Title: Crime Mapping and Analysis by Community Organizations in Hartford,
Connecticut.
Series: National Institute of Justice: Research in Brief
Author: Thomas Rich
Published: March 2001
Subject: Crime mapping
19 pages
47,000 bytes

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U.S. Department of Justice 
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

National Institute of Justice
Research in Brief
February 2001

Support for this research was provided through a transfer of funds to NIJ from
the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

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Issues and Findings

Discussed in this Brief: An assessment of how community organizations in
Hartford, Connecticut, used the Neighborhood Problem Solving (NPS) system,
a computer-based mapping and crime analysis technology. The NPS system
enabled users to create a variety of maps and other reports depicting crime
conditions by accessing a database containing the most recent 2 years of
incident-level police information.

Key issues: The objective in Hartford was to extend basic mapping and crime
analysis technologies beyond the law enforcement community by putting them
into the hands of neighborhood-based organizations so they could analyze
incident-level data and produce their own maps and reports. The assessment
discussed in this Brief was conducted to determine the extent to which
community organizations used the system, to understand how these
organizations used the software, and to assess the effect of the system on
community organization effectiveness, perceptions of neighborhood safety and
quality of life, and police-community relations.

Key findings:

--Seven of the 14 sites used the NPS system regularly. Two sites used the
system on several occasions but not on a regular basis. The remaining five sites
either did not use the system at all or used it only once.

--Factors explaining the variety of use patterns include the community
organization leader's degree of interest in the system, available personnel
resources at the site, the site's experience with community organizing and
community-based problem solving, and the relevance of both the system and
the crime data to the organization's primary work objectives.

--While all regular-use sites made extensive use of crime data, some sites
placed the highest value on arrest data and others closely examined
calls-for-service data. Maps were the most popular report format.

--The majority of frequent NPS users felt they gained a "much better
understanding" of crime conditions in their neighborhood using the system. The
majority of frequent users believed that access to comprehensive crime data did
not change the extent to which they felt safe in the neighborhood.

--Hartford's extensive problem-solving infrastructure, including neighborhood
problem-solving committees, veteran community organizers, and a supportive
environment in the city government and police department, was key to the
program's success. Without this infrastructure, the system likely would have
been used by interested parties to examine crime information but not necessarily
for effecting neighborhood change.

Target audience: City- and county-level police, planning and administrative
officials, neighborhood-based organizations, and researchers.

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Crime Mapping and Analysis by Community Organizations in Hartford,
Connecticut

By Thomas Rich

Crime mapping has become increasingly popular among law enforcement
agencies and has enjoyed high visibility at the Federal level, in the media, and
among the largest police departments in the Nation, most notably those in
Chicago and New York City. However, there have been few efforts to make
crime mapping capabilities available to community residents and organizations,
although a National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded project in Chicago in the
late 1980s aimed at introducing mapping to community groups showed that this
technology could benefit them.[1] Access to timely and complete incident-level
crime information--among other obstacles--has inhibited the spread of mapping
to communities.

To get the community more involved in crime prevention, Hartford, a city of
130,000 in central Connecticut, expressed an interest in providing
community-based organizations with a crime mapping and analysis system. This
technology--dubbed the Neighborhood Problem Solving (NPS) system--was
developed and implemented in 1997 and 1998 in 14 locations throughout
Hartford, including community organization headquarters, public libraries, and
community policing field offices. Developed with NIJ funding, the system
enables users to create a variety of maps and other reports depicting crime
conditions by using a database containing the most recent 2 years of
incident-level police information, including citizen-initiated calls for service,
reported crimes, and arrests. Although some police departments routinely
publish aggregate crime statistics and a few publish incident-level crime
information on the Internet, the objective in Hartford was to extend basic
mapping and crime analysis technologies beyond the law enforcement
community so that neighborhood-based organizations could analyze
incident-level data.

NIJ sponsored an assessment of Hartford's system by Abt Associates Inc. to
determine the extent to which community organizations used it, to understand
how these organizations used the software, and to assess the effect of the
system on community organization effectiveness, perceptions of neighborhood
safety and quality of life, and police-community relations. This Research in Brief
discusses the findings of this research.

