Shifting to Crime Prevention: How Big Data is Helping Target Crimes Before They Occur

Reacting to crimes after a legal infraction has occurred used to be the norm in law enforcement for decades. The growth of new and improving tools and technologies has pushed the needle back to ‘prevention’ in recent years, though, with more innovative approaches available to make committing crimes more difficult. A big part of this trend is a stronger reliance on big data as a cost-effective way to direct resources to disrupt criminal activity and networks. This emphasis on ‘doing more with less’ has become a focal point of combatting crime in the United States and with more reliance on criminal analysts in policing, this trend will only continue moving forward.

For law enforcement agencies across the U.S., limited budgets mean having to rely on putting officers in the right place at the right time. Innovative technologies aimed at improving the investigative functions of precincts are making this possible. By focusing on threat intelligence, financial tracking, and operational intelligence, officers can track potential threats before they occur. Connections among various tracking and analysis tools are also becoming more key to the success of preventative measures. Investigators must rely on balancing their records management systems with new programs that draw connections between databases to develop new analytical capabilities that lead to pinpointing potential vulnerabilities and crime hot spots.

The introduction of crime analysts into policing has been crucial in this trend as well. Coupling the community knowledge of officers and agents in the field with the skill sets of analysts that can sort through troves of databases to pull accurate information has led to better targeted policing schedules and assignments. Analysts can sort through data on permits, population figures, census data, crime statistics, and numerous other structured or unstructured data sets, which can help paint a picture of what areas in a community are most vulnerable. This leads to new strategies for increasing safety with lower costs, better aligning working officers ‘on the beat’ with neighborhoods that need greater policing attention and coupling historical knowledge with real-time updates.

When thinking of the future of law enforcement, a growing population and stretched resources will continue to change the face of how precincts operate. This may involve  greater use of civilian analysts and specialists, more volunteer coordination, or contracting technical requirements to IT and software firms specialized in crime data. Regardless of how the face of policing shifts, big data will continue to take a greater role as we focus on stronger prevention methods.