Modelling the Influence of Organisational Structure on Crime Analysis Technology Innovations in Municipal Police Departments
| Published date | 01 March 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1350/ijps.2014.16.1.327 |
| Author | Blake M. Randol |
| Date | 01 March 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Paper |
International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 16 Number 1
Page 52
International Journal of Police
Science and Management,
Vol. 16 No. 1, 2014, pp. 52–64.
DOI: 10.1350/ijps.2014.16.1.327
Modelling the influence of organisational
structure on crime analysis technology
innovations in municipal police departments
Blake M. Randol
Department of Criminal Justice, University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, PO Box 786, Enderis Hall
1141, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0786, USA. Tel: +1 414 229 4387; email: randol@uwm.edu
Submitted 5 November 2013; accepted 15 January 2014
Keywords: crime analysis, crime mapping, CompStat, organisational innovation,
police management
Blake M. Randol PhD is an assistant profes-
sor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s
Department of Criminal Justice. Professor Ran-
dol teaches courses in criminal justice adminis-
tration, research methods, and issues in police
practice and policy. Research interests include
police and correctional administration, data-
driven policing and police community relations.
AbstrAct
In the past two decades, many local police agen-
cies in the USA have adopted the rhetoric of
being ‘problem-oriented’, ‘evidence-based’ or
‘intelligence-led’ after investing in crime analysis
technologies used for crime mapping, hot spot iden-
tification, criminal investigations and intelligence
gathering. Scholars have presented general argu-
ments concerning the environmental and organisa-
tional factors that have influenced this technological
trend in policing; to date, however, no known stud-
ies have empirically tested these hypotheses at the
national level. This study seeks to help fill this gap
using a sample of data drawn from the Depart-
ment of Justice’s 2007 Law Enforcement Manage-
ment and Administrative Statistics survey, and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2006 Uniform
Crime Reports. Results reveal that several organi-
sational factors including community policing were
associated with agency adoptions of crime analysis
technologies. Implications for the policing literature
and avenues for future research are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Former Commissioner William Bratton’s
1994 implementation of CompStat in the
New York City Police Department (NYPD)
was widely heralded as a successful and
‘strategic innovation’ in American policing,
and influenced the nationwide diffusion of
CompStat-like programs (Willis & Mastrof-
ski, 2011; Willis, Mastrofski, & Kochel, 2010).
Although several studies have examined
the determinants, diffusion and processes
of CompStat innovations in police depart-
ments (Willis et al., 2010; Willis & Mastrof-
ski, 2011), few researchers have investigated
a more prevalent and consequential trend in
American policing: the widespread adop-
tion of computerised technologies used for
crime analysis, crime mapping and hot spot
identification (Travis & Hughes, 2002; Weis-
burd & Lum, 2005). In the past decade, the
use of crime-mapping technology for the
geographical/spatial analysis of crime has
become increasingly prevalent among both
scholars and practitioners, and the adoption
of computerised crime-mapping technology
among America’s larger police departments
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