Technology and Strategic Planning in the Police - Criminal Justice - IresearchNet (2023)

Every criminal justice organizationYou need to occasionally examine your core values ​​and evaluate the process by which you deliver the advertised products and services. Strategic planning provides the tools and steps necessary to examine the effectiveness of an agency's product delivery systems. Both public and private agencies have an obligation to the population they serve, and without such planning, agencies risk not meeting the needs of their clients. Therefore, strategic planning is an integral part of modern agencies concerned with fiscal responsibility and adequate service delivery (Haines 2000).

The boost of professionalismand public responsibility led the police to adopt strategic planning measures and apply concepts borrowed from the business world. The advent of information technology (IT) offers new opportunities and challenges for police strategic planning. Modern technologies have become an indispensable part of today's police planning process, whether it's managing staffing or anticipating how best to tackle tomorrow's crime problems.

Basic Strategic Planning in Police

Strategic planning has many benefits for police leaders.It can help an agency identify and anticipate key trends and issues facing the organization, both now and in the future. The planning process also explores options, sets directions, and helps stakeholders make the right decisions. It facilitates communication between the key stakeholders involved in the process and keeps organizations focused on results as they battle daily crises. Planning can be used to develop performance standards to measure an agency's efforts. Finally, and most importantly, it helps leaders to facilitate and manage change (Glensor and Peak 2005). Table 1 illustrates some stages of strategic planning and the necessary actions.

The need for IT in strategyPlanning becomes even more precise when the organization has adopted and is practicing the Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving (COPPS) strategy. For example, in COPPS, the organization needs to maximize communication and feedback from citizens. Some technology applications for these purposes can be quite simplistic, such as issuing cell phones to managers and publishing managers' phone numbers. Or, at a higher level, the agency could consider developing a website. A website can solicit community input on such information that can be very helpful in strategically planning the future of the agency. In addition, areas such as the agency's history, mission, vision, values, and philosophy/methods under COPPS can be presented and explained on this website.

tabla 1Stages of strategic planning and necessary actions

• Criminal acts or neighborhood problems
• Perspectives from the general department as well as individual officer contacts
• Programs or activities that citizens would like to see implemented

Therefore, IT can help the organization to achieve its goals and objectives. However, the CEO must ensure that all staff are aware of these technologies and are aware of their use. So, to merge strategic planning and IT, top law enforcement officials need to do the following:

• recognize thatThe agency must first prepare a strategic plan that articulates the organization's overall mission, goals, and objectives.
• recognize thethe mission-critical role of technology in surveillance and develop a vision for IT and its role in the agency, keeping in mind that the strategic vision for IT directly supports the agency's mission, goals, and objectives.
• create a systemprocess of planning, maintenance and continuous support of information systems. Using IT for strategic planning is not a one-time effort and requires a cyclical process of planning, acquiring, implementing and managing IT.
• develop a strategyIT vision document. This document will articulate how the technology will help the agency accomplish its primary mission and will establish an ongoing process for evaluating, updating, and improving these technologies as the goals of the agency and the technology change.

Strategic Planning and Police Technology

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS),Created by the 1994 Crime Control Act, it was largely responsible for improving police departments in terms of IT. “Under the MAKING OFFICER REIPLOYMENT EFFECTIVE (MORE) program, OCOPS provided more than $1.3 billion to approximately 4,500 police departments for the acquisition and implementation of IT systems” (Dunworth 2005, 7). This rise of IT has helped law enforcement organizations achieve their goals by integrating technological advances into the strategic planning process.

As noted above,It is extremely important that law enforcement organizations participate in strategic planning. Just as important, however, is the need for senior executives to understand how IT can assist in strategic planning, as well as the types of technologies available for this effort. Technological improvements can now provide crucial information for strategic planning. For example, Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) now has the ability to provide real-time statistical information, screen maps, prepare alarm and warning lists, and issue and store multiple permits; Records Management Systems (RMS) now analyze crime statistics and maintain files related to people, vehicles, prisoners, and police activities. Other technologies have been developed more recently and can provide a much better picture of the situation under review and related long-term planning efforts.

