Hey POP, No More Shallow Problem Solving

Crime analysis has been invaluable to the development of contemporary police strategies. However, a review of the literature suggests that there is room for improvement in how police analyze crime problems. 

For example, while research has found problem-oriented policing (POP) to be associated with significant crime reductions, the contemporary use of POP rarely adheres to the “S.A.R.A.” model that POP is built upon. Many POP efforts can be classified as "shallow problem solving," where superficial analyses default to traditional law enforcement tactics (e.g., arrests, stop-and-frisks, knock-and-talks, serving warrants) rather than incorporating new approaches that directly address the underlying problems

CompStat, when initially developed by the NYPD in the early 1990s, adhered to four main principles: 1) accurate and timely intelligence; 2) rapid deployment; 3) effective tactics; and 4) relentless follow-up and assessment. While NYPD’s original intent with CompStat was to enhance problem-solving capacities, later efforts in New York City and elsewhere disproportionately emphasized the "relentless follow-up and assessment" principle. This shift in focus transformed CompStat into a process where "analysis" rarely strayed beyond tallying crime counts and comparing numbers from current and prior periods. This limited approach diminished the role of problem-solving in favor of reinforcing standard police responses and bureaucratic models of organization.

As Malcolm Sparrow articulated in 2016, police departments around the U.S. largely implemented CompStat programs as "de facto substitutes for any broader problem-solving approach, thereby restricting or narrowing both the types of problems police can address and the range of solutions they are able to consider." The end result is police commanders making assumptions, failing to control for uncertainties, and taking disproportionate operational responses based on minor, often insignificant, differences in crime counts.

Research has consistently shown that crimes cluster at specific locations, with such clustering persisting over extensive time periods in certain cases. Given that crime patterns are spatially concentrated, many scholars including Anthony Braga, Andrew Papachristos and David Hureau have argued that crime prevention resources "should be similarly concentrated rather than diffused across urban areas" to achieve maximum impact. Risk terrain maps help to isolate and zoom-in on priority places for optimal allocations of resources and effective crime prevention programming. Here's an award-winning example in Kansas City, Missouri.

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Paraphrased from "Risk-Based Policing" by Kennedy, Caplan & Piza (2018). See this book for complete references cited here.