Welcome to the Inglewood Police Department’s Crime Analysis Unit webpage.  The unit is staffed by a Senior Crime Analyst and a Crime Analyst.  The following is a short summary of what crime analysis is, and what crime analysts do.

Crime Analysis can be best described as a set of processes directed at providing timely and pertinent information relative to crime. This includes identifying crime trends, patterns and series, assisting in the investigative process, forecasting future crime incidents and making recommendations to personnel in planning the deployment of resources for the prevention and suppression of criminal activities.  (Steven Gottlieb et al., 1994, “Crime Analysis: From First Report to Final Arrest.”)

In short, crime analysis serves mostly as a support function with its main focus being the identification, suppression, and prevention of crime, and the apprehension of suspects. Our primary goal is to provide timely and accurate information that will help accomplish this task. To do this, crime analysts use a variety of techniques in order to identify and track serious crimes. Some of those techniques allow us to determine the problem area(s) and even the most likely time frames in which specific crimes are occurring, and providing investigative leads, among other things.

There are several websites and great sources of information concerning the field of Crime Analysis.  The below websites are a good start to learning more about Crime Analysis.

Southern California Crime & Intelligence Analysts’ Association

www.scciaa.net

International Association of Crime Analysts

www.iaca.net