Project origin

In November 1994, Hartford was 1 of 12 cities to receive a Comprehensive
Communities Program (CCP) grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's
Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Hartford CCP sought to shift the focus of
city government away from the professional civil service model to a
decentralized government that recognizes residents as its "customers" and
attends to problems and solutions they identify. In 1988, the police department
had initiated community-oriented policing with the formation of the Community
Service Officer (CSO) unit. CSOs focused exclusively on problem solving
within a specific neighborhood. The department also formed partnerships with
other agencies, including schools, youth organizations, and other criminal justice
agencies. In 1995 and 1996, Hartford established a number of CCP-supported
initiatives and programs that created, in the words of one veteran community
organizer, "an infrastructure" that supported the NPS system. According to this
organizer, having this infrastructure in place was a necessary condition for
widespread acceptance and use of the NPS system.

Citizen-based problem-solving committees, one of the most important CCP
initiatives, were formed in each of Hartford's 17 neighborhoods. In many
neighborhoods, these committees consisted of residents already active in the
existing neighborhood citizen groups, but the committees were an entirely new
group for some neighborhoods. The committees were charged with identifying
and prioritizing neighborhood problems and, with the help of city agencies,
implementing solutions to those problems. The city retained an independent
consultant to conduct problem-solving training for the committees. The training
focused on recognizing and analyzing problems, developing and implementing
strategies, and assessing results. City employees were trained in
community-oriented government techniques. In addition, CCP began funding
the community organization United Connecticut Action for Neighborhoods in
1997 to provide additional training and technical assistance to the committees.

Beginning in 1995, the committees were eligible to receive personal computers
equipped with standard business productivity software and a laser printer.
Many committees immediately took advantage of this offer, although some did
not apply for their computers until 2 or 3 years later. The NPS system was
eventually installed on these computers. The Hartford Police Department and
Abt Associates jointly administered the NPS program. The police department
provided data on calls for service, crimes, and arrests to Abt Associates, which
formatted the data and provided it to the community organizations. Abt
Associates maintained the NPS system software, while the city of Hartford
maintained the computers. Trinity College in Hartford provided the committees
with e-mail and Internet accounts beginning in 1996.

System capabilities

In 1997, representatives of the problem-solving committees, Hartford city
officials involved in the city's CCP, Abt Associates staff, and representatives
from the Hartford Police Department and other city service agencies held a
series of meetings to determine what information--particularly automated
information--would be useful (and could be provided) to the committees to
support their problem-solving activities. Ideally, an information system
supporting problem solving--especially one with mapping capabilities--would
contain data from a variety of sources, including city, State, and Federal
agencies; private and nonprofit organizations; and neighborhood-based
organizations. Such data would enable maps to show a multidimensional view
of crime. For example, one layer of a map display could contain a descriptive
variable, such as the location of burglaries in the past month, while other layers
could contain possible explanatory variables, such as demographic and social
indicators or the locations of abandoned buildings or liquor establishments.[2]

Committee representatives indicated they wanted access to a variety of 
information, including police, housing, and code enforcement data that could be
tied to specific addresses. Unfortunately, with the exception of police calls for
service, crime, and arrest data, information was either not automated or out of
date by several months, although projects were under way to improve the
quality of the data. By contrast, police calls for service and arrest records were
entered in real time (i.e., while the call taker talks to the person calling 911 and
the suspect goes through the arrest booking process), and reported crime
information was typically automated about 1 week after the police officer
submitted his or her completed crime report. 

In light of these findings, CCP staff, the police department, and Abt Associates
staff decided that the NPS system would initially focus on providing the
committees with access to police calls for service, crime, and arrest data. 

Data issues

Prior to participating in this project, the Hartford Police Department had 
a history of deploying sophisticated technologies in its crimefighting and public
safety efforts. Department staff had designed and programmed advanced
computer-aided dispatch, case incident reporting, and online arrest booking
systems. The department has used computerized crime mapping since the early
1990s, when it participated in NIJ's Drug Market Analysis Program. Since the
mid-1990s, department analysts have distributed weekly crime maps to
command staff.

