictions regarding the future locations of crime events. Such models have been shown to outperform existing methods of crime mapping.

The ability to identify these kinds of regularities and to use them to inform police priorities or tactics is particularly important at a time when police budgets are being cut. However, because the types of analysis noted above are at the cutting edge of academic research, and were generated for research purposes, they cannot be conducted using available software. The aim of the proposed project is to bridge this knowledge-practice gap, identifying the most promising types of analysis and developing usable software packages that would make a real difference to police practice.

The collaboration would facilitate a two-way exchange between police practitioners and academics and lead to the translation of cutting edge research into tools that can be used to prevent harm to society. We envisage that the project would also lead to the identification of new research questions that would inform the academic agenda.

The results of this work would benefit police practitioners and academics alike, by facilitating a two-way knowledge exchange as part of an effort to reduce crime. The undertaking of such a project will itself help to develop and strengthen the dialogue between researchers and the police. Ultimately, results from this project should benefit society at large, by taking leading edge research and translating the methods into tools that could be used to prevent harm to individuals, households and neighbourhoods. Indeed, the main aim of the proposed project is to bridge a knowledge-practice gap and make a real difference to police practice.

To recapitulate, we intend to take some of our more leading edge methodological approaches and develop these into tools that the police can actually use on a daily basis. However, developing such tools is only the first step in what will hopefully be a longer-term engagement with police practitioners about how academic research and analysis can inform police strategy and tactics. The proposed project will pave the way for this form of collaboration and will demonstrate how such interaction can help develop the crime reduction research base in innovative ways.

Like many sectors, the Police are currently struggling with budget cuts and a consequent squeeze on available resources. Identifying ways to inform police priorities or tactics, including the most efficient allocation of deployments, is crucial to their continuing performance. Similarly, researchers are being asked more about the relevance of their work in the every day. The opportunity to work with practitioners and to directly elicit and discuss feedback and direction for what are the most pressing and relevant concerns for practitioners, will lead to research which is better attuned to those current problems that the police face. Thus, we envisage that the project would lead to the identification of new research questions that would inform the academic agenda.

The research outputs will be developed in close conjunction with our project partners, and will be tailored to their needs. However, as analysts around the country work with similar data on similar data bases, we expect that the software solutions developed will be (to some extent) transferable across police forces, albeit with some additional effort. In addition, there is a wider community of analysts working in the UK today that look at crime data as part of their day to day work; these are analysts that work for community safety partnerships, the fire service, emergency services and transport organisations (amongst others). They use similar methods and software for analysing problems in their respective domains. These analysts also work with similar data to the police (often the same data) and are concerned with many overlapping themes. This type of work could serve as a model for future collaborations of analysts with academia and the products from this work could be equally applicable in the analysis work done in these related domains.

Similarly, we plan to write a series of short one to two page notes that summarise the cutting edge research for the analysts and officers to save them reading the research papers. These papers could be developed as a resource for the wider police and analyst community, by making them availabe on our website for general consumption.

At the end of the project, we envisage applying for follow-on funding to generate programming code for further tools and to generate more generic versions of those tools already developed. These more generic versions could be made freely available to other police forces and there is the further potential to commercialize these tools for the private sector. The lessons learned as part of the initial project will inform and shape those agendas.