I recently decided to start a new career in crime analysis.  In hopes that it may help others who are considering a similar path, I am going to share my experience with changing careers.

After having been home for several years raising my children, I decided I was ready to jump into a career again.  However, this time I wanted to switch directions and work in a field that had always interested me . . . Criminal Justice.  I spent ten years working at a software company testing financial software, assisting with training documentation and working with clients.  My motivation to switch to crime analysis was a desire to develop a career in which I could build on my existing education and skills as well as spend time doing something I enjoy that is worthwhile and productive.

Crime Analysis

My interest in criminal justice and law enforcement stems from my family background.  A few of my family members work in the criminal justice arena (police force and legal system) and a few landed on the wrong side of the law.  This family history has always intrigued me, which naturally led me to my choice in becoming a crime analyst. Crime analysis is the systematic study of crime and disorder problems along with police-related issues such as sociodemographic, spatial, and temporal factors, to assist police in criminal apprehension, crime reductions, crime prevention and evaluation.

My interest in crime, trends, numbers and statistics, plays to my analytical side and my problem solving skills.  It’s like constantly working on putting puzzle pieces together (unlike the forensic focus on television shows such as CSI: Miami).

Now, how do I get there?  I began by researching this career online to find some detailed information such as training requirements, growth potential, etc.  Here are a few websites I found to be helpful:

• Legal Criminal Justice Schools
• Bright Hub
• Massachusetts Association of Crime Analysts

Once I gathered enough information regarding this career choice, I decided to the best place to start was to begin with my education.

Education

I enrolled in a local community college’s Crime Analyst Certification program.  I also decided it would be beneficial to volunteer at a local police district while in school to obtain hands on experience.  The Denver Police Department provided such an opportunity.  After stressing my interests and goals during my interview, the officer in charge of volunteers placed me directly in their Data Analysis Unit where I immediately gained experience mapping crimes.

Crime analysis is a fairly new field, and training in the field is not widely available. Many criminal justice programs focus on police work and offer courses focusing on problems in law enforcement. I found just a few colleges offering certification programs, one of which was offered online.  However, the programs I found differed in the courses they offered, adding to my confusion as to exactly what is required to become an analyst.  I overcame this hurdle after discovering the International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA).  The IACA provides a wealth of information regarding available training, the certification requirements, software, conferences, etc. The Colorado Crime Analysis Association (CCAA) is another helpful site on the local level.  I was able to join both associations through the Denver Police Department.  My joining CCAA has enabled me to network with various agencies and become involved in future training needs.

Experience and Skill Requirements

Researching current crime analyst job postings was another great way to get a handle on education and skill requirements.  Simply Hired is very helpful.  Typically crime analysis involves some familiarity with law enforcement terminology, applied statistics, social science and geographical mapping. This may include subjects such as psychological profiling and intelligence analysis.  Although the education requirements vary slightly from posting to posting most prefer a bachelor’s degree with emphasis on social sciences, criminology, statistics or a related field.  Just a few of the postings mention certification.  As far as experience requirements, most postings are looking for 1-2 years professional level experience in law enforcement environment analyzing crime data and mapping with Geographical Information Systems (GIS).  GIS is a software tool used to modify, visualize, query and analyze geographic and tabular data.  The skill requirements include knowledge of computer data systems, statistical analysis and mapping software programs; ability to identify and organize data for analytical purposes and present data; and proficiency in the use of personal computers in a Window, MS Office operating environment.

Salary & Growth Potential

I found PayScale to be a helpful site that runs compensation surveys.  It estimates a yearly salary range of $30,000 to $80,000 for crime analysts.  The large range may be due to the fact that law enforcement salaries are linked to civil service salaries.  In some areas of the U.S. civil service salaries are low, but in major metropolitan areas, where law enforcement may want and need civilian technical support, salaries are higher.  Indeed reports that the average annual salary for crime analysts is $57,000 while research done by  Legal-Criminal-Justice-Schools found that crime analyst salaries range from $28,000 to well over $66,000 a year depending on experience, education, location and related factors.  Based on twenty-three IACA postings within the last five years, the average salary range for a crime analyst is $48,589 – $64,317.  According to Legal-Criminal-Justice-Schools.com, the job outlook for crime analysts is promising with demand for formally educated crime analysts increasing over the last decade. The focus on the recession has created skepticism around certain career fields, but crime is prevalent in any economy and the need for law enforcement professionals and those who can help fight crime will continue to be in demand.

Now What?

I stumbled on an internship opportunity with Bair Software through IACA and am thoroughly enjoying it.  I’m gaining valuable hands-on experience while learning a new suite of applications specific to crime analysis.  Working with others who have a law enforcement background, develop software and train is incredibly beneficial as I learn invaluable bits of information on a weekly basis that wouldn’t be part of formal classes.  I’m on a strong path and look forward to developing this career as a crime analyst.

Analysis is the process of pulling meaning from chaos. When you first load up your agency in RAIDS Online, you may feel overwhelmed by all those dots on the map. What does it all mean? Is crime high in my area? Does the type of crime happening near my home pose a danger? When is all this crime happening? This blog post will teach you some basic crime analysis techniques so you can make sense of crime in your area. Empowered by this knowledge, you can help make your community a safer place.

Step One: Define What You Want to Know

Choose a specific problem you want to address and define it clearly as either a question or a statement. For instance, you can state your problem as an exploratory question such as What time of day do burglaries most often occur within a mile of my home?. On the other hand, you can describe an assumption you hold that you wish to test such as Burglaries occur most often at night. We’ll use these two problem definitions as our examples for the rest of the post.