One important difference between a crime mapping tool developed for internal
police use and one developed for use by community groups or the general
public involves the issue of which data to make available to users. The NPS
system provides basic "what, when, and where" information on calls for service,
crimes, and arrests. No names or other personal identifying information are
provided (see "Data Elements Provided to Community Organizations").
Community organizations are provided with the most recent 2 years of these
data occurring in the organization's area of concern, which typically
corresponds to one of Hartford's 17 neighborhoods. For an average-sized
community organization, the 2-year timespan of data translates into about
12,000 calls for service, 7,000 crimes, and 1,000 arrests. During the study
period, Abt Associates staff provided data to the community organizations
every 2 weeks via e-mail or U.S. mail. Because of the 2-week delivery
cycle--and because the police department entered calls for service and arrest
information in real time and crime information within a week of when the officer
completed the crime report--the data were roughly 10 days to 2 weeks old
when delivered.

The NPS software[3] can produce five different types of reports, each of which
can be based on either calls for service, reported crimes, or arrests.

--A detail list shows records that meet a specified criterion (e.g., all burglaries
in a neighborhood over the past year).

--A top 10 list shows the most frequent types of events (e.g., the 10 most
frequently reported types of crime in a neighborhood over the past month).

--A time trend graph shows the number of events occurring over a recent set of
time periods (e.g., the number of burglaries in a neighborhood by week over
the past 6 months).

--An event trend graph shows the percentage change in the number of different
types of events over a recent period (e.g., the percentage change in the number
of each crime group in the most recent month compared with the previous
month).

--A pin map shows the location of events over a specified period (e.g., the
location of all burglaries in a neighborhood over the past month). Although the
report is referred to as a pin map, it is actually a graduated symbol map in
which the size of the icon depicting the location is proportional to the number of
events at that location.

For all reports, users can specify a desired date and time range. Standard
options are available (e.g., for dates, the most recent 2 weeks, the most recent
month, and the most recent year), or the user can specify any desired date and
time range. Maps and graphs are produced for a specified group of calls for
service, crimes, or arrests (e.g., narcotics arrests, violent crime-related calls for
service, or burglary crimes). Currently, only one group can be mapped at a
time. Detail lists can be sorted by date and time, by type of event, or by
address. In addition, detail lists can show all events (e.g., all arrests) or only
events in a certain group (e.g., only narcotics arrests).

From June 1998 to March 1999 (the end of the evaluation period), the NPS
software was installed at 14 community locations in Hartford: 8 community
organization headquarters, 4 community policing substations, and 2 public
libraries.

Site characteristics

The community organizations that received the NPS system and were trained in
its use vary considerably in size, resources, and experience in community
organizing and problem solving. One has approximately 15 full-time employees,
most of whom are neighborhood organizers assigned to one of nine
neighborhoods in Hartford. Others have one or two full-time or part-time paid
staff. By contrast, the problem-solving committees are essentially groups of
concerned citizens with other full-time occupations and have no paid staff or
formal office space. Independent of their size and resources, the community
organizations and problem-solving committees all appear to possess a strong
concern about crime and public safety. Hartford's Part I[4] crime rate in 1997
was nearly twice the national average, even though the city, like many other
cities in the Nation, experienced a significant decrease in crime in the 1990s;
from 1987 to 1992, the city recorded between 20,000 and 22,000 Part I
crimes per year, and by 1997, the annual total had dropped to slightly more
than 12,000. Crime, however, is by no means the only issue of concern to these
organizations. An organizer in one neighborhood indicated that the four issues
discussed most at neighborhood meetings are (in order of importance) taxes,
education, crime, and litter.

Although all community organizations with the NPS system share major crime
concerns, they differ in their overall approach to addressing these problems in
their neighborhoods. For example, some focus on identifying issues of concern
to neighborhood residents and developing approaches to address those
concerns. Other organizations focus on delivering services to neighborhood
residents, such as sponsorship of job fairs or street-lighting projects. Many of
the Hartford problem-solving committees work directly with police CSOs to
address specific crime problems.

System users

There was at least one targeted user--a person trained in the use of the system
who received and processed crime data updates and whose reaction to the
system was monitored--at each installation site. In many cases, these targeted
users showed others in their organizations how to use the system. Having a
targeted set of users distinguished this project from one that involved the
installation of an NPS-like system at public kiosks or on the Internet to provide
information to the general public. In general, the system in this study was
designed for community organizations, and there was no attempt to encourage
its use by the general public.

