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The purpose of this paper is to use an evaluation of a micro-place-based hot-spot policing implementation to highlight the potential issues raised by data quality standards in the recording and measurement of crime data and police officer movements.

The study focusses on an area of London (UK) which used a predictive algorithm to designate micro-place patrol zones for each police shift over a two-month period. Police officer movements are measured using GPS data from officer-worn radios. Descriptive statistics regarding the crime data commonly used to evaluate this type of implementation are presented, and simple analyses are presented to examine the effects of officer patrol duration (dosage) on crime in micro-place hot-spots.

The results suggest that patrols of 10-20 minutes in a given police shift have a significant impact on reducing crime; however, patrols of less than about 10 minutes and more than about 20 minutes are ineffective at deterring crime.

Due to the sparseness of officer GPS data, their paths have to be interpolated which could introduce error to the estimated patrol dosages. Similarly, errors and uncertainty in recorded crime data could have substantial impact on the designation of micro-place interventions and evaluations of their effectiveness.

This study is one of the first to use officer GPS data to estimate patrol dosage and places particular emphasis on the issue of data quality when evaluating micro-place interventions.

Since 1987, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has periodically collected data from police agencies in the USA and disseminated these data as the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) series. The purpose of this paper is to outline LEMAS's impact on criminal justice scholarship by describing the nexus between policing scholarship and LEMAS, and by analyzing the LEMAS constructs and variables used by researchers in refereed journal articles.

A systematic review of the literature is undertaken to better comprehend how scholars use LEMAS variables and constructs. In total, 114 peer-reviewed journal articles were analyzed to parcel out variables and constructs derived from LEMAS data.

The paper's analysis reveals that LEMAS is the second-most used BJS data series and the majority of authors use LEMAS to measure elements of organizational structure but not organizational behaviors, outcomes, or outputs.

The study is the first to systematically identify all peer-reviewed journal articles that utilize LEMAS data. Police organizational research is unique in the fact that most authors agree on the operationalization of variables and constructs.

This research paper aims to consider the use of the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) as a resource providing access to otherwise unavailable data from the UK Police forces. Not seeking to be a critical examination of Police practice, it offers insight to many aspects of records management appertaining to the police service provision of recorded crime. Authors consider whether record management is sufficiently integrated into police practice, given the transparency called for by the FOIA, contemporary societal needs and the growing requirement to provide high value evidence led assessments of activity both within and external to the service.

FOIA was utilised to collect data from all police forces in England and Wales through multiple requests. Carried out over a 15-month period, three requests were collated and responses compared, allowing for examination of compliance with the legislation and reflections on the manner in which records were sought and ultimately disseminated.

Generally, responding to FOIA requests was well managed by English Police Forces. Methods of data management and collection practice were exposed which the authors suggest pose questions on the strength of records management consideration that may be worthy of further work. Configuration management of records is highlighted as an essential function given the disparity of data releases experienced.

This research highlights the FOIA as a valuable methodological tool for academic researchers, but it is limited in respect of seeking firm contextual explanation of the Police internal procedures to answer requests. By making common requests over a long time period to the same Police forces, it provides a clear study of FOIA processes and raises potentially significant questions for records management consideration.

Findings provide advice on developing use of the FOIA as an academic methodological resource and reflect on the findings impact on internal police use of data and information records.

This paper allows for reflection on the importance of high-value records management in the day-to-day business of the police service and questions whether such knowledge areas are suitably considered. Covering an area of little previous academic enquiry, the research informs criminal justice practitioners of areas for potential further discussion and academic researchers on the validity of using the FOIA as a valuable information source.

