Neighborhood Crime Analyst (NCA)
What is a Neighborhood Crime Analyst?
Basically a Neighborhood Crime Analyst is someone who uses their special knowledge of the neighborhood with a crime data resource like krimelabb to formulate a strategy for deterring crime.
A Neighborhood Crime Analyst works closely with the neighborhood, law enforcement, the DA's office and other Neighborhood Crime Analysts. This amateur can do analysis in the neighborhood similar to what a professional crime analyst would do citywide but with a narrower focus.
So here are some things the NCA can do:
- Monitor day to day crime activity based on crime reports
- Collect anecdotal crime information from neighbors
- Determine hot spots in the neighborhood
- Determine who the frequent offenders are
- Create CompStat-like reports that show where each type of crime is taking place
- Network with other NCAs and share information
- Monitor alert systems like Citizen's Observer and krimelabb's Alert system
Here are a few ways to study crime data:
- Crime categories--what type of crime is taking place?
- Chronologically--when do crimes take place...time of day, day of the week, month of the year?
- Geo-spatially--where are the crimes taking place, e.g. hot spots
- Criminal associations--the way criminals are connected
- Offense taxonomy--the way offenses are classified
- Offense escalation--the way offenses are related, e.g. does an increase in public intoxication arrests decrease the incidence of assaults?