Importance of Crime Patterns

Law enforcement agencies have been collecting data on the amount, types, and effects of crime in America. The information is valuable in law enforcement administration, management, and operation. Researchers, criminal justice professionals, and politicians also use the data to comprehend society and crime deeply. Crime analysts can thus analyze the data to help the police; hence the analysts’ identified patterns grant the police investigative leads. Therefore, it is important to know the exact date and intervals between crimes or events to better deploy the resources needed to reduce crime and safeguard the community.

Crime statistics are valuable in helping criminal justice professionals anticipate an increased probability of crime. Consequently, they help law enforcement intervene to stop the anticipated crime from occurring (Santos, 2016). Knowing the exact date and intervals between crimes or events thus allows for the focus on a certain area and the effective use of resources of police resources (van Sleeuwen et al., 2020). This way, law enforcement can reduce the rate of future crimes. Additionally, this knowledge enables effective budgeting in law enforcement (Zhuo & Libed, 2020). After knowing the exact date and intervals between crimes, enough money can be allocated to ensure a significant difference in keeping the community safe. Budgets also inform where there is a need for more resources and where fewer resources are needed as the community becomes safer (Zhuo & Libed, 2020). Moreover, knowing the exact date and intervals between crimes and events enables tracking progress in terms of the working initiatives, the obsolete ones, and the ones needing changes.

In a nutshell, crime analysis is vital in identifying emerging issues quickly and handling them effectively. The data and patterns identified to enable the police to stop crime before it occurs, keeping the community safe. They can also budget effectively and use the available resources to reduce crime rates. Therefore, more research should be targeted at finding more applications for this data.

References

Santos, R. B. (2016). Crime analysis with crime mapping (4th ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

van Sleeuwen, S. E. M., Steenbeek, W., & Ruiter, S. (2020). When do offenders commit crime? An analysis of temporal consistency in individual offending patterns. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 37(4), 863–889. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-020-09470-w

Zhuo, E. R., & Libed, J. (2020). Analysis of crime rates in rizal province using crime forecasting models. Proceedings of the 2020 the 3rd International Conference on Computers in Management and Business. https://doi.org/10.1145/3383845.3383884