Law Enforcement Information Research Articles

Law enforcement information sharing: A Florida case study

Many attempts have been made over the last several decades to improve communication among law enforcement agencies. This article is a case study of a “low-level” data sharing project in Florida that could serve as a national model. The Florida Law Enforcement Data Sharing Consortium is a partnership between the University of Central Florida and more than one hundred law enforcement agencies. It offers an inexpensive, yet technically advanced alternative to the proprietary data sharing model. Its distributed architecture was endorsed by the Markle Foundation, the 9/11 Commission, and the 2004 National Security Act. Civil liberties concerns raised by this and other types of data sharing projects are discussed.

Process-driven collaboration support for intra-agency crime analysis

In law enforcement applications, there is a critical need for new tools that can facilitate efficient and effective collaboration. Through a field study, we observe that crime analysis, a critical component of law enforcement operations, is knowledge intensive and often involves collaborative efforts from multiple law enforcement officers within and across agencies. To better facilitate such knowledge intensive collaboration and thereby improve law enforcement agencies' crime-fighting capabilities, we propose a novel methodology based on modeling and implementation techniques from workflow management and information retrieval. This paper presents this process-driven collaboration methodology and its prototype implementation as part of an integrated law enforcement information management environment called COPLINK.

Corporate compliances with the information certification provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

Information contained in periodic reports is normally accepted as accurate because these publications are audited by reputable accounting firms. However, the discovery of improper relationships between corporations and auditing firms as well as the misinformation contained in periodic reports in the beginning of the new millennium resulted in an erosion of the public trust in the role played by auditing companies and in the quality of periodic reports. One of the most important pieces of legislation concerning acceptable standards which will affect the computing and auditing function is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This study examines the compliance of corporations with the information certification provision (Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act). This research shows that employing internationally known auditing firms is not necessarily related to a company's ability to meet the respective deadlines. The results of this study and the implications thereby should be of interest to all categories of information end-users and law enforcement individuals because complying with governing standards and generating accurate reports affect all types of information systems.

7.5.3 Management of Enterprise Administrative Systems Implementation at United States Capitol Police

AbstractThis paper describes our management of the systems modernization effort at the United States Capitol Police (USCP). The Enterprise Architecture of the United States Capitol Police comprises six broad categories of business applications. Of these six, two represent clusters of IT applications: the administrative information systems (AIS) and the operational law enforcement information systems (LEIS). The Enterprise System Architecture is comprised mainly of these two systems. A number of guiding principles are used to manage these systems modernization activities. One of those guiding principles is to use commercial off the shelf (COTS) products as much as possible to reduce development time and implementation costs. In some cases, we were able to successfully implement COTS products with little or no modifications. However, in others, the COTS products needed extensive modifications due to new, unique or evolving business needs. This paper will discuss the management strategy used to select, consolidate, modify, test and implement systems within the framework of USCP's enterprise architecture. This paper also discusses lessons learned from our system upgrade, conversion, consolidation, migration, integration and modernization experiences.

COPLINK Connect: information and knowledge management for law enforcement

Information and knowledge management in a knowledge-intensive and time-critical environment presents a challenge to information technology professionals. In law enforcement, multiple data sources are used, each having different user interfaces. COPLINK Connect addresses these problems by providing one easy-to-use interface that integrates different data sources such as incident records, mug shots and gang information, and allows diverse police departments to share data easily. User evaluations of the application allowed us to study the impact of COPLINK on law-enforcement personnel as well as to identify requirements for improving the system. COPLINK Connect is currently being deployed at Tucson Police Department (TPD).

National health information privacy: regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Health information privacy is important in US society, but existing federal and state law does not offer adequate protection. The Department of Health and Human Services, under powers granted by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, recently issued a final rule providing systematic, nationwide health information privacy protection. The rule is extensive in its scope, applying to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers (hospitals, clinics, and health departments) who conduct financial transactions electronically ("covered entities"). The rule applies to personally identifiable information in any form, whether communicated electronically, on paper, or orally. The rule does not preempt state law that affords more stringent privacy protection; thus, the health care industry will have to comply with multiple layers of federal and state law. The rule affords patients rights to education about privacy safeguards, access to their medical records, and a process for correction of records. It also requires the patient's permission for disclosures of personal information. While privacy is an important value, it may conflict with public responsibilities to use data for social goods. The rule has special provisions for disclosure of health information for research, public health, law enforcement, and commercial marketing. The privacy debate will continue in Congress and within the president's administration. The primary focus will be on the costs and burdens on health care providers, the ability of health care professionals to use and share full medical information when treating patients, the provision of patient care in a timely and efficient manner, and parents' access to information about the health of their children.

The prediction and control of organized crime: A risk assessment instrument for targeting law enforcement efforts

Linking isolated instances of organized crime in a systematic way can inform law enforcement in identifying high-risk activities and markets and prioritizing them according to objective factors known to be associated with organized crime. There are five ways in which risk assessment organized crime can be achieved. Improvements to data collection, utilizing a team approach to gather information, identifying common elements in organized crime incidents, understanding the parameters of a risk assessment instrument, and connecting organized crime risk assessment to the implementation of law and policy are practical ways in which organized crime activity can be better anticipated, investigated, and prevented. Connecting isolated incidents to organized crime through better information from offenders, victims, and police is possible with teams of investigators, researchers, and analysts. An organized crime risk assessment tool is presented that offers systematic analysis of opportunity factors, the criminal environment, and harm potential among the seventeen risk factors identified. Risk assessment can be used to evaluate the influence of organized crime in local jurisdictions, and the impact of new laws and policies that affect commerce and criminal opportunities.

