An Information Processing Model of a Police Organization

Abstract

A model has been developed to study economic decision making in police organizations. The conceptual viewpoint taken is that police organizations are information processing systems, with activities connected in a communication network. The resulting model is process-oriented, and organizational decisions are analyzed by studying how the police force senses, learns about, and solves a stream of criminal events. Search theory is used to model the information processing activities and to study the value of unit memory, communication between units and the coordination of two or more units. A computer model links the units and activities in a simulation of the police force organization. Examples based on a municipal police force are used to highlight the concepts of the model building approach. The implementation of the computer model using police force data is reported.