The four types of targeted users were: 

--Block watch organizers, who work for a community organization and are
charged with establishing new block watches and supporting existing block
watches. The city of Hartford provided funding to community organizations to
hire these individuals.

--Neighborhood organizers, who work at community organizations and
undertake community organizing activities in the neighborhood to which they are
assigned. In particular, neighborhood organizers support the problem-solving
committees.

--Community organization staff, which refers to other individuals at community
organizations who have a variety of responsibilities, including administration,
management, grant writing, and community organizing.

--Problem-solving committee members, who have other full-time occupations
and positions.

System utilization

The most basic evaluation issue for the NPS system was how frequently the
system was used. Across NPS sites, the frequency of system usage varied. 

--Regular users--7 of the 14 sites used the NPS system regularly on a monthly
or more frequent basis during the data collection period.5

--Irregular users--two sites used the NPS system on several occasions but not
on a regular basis during the data collection period.

--One-time users--four sites used the NPS system once during the data
collection period.

--Nonusers--one site did not use the NPS system at all during the data
collection period.

At the conclusion of the initial training session at each installation site, all
targeted users reacted enthusiastically to the system, praising its ease of use and
listing ways in which their organization could use the system. Yet, 5 of the 14
sites either did not use the system at all or used it only once. Why did some
community organizations use the system and not others?

The primary reason some sites regularly used the system was that organization
leaders affiliated with the site took a personal interest in it. In contrast, the
targeted users in several other neighborhoods were largely on their own and
without supervisors to encourage them to use the system. In addition, several
users were relatively new to the field of community organizing and naturally had
a more difficult time integrating an information tool such as the NPS system into
their organizing activities. 

Personnel resources also influenced use patterns. Targeted users at many sites
where the system was used regularly were persons whose full-time job was
community organizing. At some sites where the system saw little use, however,
targeted users had other full-time occupations and did not have access to
volunteers, interns, or full-time organizers who could use the system. Some
organizations did not regularly use the system because it was not particularly
relevant to the targeted user's primary work objectives-for example, the site's
primary objective was to provide job training or other services to residents.
Limited accessibility to the computers equipped with the NPS system inhibited
system use in two sites.

The types of maps and reports produced with the NPS system provide insight
into the general types of police data and data formats community organizations
in other jurisdictions might find particularly useful. Each NPS run was based on
calls for service, crimes, or arrests (see exhibit 1). Significant site-by-site
variations exist, however, among the regular users of the system. For example,
three regular NPS users showed little interest in calls-for-service data; their
sites used those data in less than 10 percent of their runs. Users at another
regular-use site, however, were most interested in calls for service. Users at a
third regular-use site focused most often on arrest data, reflecting a strong
interest in monitoring the police response to neighborhood problems.

Four of the seven regular-use sites preferred the pin map report format. Across
all sites, the pin map was the most preferred report format, and it was used in
39 percent of all NPS runs. The other report formats also showed significant
use, ranging from 23 percent (the detail list) to 8 percent (the top 10 list) of all
runs, thus reinforcing the notion that maps are only one method of analyzing
police data and that a variety of report formats is required to provide useful
information to users of police data (see exhibit 2).

Although information about the preferred data types and report formats used in
Hartford may provide insight into the possible preferences of community
organizations in other cities, the specific type of data displayed in the maps and
reports is likely to vary depending on the issues of importance to users in those
cities. Data preferences in Hartford may be representative of other urban areas,
however. Narcotics-related information was the most common type of data to
appear in Hartford sites' NPS pin maps, followed closely by Part I
crime-related information (see exhibit 3). Together, these data constituted
nearly 80 percent of all NPS pin maps. The most common Part I crime-related
maps across all sites were burglaries (14 percent of all pin maps), followed by
auto theft and aggravated assaults (9 percent each). Overall, the interest in
Hartford was serious crime, as opposed to less serious crime and quality-of-life
issues. Nevertheless, there were significant variations across the regular-use
sites. The percentage of maps depicting narcotics activity, for example, ranged
from a low of 8 percent to a high of 81 percent. The percentage of maps
depicting noncriminal activity (e.g., accidents, motor vehicle infractions) ranged
from 0 to as much as 24 percent.