The Planning Profession and Pedestrian Safety: Lessons From Orlando

The planning profession's traditional focus on pedestrian safety in neighborhoods has led to institutional neglect of pedestrian safety along urban arterial roads. To determine whether such neglect has had serious consequences, we present a case analysis of pedestrian-auto crashes in Orange County, Florida. Orange County's major city, Orlando, is typical of post-World War II development throughout the United States, and findings from that area may be taken as representative. Drawing on law enforcement information on pedestrian- motor vehicle collisions, the case analysis relates the geographic distribution of pedestrian/auto crashes to different types of streetscapes and the alcohol impairment status of pedestrians. The analysis implicates those segments of arterial roadways that are lined with strip commercial activities as an important factor in pedestrian injuries and deaths. The problems are worsened where strip commercial activities include establish ments selling or serving alcohol. We conclude by calling for a reevaluation of planning practice that designates urban arterials as traffic-moving facilities and nothing else.

Recommendations for Toxicological Investigations of Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assaults

The recent increase in reports of drug-facilitated sexual assaults has caused alarm in the general public and prompted forensic toxicologists from across North America to address the toxicological issues surrounding this matter. The authors have developed recommendations and guidelines to inform law enforcement, medical, and scientific personnel of the requirements for performing successful toxicological examinations in cases of drug-facilitated rape.

Techno-cops: information technology and law enforcement

Since the first wave of computerisation in the 1970's the implementation of information technology (IT) within policing has been chequered and often met with resistance. It was not until the early 1990's that IT in policing became a political issue of national importance within the UK. This culminated in September 1994 with the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers issuing a National Strategy for Police Information Systems (NSPIS) for England and Wales. The development of an IT strategy must be viewed in the context of increasing expectations and pressure for reform within the police service as a whole and is set against a background of reports and studies aimed at enabling the police service to meet its aims more effectively. The business environment in which police forces operate is changing; increased demands for efficiency has led to IT being recognised as a valuable and innovative addition to policing. In recent years many technological developments have taken place initiated by local police forces themselves and by government both in the UK and the US. This article explores how technology can support the routine core functions of policing, the issues surrounding the use of the technology and finally draws some conclusions about the implications of the technology on the nature of policing.

Race, Income, and Penetration of the Justice System

A great deal of interest and controversy has focused on the impact of race on crime and justice system status. Some have suggested that the overrepresentation of identifiable racial minorities in our system can be attributed to discrimination; others suggest that this can be attributed to the higher levels of poverty observed in these groups. This study addressed this issue by the use of available summary data in the census, Department of Corrections reports, and law enforcement information from the State Criminal Justice Information System. The findings provide partial support for the hypothesis that when economic status is held constant, blacks will be more likely to be processed by the justice system than whites. Race does not appear to have an effect, with economic status controlled, at the arrest level. However, blacks are more likely to be incarcerated than whites, indicating that race has an impact on the degree of penetration of the system.

Information Technology and Law Enforcement

Information Technology and Law Enforcement

Evolving patterns of drug abuse.

The sharp rise in drug abuse in the past decade has led to the development of new sources of information on drug-abuse trends. These include surveys, drug-related emergencies, drug-abuse treatment, hepatitis rates, and various types of law enforcement information. This paper summarizes data currently available for heroin, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, and barbiturates. Heroin use occurred in epidemic form in the late 1960s. Some cities, which had experienced a subsequent decline in heroin use, recently have reported an increase again. Marijuana use has increased steadily. The abuse of amphetamines and barbiturates appears to be growing. Trends on cocaine use are unclear. The development of ongoing, quantitative data-collection systems is beginning to clarify many of the issues regarding drug-use patterns and trends. With the possible exception of survey data, however, each indicator provides data only on selected segments of the drug-using population.

Law enforcement information systems : by Robert J. Reider. Charles C. Thomas (301-327 East Lawrence Avenue, Springfield, Illinois), 1972, 267 pp., paperback and hardcover

ROC analysis is a straightforward but non-intuitive way to determine which of two identification procedures better enables a population of eyewitnesses to correctly sort innocent and guilty suspects into their respective categories. This longstanding analytical method, which is superior to using the diagnosticity ratio for identifying the better procedure, is not in any way compromised by the presence of fillers in lineups and is not tied to any particular theory of memory or discrimination (i.e., it is a theory-free methodology). ROC analysis is widely used in other applied fields, such as diagnostic medicine, and this is true even when the medical procedure in question is exactly analogous to a lineup (e.g., a detection-plus-quadrant-localization task in radiology). Bayesian measures offer no replacement for ROC analysis because they pertain to the information value of a particular diagnostic decision, not to the general diagnostic accuracy of an eyewitness identification procedure.