Police Information Systems

Conceptual Foundation of Information Systems

The ability to compile and report information such as crime statistics is vital to the organizational survival of police organizations and to their ability to communicate with the public about the nature of their functioning. By the end of the twentieth century, most police departments in the United States were utilizing computerized information systems in some fashion. Reaves and Goldberg (1999) report that by 1997, nearly 80 percent of larger local law enforcement agencies had implemented vehicle-based (mobile) computer systems; 28 percent had direct access to criminal history information in their vehicles; and nearly 60 percent used some form of computer-based crime mapping. In this way, information systems provide the law enforcement community with the ability to justify their resource needs and maintain accountability to the public.

Organizational accountability has been intricately connected with policing since the early twentieth century and the advent of the professional policing movement. Reformers such as August Vollmer and O.W. Wilson articulated a need for technological advancements that would transform policing into a profession (Uchida 1993). Accountability was subsequently connected to the collection of official statistics in 1959 when J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) established the annual collection of crime data known as the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) from police departments around the United States, thereby institutionalizing the need for automated police information systems. Technology and the collection of official statistics remain central to the “bureaucratic ideal” of police organizations, an ideal that values organizations as rational, efficient, and technologically sophisticated bureaucracies.

The Role of Information in Police Organizations

Information systems create both organizational memory and organizational history, and they allow managers to intelligently allocate budget resources and to plan for future needs. Information collection has become central to the police mission, because it provides police managers with tools for both short-term and long-term planning, and because the availability of information is important to the safety and effectiveness of officers on the street. From an administrative perspective, easily accessible information is necessary for everyday decisions in any organization. Police departments have organizational demands and requirements that are similar to those of other public or private sector agencies: Police administrators must plan in a manner that moves the organization toward both its long-term goals and short-term goals that ensure the smooth day-to-day functioning of the agency.

At the same time, however, police agencies are different from other types of organizations, and they have requirements that make the availability of information uniquely important. Unlike the private sector, police do not determine their own workload but are tied to the levels of service demanded by the public. Also, unlike private sector agencies, police generally cannot refuse to provide services that fall under their mandate. These organizational pressures differ from the private sector in that certain levels of services are expected even if they are no longer cost-effective to provide. The advent of massive communication systems, such as the 911 emergency telephone system, has given the public the expectation of immediate service, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Although police can moderate their workload by manipulating their response time to calls for service or limiting the amount of investigative effort given to certain criminal violations, their work-load is highly dependent on levels of public demand. Quality information better enables police managers to handle these demands.

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