Intelligence and crime reduction

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the theories, techniques, and tools used by analysts to assist in the reduction of crime and illustrate their implementation in practice. The chapter is organised into four sections, which mirror a systematic problem-solving approach. The chapter starts by exploring techniques to identify and prioritise patterns of crime and incidents. It will then list analytic techniques to help the analyst to recognise why these patterns are occurring. Specifically, it will show how crime patterns are generated by the opportunities presented in everyday life, associated with locations, people, events and products. Further, the chapter explores how, by analysing these incidents from an offender perspective, more effective interventions can be tailored to tackle the problem. The chapter will finish by describing different approaches to evaluation to assist the analyst understand whether the intervention has had an impact.