Just as the sites used the NPS system to varying degrees, they used it in a
variety of ways and for a variety of purposes. Primary uses of the maps and
reports include the activities described below.

Forming block watches. Veteran block watch organizers commented that the
NPS system was useful for getting people to attend block watch meetings. The
block watch organizer in a neighborhood perceived as one of Hartford's safest
commented that the maps and reports she showed to potential block watch
members helped convince them that "there is real crime in their quiet
neighborhood, so a block watch would be beneficial."

Supporting existing block watches. In several neighborhoods, block watch
organizers regularly produced maps and other reports and shared them with
attendees at block watch meetings. Organizers consistently commented that the
maps and reports served as conversation starters for the meetings and provided
valuable information. In one neighborhood, support for the block watches was
highly systemized because community organization staff, together with several
block watch leaders, designed and distributed a biweekly "CrimeData Update"
containing NPS reports to all block watch leaders.

Supporting neighborhood-level organizations. Members of citizen groups,
neighborhood organizers, and other community organization staff used the NPS
system to provide information to neighborhood-level organizations, much like a
police crime analyst produces a set of maps for a police command staff
meeting.

Raising neighborhood awareness. One community organization used the NPS
system to disseminate crime information to residents throughout the
neighborhood on National Night Out, an annual nationwide event in which
residents participate in outdoor activities designed to mark progress in "taking
back the night" from drug dealers and other criminals. Community organization
staff used the NPS software to produce a two-page crime summary handout
and delivered it to neighborhood block-party hosts.

Distributing information to law enforcement officials. Several community
organizations used NPS maps and reports to facilitate communication with
police and prosecution officials. CSOs, for example, regularly attended
neighborhood problem-solving committee meetings and were typically called on
to explain and interpret the NPS output. During some of these discussions
between residents and police officials, residents commented on apparent
inaccuracies in the police data, highlighting what one veteran community
organizer believed was the most important use of the NPS system: improving
the exchange of information between the community and the police and, in
particular, ensuring that the police and the community have a common
understanding of neighborhood problems. In other situations, the maps and
reports were used at meetings with law enforcement officials to substantiate
requests for action in a hot spot or for additional police resources.

Problem-solving and crime prevention applications

Targeted users and the people for whom maps and other reports were
produced used the NPS system to accomplish a variety of specific or general
objectives (see "Study Methodology"). One of the most common objectives
related to the NPS system was identifying and quantifying crime hot spots,
including specific addresses, streets, and sections of neighborhoods. In most
cases, the quantifying component was significantly more important than the
identifying component because community organizers and other persons active
in a neighborhood were already aware of the most problematic locations in their
area. What those individuals ordinarily could not do was quantify the
seriousness of the hot spot in terms of citizen complaints, reported crimes, and
arrests.

Quantifying the seriousness of a hot spot serves two key purposes for
community groups and neighborhood residents. First, maps and reports confirm
the organizers' or residents' perception of the problem. A number of targeted
users indicated that the NPS output served as a "reality check" and let residents
know the problems they saw were, in fact, real. Conversely, the NPS system
was also used to suggest that a problem thought to be serious was, in fact, not
that serious. The second and more important purpose for quantifying problems
is that community groups, armed with hard evidence of a problem, can make a
stronger case both to neighborhood residents to get involved and to the police
and other city agencies to provide additional resources to combat the problem.
The leader of one Hartford community organization indicated that the primary
value of the NPS system was using data to highlight the chronic problems in a
neighborhood. He added that his organization was often "somewhat skittish
about going after a problem if the only evidence is citizen perceptions."

Although in most cases the NPS system was used to confirm and quantify
known problems, targeted users noted that in some instances the system
highlighted a previously unknown problem (at least to the community group or
neighborhood problem-solving committee). This finding indicates what some in
the Hartford Police Department hoped would be an outcome of this
project-that citizens would become effective crime analysts.

