Proactive Knowledge Management in Policing

Community based policing strategies and problem oriented policing are intuitively attractive strategies for law enforcement agencies primarily because these approaches promise increased productivity and effectiveness by leveraging knowledge.  Underlying these strategies is the notion that by a more thorough understanding of the environment within which an officer is working, higher success rates as measured by both customer satisfaction and higher clearance rates will accrue.  There is also the implied promise of reducing crime by changing the factors or conditions under which it appears to proliferate.  By proactively intervening in the processes that lead to the ongoing support of an environment conducive to continuous criminal behavior, the policing objective is to reduce the level of effort required to respond to a specified crime or order problem.

The actual success of these strategies beyond the good press they often receive is based on the extent to which knowledge gathered and available is put to use in the resolution of crime problems in a specific context or community.  Knowledge, as opposed to information, and its application in improved decision-making both at a strategic and tactical level, is the grounding principal on which successful strategies are built.  For the enhanced policing strategy to be measured as effective in achieving its goals, the management of knowledge is essential and critical. For proactive policing strategies to succeed, there must be proactive knowledge management.

There are two key classes of knowledge that support proactive policing strategies.  First, there is the knowledge about the crime or public order problems to be addressed.  The second class is knowledge of the extent to which alternative responses are likely to be effective in addressing the problem.

A basic truth about knowledge management in policing is that there is very little of it.  As far back as the early 1970’s, The Stanford Research Institute published a thorough evaluation showing that police departments owned 95% of the information they needed to solve crimes, but they couldn’t find the information in a timely fashion.  There was no structured way to share knowledge with those who needed it in response to specific criminal activity or classes thereof.

In spite of the advances of computer technology and software aimed at automating the records management function in policing, there remains today a lack of intentional focus on knowledge management and dissemination in most police agencies.  The considerable literature base about knowledge management in industry and the innovations in the capture, structuring, and sharing of knowledge has had little to do with the application of these principles in policing.   The lack of this application to policing practices has more to do with the management emphasis in police agencies than with the capability of technology. 

There is now a major movement in the computer industry toward improved knowledge management.  Creating the tools to support this endeavor has become one of the key objectives of Microsoft, among other suppliers.  Specialized software for knowledge management or decision support has been introduced throughout the industry in recognition of the need to provide an easy way for everyone in an organization to have the information (knowledge) that is required for the task at hand.  Police agencies have discovered the value of making both strategic and tactical decisions based on “data” rather than on intuition.  Knowledge, as represented by measures, facts, and analytical conclusions supported by data, has been shown to form an improved basis for management of police activities.  The DOJ endorsement of the principle of basing decisions on data , and the recent proliferation of the use of mapping and other software to show actual trends, hot spots, etc., is the first step in the evolution of a more intelligent basis for decision making in police management than has ever been possible.

There are three components to intentional or proactive knowledge management that police executives must attend to in the effort to create a more sound basis for decision-making:  (1) the mechanisms for capturing  knowledge and structuring it in a way that facilitates its use, (2) the means for identifying the knowledge that each operational and management person requires in decision-making, and (3) the methods for disseminating the knowledge.

The infrastructure for the effective implementation of proactive knowledge management consists of a modern computer system, network, and software designed to support this business objective.  Modern architectures involving high-speed availability of information to everyone in the department regardless of their physical location and under all conditions is the underlying basis for effective knowledge management.  The user of client/server, intranet-based, relational databases and all of the associated software is a key to delivering on the promise of knowledge management.  However, the way to approach implementation of such technology has more to do with the likelihood of success than the technology itself.

Police executives will have to ensure that the objectives of computerization are driven by the business needs.  If it is the intent to use the technology to acquire, categorize, disseminate knowledge to everyone in accordance with their needs, then the computer system has to be designed around this objective.  The classical concept of buying a records management system to automate UCR reporting and allow some searching of data is not enough.   The database design, the tools for capture and dissemination all must be shaped by the business needs.  An obvious conclusion is that the requirements must be defined in terms of what can be provided as an output from the system rather than only defining the data capture and storage side of the equation. 

© Copyright 2005 Paul Wormeli. Last update: 3/16/2005; 9:25:19 PM.