Presents an investigation of the perennial problem of collecting valid empirical data on police vehicle pursuits, an organizationally sensitive and often controversial behavior, through a new data collection strategy using police emergency radio transmissions. Analyzes taped vehicle pursuits recorded on the Illinois State Police Emergency Radio Network and codes them for content as a data source on police vehicle pursuits. Compares these radio‐transmission data with more conventional pursuit data collection methods, e.g. administrative/official data, elicited‐pursuit‐reporting‐form data, and officer‐self‐report data. Evaluates these as an alternative or supplemental data window for empirically studying the incidence and content of police vehicle pursuits. While some differences appear, results from emergency‐channel radio transmission data largely converge with earlier findings from more conventional data collections. Divergent findings, which are few, appear to be largely the artifacts of different samplings of pursuits that the different data collection methods yield, rather than a result of differential validity.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce architecture of an Intelligent Decision Support System to fulfill the emerging responsibilities of law enforcement agencies.

The proposed Intelligent Police System (IPS) is designed to meet the emerging requirements and provide information at all levels of decision making by introducing a multi-level structure of user interface and crime analysis model. The proposed framework of IPS is based on data mining and performance measurement techniques to extract useful information like crime hot spots, predict crime trends and rank police administration units on the basis of crime prevention measures.

IPS has been implemented on actual Indian crime data provided by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which illustrates effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed system. IPS can play a vital role in improving outcome in the crime investigation, criminal detection and other major areas of functioning of police organization by analyzing the crime data and sharing of the information.

The research in intelligent police information system can be enhanced with some important additional features which include web-base management system, geographical information system, mobile adhoc network technology, etc.

IPS can easily be applied to any police system in the world and can equally be useful for any law enforcement agencies for carrying out homeland security effectively.

The research reported in this manuscript is outcome of the research project funded by NCRB. This paper is the first attempt to build framework of IPS for Indian police who deal with large volume and high rate of crimes that are unmatched to any police force of the world.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an analysis of official data on police misconduct, providing new insights into the nature and extent of police misconduct and in the official response to police misconduct. Next to the use of force and neglect of duty, private time misconduct is a major type of (alleged) misconduct although it is often discarded from theoretical conceptions of police misconduct. The analysis also showed that two‐thirds of internal investigations are the result of an internal report. This paper shows that official data on police misconduct can result in new insights in the nature and extent of police misconduct and is therefore a relevant source for academic analysis.

An analysis of official data on police misconduct is compared with theoretical notions of police misconduct, internal investigations and reliability of official data.

The implementation of a uniform Registration of Internal Investigations for all Dutch police forces has resulted in a clear increase in the number of registered investigations. This seems to be due to a combination of increased strictness on (alleged) misconduct and an improved quality of the registration. The analysis also showed that two‐thirds of the investigations are the result of an internal report. This places a new perspective on the so‐called code of silence among police officers. However, information on the extent and nature of complaints that are dealt with through the complaints procedure is lacking. The complaints procedure has also no formal relation with the disciplinary or criminal procedures.

Official data on police misconduct have to be viewed with a critical eye. The analyses showed however that the Dutch data seem fairly reliable. Additional research should place the official data in further perspective, e.g. through case studies and through a control of the registration with the files of the Bureaux of Internal Investigations. Finally, a comparison with official data in other countries is needed.

The Dutch police should improve its complaints procedures and the complaints registration.

Academic analysis of police misconduct is often limited to case studies of scandals or focuses on citizen complaints. The paper gives a broader perspective by using official data.

The current research explores the structural elaboration of municipal American police organizations, specifically, the structural complexity of police organizations and its relationship to time. The purpose of this paper is to describe and test essential elements of the structural elaboration hypothesis.

The authors explore the structural elaboration hypothesis utilizing a sample of 219 large police departments across the USA. Data are drawn from multiple waves of the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey and are analyzed using tobit and OLS regression techniques.

While there is some evidence that police departments are becoming more elaborate, little evidence for the structural elaboration hypothesis as a function of time is found.

This project is the first to specifically explore the structural elaboration hypothesis across multiple time points. Additionally, results highlight structural trends across a panel of large American police organizations and provide potential explanations for changes. Suggestions for large-scale policing data collection are also provided.