Strategic Planning and Crime Reduction Applications

Strategic planning that involves preventative efforts or addresses specific, recurring problems can also benefit from the use of IT. Some examples are the following:

• crime prevention.COPPS and TI can assist in strategic crime prevention planning through its crime analysis function, looking for ways to deny criminals the opportunity to act in the first place. Using the SARA process, analysts can search for criminal problems, analyze the nature of criminal activity, respond by allocating the necessary police resources to deter criminals, and evaluate by conducting periodic assessments to determine effectiveness (Helms 2002).
• Mapping of criminal acts.Computerized crime mapping combines geographic information from global positioning satellites with crime statistics collected by the department's CAD system and demographic data. The result is a picture that combines disparate data sets for a whole new perspective on crime. For example, a crime map can be overlaid with maps or layers of causal data: unemployment rates in high-crime areas, locations of abandoned houses, population density, reports of drug activity, or geographic features (such as alleys, canals, or places open). fields) which may be contributing factors (Rogers 1997; Pilant 1997).
• accident investigation.Some law enforcement agencies have begun using a global positioning system to determine details such as vehicle location and damage, elevation, bank, turning radius, and critical speed. A transmitter takes a series of "shots" to obtain the exact location and measurements of crash details such as skid marks, impact area, and debris; this information is then downloaded into the system and the coordinates are plotted on an aerial shot of the intersection or highway. Using computer technology, details are superimposed on the aerial shot, thus recreating the accident scene to scale. Finally, digital photos of the accident are incorporated into the final product, resulting in a highly accurate description of the accident (Bath 2003).
• gang intelligence systems.Police now use their laptops and cell phones to help solve gang-related crimes. Some states now have an intranet-linked software package that connects sites across the state. It's essentially a clearinghouse for information about individual gang members, the places they go or live, and the cars they drive. Within minutes, an officer in the field can connect to the network, enter information, and wait for matches (Dussault 1998).
• Staffing and Deployment Applications.Police departments need to deploy staff efficiently. This can be achieved using different technological tools. For example, computerized personnel databases can identify officers with unusual sick time or those who rack up numerous public complaints. The largest application of IT in terms of strategic planning involves the assignment of patrols. Using geographic mapping software, officers are now able to calculate the crime problem at the round level and allocate resources as needed within very tight limits. This is very different from the traditional division of a city into four geographic quadrants or the static allocation of zones that often remain the same for many years, regardless of changes in crime problems.

See also: Administration of Police Agencies, Theories of; Attitudes Towards the Police: Measurement Issues; demographic change in policing; Community Surveillance: Effects and Impacts; Police Standards and Training Commissions; SARA, the Model.

References:

1. Bathroom, Alison. 2003. The investigation of the crash site is high-tech. Reno Gazette Journal, November 18, 4.
2. Dunworth, T. 2005. Information Technology and the Criminal Justice System: A Historical Overview. In Information Technology and the Criminal Justice System, A. Pattavina, 3-28. Thousand Oaks, CA: Wise.
3. Dussault, R. 1998. GangNet: A New Tool in the War Against Gangs. Government Technology (January): 34-35.
4. Glensor, R.W., and K.J. Peak. 2005. IT Strategic Planning. IT Matters: A Reader for the Busy Police Chief Executive. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
5. Haines, Stephen G. 2000. The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press.
6. Helms, D. 2002. Shutting the Barn Door: Post-9/11 Police Counterterrorism from the Analyst's Perspective. Crime Mapping News (Bulletin of the Police Foundation) 4: 1-5.
7. Pilant, L. 1997. Computerized crime mapping. The Chief of Police (December): 58.
8. Rogers, D. 1999. Putting crime analysis on the map. Law Enforcement Technology (November): 76-79.