Whether a property was a known or an unknown problem, community
organizations used several techniques to target specific problem properties,
including discussing the problem with the police CSO and other police officials,
talking to the owners, and publicizing the problem in the media. In July 1998,
the Connecticut Legislature provided an additional tool that the police,
prosecutors, and community organizations could use to target specific
properties. The Nuisance Abatement and Quality of Life Act gives the State,
through the State's Attorney's office, the right to bring a civil action against any
property owner whose property creates a public nuisance. The law defines a
public nuisance as three or more arrests (on different dates) for a variety of
crimes, including prostitution and the sale or possession of narcotics. The value
of the NPS system in developing cases for the Nuisance Abatement Act is
obvious, and several community organizations in Hartford used the system to
identify properties covered under the Act. The organizations then notified the
Connecticut attorney general's office, attaching NPS output to their letters as
supporting documentation.

A number of community organization leaders in Hartford said they believed a
primary use of the NPS system would be to raise awareness throughout the
neighborhoods regarding crime conditions and encourage residents to focus on
crime prevention. As one neighborhood organizer said, "The main use of the
system is to bring the neighborhood together--getting [neighbors] to focus on an
issue and mobilize around it." One community organization noted how
frequently residents complained about drug activity but how infrequently they
reported it to the police. As a result, the organization mounted a campaign
(using NPS reports that showed how few citizen drug-related calls for service
were made in the neighborhood) to encourage residents to contact the police.
The number of calls for service increased substantially following this outreach
effort and a number of drug arrests were made as a result.

Finally, one neighborhood organizer used the NPS system to measure the effect
of a major multiyear initiative with which his organization was involved. For
several years, his organization worked with Federal, State, and city officials to
secure funding and garner political support to demolish a public housing
development in the neighborhood. One year after the demolition, the organizer
used the NPS system to address concerns that the relocation of public housing
residents to other parts of the neighborhood led to crime increases. The
organizer said the NPS system enabled him to be factual and precise with the
organization's supporters and city policymakers about changes in the
neighborhood.

Overall effects

How did targeted NPS users and consumers react to the NPS output? Did the
maps and reports tell them anything they did not already know?

Although neighborhood activists were already aware of the most problematic
properties and locations in their neighborhoods, results of the survey of regular
NPS users indicated they learned much about their areas from the system. For
example, 12 of 17 regular NPS users and consumers gained a much better
understanding of crime conditions in their neighborhoods, and 13 of the 17
gained a much better understanding of where the crime hot spots were in their
neighborhoods.

Of related interest was whether residents' perception of neighborhood safety
and quality of life were affected after they viewed the NPS maps and reports;
that is, did residents feel differently about their neighborhoods when they had a
comprehensive database of actual and suspected criminal activity than they did
when their perception of crime was based only on reports in the media and
what they heard from friends and neighbors? On this issue, regular NPS users
expressed a variety of viewpoints. A majority of respondents indicated that the
NPS maps and reports did not affect their view of their neighborhoods: 11 of
17 regular users indicated that the level of reported crime displayed in the NPS
maps and reports was about what they expected, and 9 of 17 said the NPS did
not change the extent to which they felt safe. Among respondents who said the
NPS system changed their view of their neighborhood, some indicated the
change was positive, while others said the change was negative. Some regular
users saw less crime in the maps and reports than they expected, primarily
because of how the media portrayed the crime situation. However, as one
community leader put it, "Some people are in denial about crime--they don't
want to think about [it]," and, consequently, the maps and reports may have
made them feel that the situation was worse than they previously believed.

Improving police-community interaction was an important objective for both the
Hartford Police Department and many of the community organizations involved
in the project. All parties hoped that providing the community with the same
data that the police had would create a common frame of reference for problem
identification and solving. In the end, the project can perhaps claim partial
success in improving police-community relations. When asked whether the
NPS system changed their organization's relationship with the police
department, 6 of 17 targeted users who regularly used the system indicated that
the system helped improve the relationship; the remaining 11 indicated that the
system did not change the relationship. From the police perspective, CSOs
working in neighborhoods where the NPS system was used most frequently
were pleased to see the community have access to police data and appreciated
the work that problem-solving committees and others did to identify problem
areas and other crime problems.

Overall, among community organizations that regularly used the NPS system,
13 of 17 targeted users believed the NPS system was "an important source of
information." The remaining four said the system was "useful once in a while." In
general, community organizations appear to subscribe to the notion that
"information is power." As the leader of one community organization put it,
"Our effectiveness depends on our knowledge." Armed with information,
community organizations will be more effective in educating neighborhood
residents, interacting with the police and other city agencies, and carrying out
other specific tasks and projects. In particular, several veteran community
activists commented that "having the data" ensures that community groups "will
have a seat at the table," meaning they can make a positive contribution to
problem-solving efforts and that their voice should not be ignored by the city.