Research into crime is reliant on data that is recorded and published by criminal justice agencies; data which is collected for other purposes. Considering the suitability of geocoded crime data for academic research purposes, this paper will demonstrate the difficulties faced regarding the availability, integrity and reliability of readily accessible criminal justice data.

Data from two countries – England and Germany – were considered and set in a wider European Union (EU) context. Using the data received from requests made to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in England and openly published reports and data available from Germany, the authors provide a contextual picture of the availability and operability of data recorded by these agencies. Geocoded data that enable cross-national comparisons with respect to immigration, ethnicity and crime are particularly hard to locate, and conducting research using data (such as crime data) whose “integrity” is questionable in an academic environment becomes increasingly problematic.

Analysing secondary data produced by a number of agencies are amplified due to the different methods of collection, management, retention and dissemination. It was found that even within England, the information provided by police forces varied greatly. Data in Germany were found to be more openly available and published electronically by a number of different criminal justice agencies; however, many of the issues apparent in English data regarding data integrity were also identified here.

The need for good record-keeping and information sharing practices has taken on added significance in today’s global environment. The better availability of comparable criminal justice data has the potential to provide academics with increased opportunities to develop an evidence base for policymaking.

Based on the theoretical viewpoints of criminal geography and environmental criminology, this research uses spatial multi-criteria decision-making methods. In the process of spatial decision-making and optimization of police resources, researchers fully consider the dynamic application of Geographic Information System (GIS) and the effects of spatial prevention and control.

Researchers use an integrated method combining Policing Geographic Information System (PGIS) and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). On the one hand, police GIS has an excellent visual data analysis platform and integrated decision support system in data management, spatial analysis, data exploration and regression analysis. On the other hand, through the design of the indicator system, the quantification of indicators, the determination of weights, comprehensive evaluation and sensitivity analysis, MCDA can select the best plan from a large number of alternatives. When joining MCDA, the spatial dimension will bring the research results closer to the real world.

The study finds that the crime of burglary is affected to a certain extent by the distribution of police forces, the location of police units. Another important finding of this research is the correlation between more precise preventive measures and the crime of burglary.

From a practical point of view, this research would help advance the role of police units and law enforcement agencies in preventing burglary crimes and provide experience for the allocation of regional police resources.

This study aimed to identify a model investigating effects of organizational characteristics on COP activity, and to compare the model in different social contexts to broaden the understanding of COP implementation. In addition, this study was intended to address an ecological fallacy committed in the prior studies so as to carry out a theoretically and methodologically rigorous comparative study of COP implementation between South Korea and the USA.

Unlike prior studies, which utilized direct measures of organizational characteristics, this study analyzed data on police officers' perceptions on organizational characteristics to investigate COP activities among police officers. For data collection, this study utilized an organizational survey developed by the School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University and collected data from 206 police officers in South Korea and 231 police officers in the USA. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the best fitting model to the combined data set, and multiple group analysis was performed to compare the model in both countries. For direct comparison and test of comparability, this study used matching for sampling and multiple group analysis method of SEM.

Findings indicated that both organizational flexibility and decentralization were important factors influencing COP activity in the USA, but decentralization of authority was the only important factor affecting COP activity in South Korea. Also, it was found that organizational philosophy had greater influence on organizational structure in the USA than in South Korea. In both countries, decentralization influenced feedback mechanism, but feedback mechanism did not influence COP activity. Likewise, flexibility influenced reward system, but the system did not influence COP activity in both countries.

Although this study utilized matching and multiple group analysis for comparison between two countries, it may be possible that direct comparison regarding police organization would be difficult due to unmeasured aspects of organizational contexts.

Although many studies have been conducted to investigate effects of organizational factors on COP implementation, there has been a lack of study in South Korea. In addition, there is a vacuum of empirical study on comparison across different countries regarding the factors. In this sense, this study produced important comparative knowledge on COP implementation.