Manhours and resources would be spent on cases with the best chance of successful prosecution and committal of offenders to the criminal justice system. A sample priority system would include cases involving in-custody suspects, cases in which the elements of the crime are established and a suspect identified, cases in which the elements are established and there are leads to a suspect, cases in which the elements are incomplete but a suspect identified or the reverse, and cases in which there is no suspect information. Assignments should be made on the basis of motive, not geography. A computer-controlled data base, possibly run on an IBM XT compatible computer using a dBase program, is essential to information control. It should contain case information, suspect information, and property records; fields useful for tracking crime trends can also be added. A sample data base demonstrates the utility of this approach.