Policy implications

Community policing requires the active participation of the community, both in
terms of formal and informal partnerships with the police and in initiating its own
crime prevention strategies. One effective way to increase the community role in
community policing is routine two-way information sharing. The NIJ-funded
effort described in this Brief documents one approach by one police
department to sharing computerized police information with the community.
More police departments across the country are making crime statistics and
maps available, primarily via police department Web sites, which offer a variety
of data and features. Some offer static maps or statistics, while others allow
users to formulate queries; some provide aggregate data, while others provide
incident-level data.

The Hartford experience highlights the different ways community groups have
analyzed various data. Although all regular users of the NPS system made
extensive use of crime information, some placed the highest value on arrest
information and others closely examined citizen calls-for-service information.
The map display was generally the most popular report format but still
accounted for less than half of the report runs, emphasizing that maps are only
one way to look at police data. Appropriately sorted lists, graphs, and time
period comparisons are also essential. In short, the Hartford experience
suggests that police departments hoping to use their Web sites to provide data
to the public in support of their community policing initiatives should also include
extensive query capabilities and multiple report formats. New Web
development tools, particularly map-based tools, allow for this versatility. In
addition, data from agencies other than police departments (e.g., corrections
agencies, property data, public health agencies, schools) could be included to
enable users to examine possible links between these datasets and crime data.

However, it is important to note that what made the NPS system useful for
community-based problem solving in Hartford was the extensive infrastructure
that the city had in place to support the system, including neighborhood-based
problem-solving committees, veteran community organizers, and a supportive
environment in the city government and police department. Without such an
infrastructure, it is probable that Hartford's NPS system not only would have
been used less but would have been used for very different purposes.
Specifically, instead of serving as a tool for organizing block watches,
supporting neighborhood organizations, and supporting neighborhood-based
problem solving, the system would have been used by individuals interested in
knowing crime conditions in their area but less likely to share information from
NPS with others or act on that information to effect neighborhood change. This
is not to say that self-education about crime conditions is not worthwhile, but
that the potential for neighborhood improvement is much greater when the
primary system users are connected to organizations that operate in an
environment conducive to neighborhood-based problem solving.

Notes

1. Maltz, M.D., A. Gordon, and W. Friedman, Mapping Crime in Its
Community Setting: Event Geography Analysis, New York: Springer-Verlag,
1991.

2. One approach to developing a multilayer information support system for
community policing is described in Block, Carolyn Rebecca, "The
Geo-Archive: An Information Foundation for Community Policing," Crime
Mapping and Crime Prevention, ed. David Weisburd and Tom McEwen,
Monsey, New York: Criminal Justice Press, 1998.

3. At the beginning of the project, a variety of options were considered for the
software that community organizations would use to produce maps and reports.
One option was to develop a custom mapping application using a commercial
mapping software package, such as MapInfo or ArcView. However, to avoid
having to pay for commercial mapping packages for all the community
organizations, the research team decided to develop a stand-alone executable
program with mapping capabilities provided by a royalty-free third-party
ActiveX software component.

4. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports list Part I
crimes as homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, larceny, burglary, and
auto theft.

5. The data collection period ranged from 4 to 9 months, depending on when
the NPS system was installed at the site.

Thomas Rich is an associate and project director at Abt Associates Inc. This
research was supported by the National Institute of Justice and the Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services under grant number 95-IJ-CX-0079
and cooperative agreement number 97-IJ-CX-K017 to Abt Associates.

---------------------------

Data Elements Provided to Community Organizations 

Any police department publishing incident-specific information on its Web site
or other media must address the issue of what specific data elements,
particularly those related to location, should be made available to the public.
Police departments must balance the public's right to know against the right to
privacy of complainants, victims, and suspects. This important issue is the focus
of a forthcoming NIJ publication.

In Hartford, community organizations received incident-specific information
obtained with the Neighborhood Problem Solving (NPS) system, which
contained the following data elements:

--For each citizen-initiated call for service: call number, date and time the call
was received, call-for-service type and category, associated incident report
number (if any), block where the police unit was sent, and latitude and longitude
of where the police unit was sent.

