pdf - Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern University

Law and Justice Studies
P. Reese
Wesley Skogan,
Chair
CCan community-based solutions decrease violent crime? How can information
technology best be integrated into the criminal justice system? How do lawyers
form networks to push their ideological agendas? Bringing together faculty from
the law school and social sciences, IPR’s Law and Justice Studies Program, led by
political science professor Wesley G. Skogan, is addressing the following topics:
• the role of information technology in law enforcement,
• measuring the effects of community policing initiatives,
• measuring the impact of an anti-violence program, and
• networks formed by conservative lawyers.
8 Overview of Activities
22
While advances
in information
technology (IT)
have revolutionized
how the world
works and communicates,
IT is
still in the take-off
stage in the criminal
justice world.
Project I-CLEAR
While advances in information
technology (IT) have revolutionized how
the world works and communicates, IT is
still in the take-off stage in the criminal
justice world, where law-enforcement
officials are just beginning to implement
systems for data-driven policing and
understand their potential.
With a grant from the Illinois Criminal
Justice Information Authority, Skogan
and his team conducted a statewide
evaluation of ongoing IT development
at the Chicago Police Department (CPD)
and I-CLEAR (Illinois Citizen Law
Enforcement Analysis and Reporting)—
an innovative criminal justice data
integration project launched jointly by
the CPD and the Illinois State Police.
The aim of I-CLEAR is to create a
uniform incident-reporting system and
facilitate data sharing among all law
enforcement agencies throughout Illinois.
I-CLEAR is the evolution of an ambitious
data-sharing project begun by the CPD
in partnership with Oracle Corporation.
More than five years ago, the CPD created
a “data warehouse,” a queriable repository
of over 5 million arrest records drawing
from multiple data sources that is updated
daily. The Chicago Police Department
first offered data warehouse access to
jurisdictions in Chicago’s collar counties
and eventually throughout the state. A
survey on that effort is being conducted
by IPR research associate Susan Hartnett,
the lead researcher. She is tracing the
data warehouse’s widespread and rapid
adoption from 2002 to 2007.
To create the statewide I-CLEAR
system, the Illinois State Police hoped
to “piggy-back” off of Chicago’s local
applications, but the agency soon realized
the impracticality of that plan. Since the
beginning of the I-CLEAR evaluation
in May 2005, Skogan and his research
team have witnessed some bureaucratic
challenges to implementing the system
statewide, particularly an erosion of the
partnership between the Chicago and
state police.
Their findings suggest that high
personnel turnover at the CPD hindered
IT progress and innovation internally
as responsibility for the program shifted
continuously. Better succession planning
might have prevented the CPD from
losing precious time and resources
and would likely have expedited the
I-CLEAR decision-making process.
In addition, the report recommended
that the state and the CPD establish an
impartial governance body to mediate
between the agencies and push the
I-CLEAR project forward.