Prospective crime mapping in operational context Final report

5. Process evaluationThe aim of this element of the evaluation was to understand and assess exactly what happened andto identify any factors that particularly facilitated or impeded implementation. For instance, whogenerated the maps, how often, how were they interpreted, who looked at them, were tactics shapedby the results, and if so, how?The reasons for this emphasis are (at least) two-fold. First, this type of analysis is essential if themechanisms through which an intervention worked (or failed to work) are to be identified andunderstood. Given that this project is the first in the UK to see if and how police officers can use crimeforecasting methods in an operational context, this was of particular importance. Consequently, thereis much to be learned not only in terms of whether these types of systems could help reduce crime butalso in terms of how they are received by those who would use them, technical issues that may arise,and how the information can be usefully disseminated and interrogated. A particularly poor outcomeof the project would have been to find that the system was not used but with no account of why thatwas the case. Another undesirable outcome would have been to find that the system had not beenused for reasons that could have been corrected during the implementation phase. The work reportedin this section sought to preclude such outcomes.The second reason for conducting the process evaluation was to document how implementationoccurred, who was involved and when, so that intelligent replication elsewhere would be plausible, orso that mistakes made could be avoided in subsequent projects.Central questions addressed whether or not the police and their crime reduction partners used themaps in the deployment of operational resources and, if so, how? Of course, if the answer to the firstof these questions was ‘no’ then it would not be possible to attribute any crime reductive effects to theapproach. Thus, the process evaluation was integral to, and informed the evaluation of change inlevels of crime that followed. In subsequent sections the approach taken for this element of theevaluation is considered and results discussed.Process evaluation methodologyA variety of measures were used to identify and document the processes through which the pilot wasimplemented. These included: semi-structured interviews, a survey of front-line police officers, thecompletion of a tactical options log by the Command Team, and direct observation by the researchteam. In this section, to provide an overview of the approach taken, each of the different methodsused will first be discussed before discussing the collective results.The maps were routinely generated by the two crime Intelligence Analysts who worked on theDivision. To gain an understanding of how they perceived the usefulness of the system, both in termsof user friendliness of the software and the maps generated, three semi-structured interviews wereconducted with both analysts at the beginning, middle and end of the seven-month implementationperiod. The questions asked were divided into two general categories: 1) how useful did they feel themaps were; and, 2) how much did the production of the maps impact on their daily work.Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with 12 Section Sergeants in Alfreton, Belper, LongEaton and Ripley towards the end of the pilot period. These were intended to provide an in-depthnarrative of how useful, if at all, the maps were to those who used them, and to seek understanding ofhow they were used on a day-to-day basis.At the end of the implementation period, a survey was conducted with 57 front-line police officers in ‘A’Division to help gain an understanding of how useful the officers felt the maps were as well as whether43