Week 5 Assignment – Outcome And Process Evaluations /NO PLAGARISM PROFESSOR USES TURNITIN

Investigative Intelligence- Chapter 9 Lecture Notes

EVALUATION CONCEPTS AND PRACTICE

Evaluation of attempts to control crime is generally forgotten in the rush toaddress the next big issue, but is essential if practitioners are to learn whatworks, and what doesn’t to reduce crime.

This is often the most difficult point for practitioners to grasp. Intelligence‐ledpolicing is a business model and as such can be largely successful whenanalysts interpret the criminal environment effectively, and use thatintelligence to influence decision‐makers. If decision‐makers then choose anappropriate crime reduction strategy, but officers in the field fail toimplement it correctly, does this mean that the business model ofintelligence‐led policing fails?

Outcome evaluations tell you whether a crime reduction initiative worked ornot. If not, a process evaluation can often tell you why.

The process evaluation of Operation Vendas is immensely useful because ithelps to show that the strategy may still be viable, but the implementationwas flawed.

The Safe Streets evaluation by Lawton et al is quantitatively strong, but themore‐process evaluation type writing of Giannetti helps to understand theactual street implementation of the policy across the whole city. Bothevaluations work in tandem to provide a fuller picture of the operation.

Of all the analytical skills required for analysis, spatial statistics and crimemapping may be the most important for police analysts.

Spatial skills will have address perennial questions that come up aboutdisplacement of crime, and the impact of crime around criminogenic facilitiessuch as bars and nightclubs.

Both scientific and scientific realist approached have merit in understandingthe outcome of attempts to reduce crime and to better organize the flow ofinformation and criminal intelligence around a police department.

A degree of latitude is required to accept a fixed value for the societal impactof a residential or non‐residential burglary. Obviously each burglary isdifferent in terms of the impact and cost of the crime, but the attempt bystaff at the Australian Institute of Criminology to place a value based onaggregate impacts is still valuable.

MEASURING SUCCESS IN DIFFERENT WAYS

The cost of informant handling is disputed, and centers along whether moreabstract societal costs (impact on police legitimacy, for example) can beincorporated into a cost evaluation. Furthermore, the true costs of trainingofficers, meeting time and so on are rarely factored into a cost estimate.

Some agencies take considerable liberties in how they apply disruption as ameasure of their success. Others under value the importance of theiractivities.

The Disruption Attributes Tool is relatively new, and further details will becoming in the second edition of the book Strategic Thinking in CriminalIntelligence.

Hybrid governance is a relatively new term, but is a good description of wheresecurity governance is going.

In New Zealand, I found that assessing each component of the three‐i modelwas a good way to examine the health of intelligence processes in policedepartments.

Generally, the approach is often be careful what you wish for. By settingperformance indicators, police executives can often drive commanders inways that they never intended. This is especially the case with Compstatdriving short‐term thinking about long‐term crime problems.