NCJ Number
252230
Journal
Journal of Crime & Justice Volume: 40 Issue: 1 Dated: 2017 Pages: 50-67
Date Published
2017
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This paper uses the issue of gun violence as a lens through which to examine the organizational and inter-organizational change necessary to apply a data-driven, proactive, and strategic policing-led response to gun homicides and non-fatal shootings in four Midwestern sites.
Abstract
Over the last several decades, police departments and other criminal justice agencies have seen a shift toward a proactive problem-solving response to crime problems. This problem-solving orientation has often included an emphasis on expanded partnerships across criminal justice agencies, as well as with a variety of community stakeholders, including researchers. In the current study, each of the four sites adopted a unique data-collection process and incident review. The data collection, incident reviews, and the varying models developed across the four cities provide a reflection on corresponding organizational and inter-organizational changes that illuminate the movement toward this proactive, data-driven, problem-solving model of criminal justice. Fulfilling the promise of the incident reviews, however, requires internal organizational and cross-agency inter-organizational collaboration to align people, systems, and resources with this proactive, problem-solving model. In addition, effectively implementing these organizational and inter-organizational changes is apparently dependent on commitment and leadership, collaboration and partnerships, data quality and availability, and training and communication within and across organizational boundaries. (Publisher abstract modified)