Step Two: Select the Crime Relevant to Your Problem

Use the address buffer, crime type list and date range selector to view only the crime that is relevant to your specific question. Follow the steps below to filter out all the unnecessary data so you’re left with only the crime you care about. Feel free to follow along with your own address.

1. Enter your address in the Address field and click the Go to Address button.
2. Turn on the address buffer by checking the Buffer checkbox.
3. Use the radius distance drop down menu (next to the buffer checkbox) to select a distance of 1 mile.
4. Check the Only display crimes within buffer checkbox to hide all crimes further than a mile from your address.
   

   Your search address box should look similar to this.

5. In the Crime Types box, click the Deselect All button. This will hide all the crime. Now click on the Burglary row to display the burglaries.
   

   Your crime type box should look like this.

6. Since the map defaults to only a week’s worth of data, we may need to select a longer timeframe in order to have enough crime to effectively answer your question or test your statement. For our particular problem, I would try to include around 50 burglaries in our analysis. I ended up selecting three months of burglaries to achieve this number. You may need to include more or less time. Hint: You can always find our how many crimes you are viewing by click on the Metadata tab and looking for the Records row.

Now you are viewing only the crime relevant to your analysis. Feel free to check out the Data Grid tab to get a feel for the nature of the crimes. You might also want to take a look at the Metadata tab to see the quality of the data, which has a direct bearing on the quality of your analysis.

Your map should look something like this after applying the filters. (Click the image for a larger version.)

Step Three: Run the Analytics

The next step is to select the appropriate analytics for our problem. We’re trying to discover patterns dealing with the time of day. This is a temporal problem. Consequently, the most appropriate analytic for our problem is the Temporal Topology, which displays when crime is occurring in time. The x-axis represents the hour of the day while the y-axis represents the day of the week. Times with the most crime appear in red while times with no crime appear in blue.

To run the temporal topology analytic, simply click on the Analytics tab.

The temporal topology showing when burglary is occurring in time. Yours will look a little different. (Click on the image for a larger version.)

Step Four: Draw Conclusions from the Analytics

Use the analytic you ran in the previous step to draw conclusions about the specific problem you defined in step one. Let’s start with our first definition, which we posed as an exploratory question: What time of day do burglaries most often occur within a mile of my home? Look at the temporal topology graph and answer that question by looking for hotspots (areas with the most crime) as depicted by red, orange and yellow shades. What times during the week show the most activity? In our example (shown above), it appears that burglaries occur most often during the day with slightly more activity during business hours.

Ask the opposite question: What times have little to no burglaries? In our example, the early morning hours (2 a.m. to 7 a.m.) of the weekdays show very few burglaries.

Burglaries by Day of Week (Click on the image for a larger version.)

You can flesh out this analysis a little bit by looking at which days have more crime in general. Confirm this by looking at the Crime Type by Day of Week graph. Likewise, take a look at the hours of day that tend to have a good deal of crime no matter the day of the week.

In our example, the number of burglaries don’t vary too much between the days of the week. Although we do notice a slight dip in the middle of the week, it only differs from the other days by one or two burglaries; we would need to include much more data to draw any solid conclusions from the Burglary by Day of Week graph.

Let’s answer our second problem definition, which we stated as an assumption that we wanted to test: Burglaries occur most often at night. We have probably already answered this question in the above analysis, but look at the temporal topology graph again with this assumption specifically in mind. Do burglaries happen more often during the night? Or do they tend to occur more often during the day?

What are some ways we can improve this analysis? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments. Hint: Does our problem definition say anything about the distance from our address?

What Now?

Now that you have analyzed a specific crime problem in your area, don’t let that knowledge go to waste. Here are some steps you can take to make your community a safer place with your analysis.

• Ask your police department what you can do to help with the problem you discovered in your analysis.
• Present your analysis at your Neighborhood Watch meeting to foster awareness. Lead a discussion on how to solve the problem. Better yet, invite an officer from your police department to the meeting and pick his brain for ideas on how to deal with the issue.
• If you discover a common assumption about crime is not true—at least in your area—share what you have learned with others to put their minds at ease and focus their attention on real problems.
• Be more alert at the places and times that your analysis suggests is at risk for higher levels crime.

Those are just a few ideas to get you started thinking about where to go from here. Suggest more action steps in the comments. We might even add them to the list! We would also love to hear how you are using RAIDS Online to analyze crime in your area. Your experiences will help other readers become better analysts, so post away!

A Few Parting Tips

Narrow Down the Problem

Make sure your problem definition is specific. Too broad of a question will not exclude enough of the chaos to glean real meaning from the data. Analyze one crime type at a time instead of many. Focus your analysis on a small area rather than a large one. Compare two crime types over a period using the Timeline graph of time instead of trying to find patterns in all the crime types at once.

More Data = More Accurate Results

Crime, as with anything else, can randomly spike well above the average rate one week and dip real low another week. As a result, try to include as much data for your specific crime types or time periods as you can to even out these ups and downs. This will give you a more accurate picture of the real crime rates. For instance, when testing our assumption about when burglary most often happens, we should turn off the address buffer and bring in several months of data.

Confer with a Professional

Crime analysts at your police department have years of training and experience as well as powerful analysis tools. So you may want to check with them to confirm the results of your analysis and learn what you and your neighborhood can do to address the problem.