--For each reported crime: case number, date and time the crime occurred,
crime type and category, block where the crime occurred, and latitude and
longitude of where the crime occurred.

--For each person arrested: case number; date and time of arrest; sex, age, and
race of the person arrested; charge type and category; street address where the
arrest occurred; and latitude and longitude of where the arrest occurred.

The specificity of the location information varied. For arrests, the street number
and name (e.g., 542 Main Street) are provided, whereas only the street name
and block (e.g., 500 block of Main Street) are provided for calls for service
and crimes. However, geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the
street number and name are included in the NPS database for calls for service,
crimes, and arrests. The coordinates coincide with the Hartford Police
Department's street centerline file. Thus, NPS maps show the approximate
point along a street where the event occurred but do not indicate on which side
of the street the event occurred.

---------------------------

Study Methodology

The evaluation of the Hartford NPS system had three primary objectives:

--Use level--to determine system utilization, including measuring how often
community organizations used the system and what types of maps and reports
they created.

--Use purpose--to understand what the organizations did with the maps and
reports they produced and what they hoped to accomplish with them.

--Use effect--to assess how use of the system affected perceptions of
neighborhood safety and quality of life, community organization effectiveness,
and police-community relations.

The first objective, measuring system use levels, is perhaps the most
fundamental question in any evaluation of an information tool. Special purpose
software, especially when not integrated with the user's workflow patterns,
often falls into disuse after an initial period of use. The research team fully
expected this at some of the installation sites. For the NPS evaluation,
researchers relied primarily on tracking logs that recorded information about
each map or report that users produced. The information included the date and
time, the type of report produced, and the type of data used. The logs were site
specific rather than user specific; that is, a user identification or login name was
not required to use the system because such a feature would pose an obstacle
to system use.

To assess how the committees used the system and its effect on users, Abt
Associates staff conducted informal interviews with and a formal survey of
system users and attended neighborhood meetings at which crime issues were
discussed. The survey focused on such issues as how users decided what types
of maps and reports to produce, how often users referred to the maps and
reports, how the maps and reports affected users' understanding of crime
conditions and their feelings about neighborhood safety and quality of life,
whether the maps and reports changed users' attitudes toward the police, how 
often users shared maps and reports with others, and how the maps and
reports could have been made more useful. 

Identifying NPS system users for the evaluation was not difficult because the
software ran on stand-alone PCs and, for this project, only Abt Associates staff
had the software installation disks.[a] Identifying users would be more difficult if
one were examining an Internet-based police information sharing system.
Although the general public in Hartford could walk in and use some of the
computers with the NPS system,[b] Abt Associates did not publicize the
existence of the system to persons not affiliated with either the CCP project or
community organizations or citizen groups. The system was the subject of two
articles in the main Hartford newspaper,[c,d] and Abt Associates staff were
informed of only a few instances when persons not affiliated with a community
organization or citizen group used the NPS system. As such, this evaluation
focused on how community organizations, not the general public, use crime
information.

At each site, Abt Associates staff installed the software, provided training to
one or more persons, made general suggestions on how the software might be
used, and provided ongoing technical support to users both in person and over
the telephone. However, because the researchers wanted to find out what
organizations would do with the system, Abt Associates did not develop a plan
for how organizations should use the system or help them integrate the system
into their workflow. Thus, while Abt Associates was by no means a
disinterested observer of the system, the researchers also were not the driving
force behind its use.

a. However, NPS software is now available from NIJ.

b. Some NPS installation sites, such as public libraries, are open to the public;
others are in community police field offices, which are generally locked unless
the community police officer is in the office.

c. Rocha, Joseph, "Groups Get the Latest Crime Data," The Hartford Courant,
October 28, 1998.

d. Mason, Johnny, "Residents Monitor Police Through Internet," The Hartford
Courant, February 16, 1999: B4.

---------------------------

Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and
the Office for Victims of Crime.

This and other NIJ publications can be found at and downloaded from the NIJ
Web site (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij).

Additional information about mapping crime may be found at the Crime
Mapping Research Center Web site (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc).

NCJ 185333