Prospective crime mapping in operational context Final report

Recommendation 4 Further development of Promap or a variant should, in the authors view, be apriority. The research presented here demonstrates the superiority of the approach over existingcontenders and shows that it is welcomed by the police. To achieve what is clearly possible willrequire further development of the system and a series of field trials across a range of differentcontexts.Recommendation 5 The utility of the approach should be explored for a range of crime types.Recommendation 6 It would be useful to distinguish between areas for which risks are increasingand those for which they are stable or declining. Operational tactics would vary for these two types ofarea.If the writers might be allowed to end on a flight of fancy, they envisage a situation in perhaps fifteenyears when predictive mapping is available for all crime types, real time information on risk is availableto police patrols, where the seriousness of different crime types is weighted automatically so that anoptimal patrolling pattern is provided to each police vehicle to maximise the total seriousness of crimesto be preventively patrolled. Used in concert with Lab-on-a-chip forensic testing, where DNA and othertests would be possible in police vehicles, would facilitate swift forensic identification of perpetrators ofcrimes not prevented, and patrolling informed by Promap would mean faster response times to arrivebefore crime scenes are compromised for forensic purposes. In parallel with optimised patrolling,Promap would deliver information about longer-term patterns and stabilities in crime and disorder toCrime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, enabling them to put in place design and maintenancechanges. Nothing in such a future is unfeasible even with today’s technology. It does, however requirean effort of imagination to discern the centrality of prospective mapping to such a future.The authors’ nightmare scenario is that Promap suffers death by a thousand trials. When assaultivecrime is shown to be Promap predictable, minor changes in such crime will likely be achieved.However, since the police have to put Promap for assault alongside non-Promap-based decisionmaking for other crime types, they will have to decide at any moment whether they are in Promap ornon-Promap mode. Only when Promap is the default basis for routine policing will its benefits becomevisible. This is a brazen plea that any further funding of Promap focuses on the eventual realisation ofan integrated system, rather than short-term and crime-specific operational trials.69