Overview

This four-day professional training course for police and CSP analysts provides a firm grounding in, and development of, problem-solving and intelligence-led analytical methods and processes in analysing crime.

Our course tutors have either previously been analysts and/or work very closely with analysts in many police forces and CSPs in the UK. They also have extensive international knowledge of intelligence-led policing and problem solving.

Course content

The course is designed to improve awareness of data that can be used in crime analysis, while developing or extending your skills in the following areas:

• using analytical techniques
• problem solving
• the use of analytical products to influence decision-making

The course is applicable to all types of crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour (ASB). It explores concepts of offending behaviour, victim vulnerability, and place-based criminal activity.

The course is very interactive, and places great emphasis on helping you to develop good quality analytical and intelligence products, particularly problem profiles and strategic assessments. 

In particular we focus on helping you to develop intelligence products that not only provide a description of a problem, but a real understanding of that problem, and how it can be tackled. 

We illustrate these principles, the use of data, analytical techniques and methods for confidently influencing decision-making with examples from practice and research. 

The course draws from our award-winning 'Become a Problem-Solving Crime Analyst' manual, and adds to it with practical research and lessons learnt that we and others have developed over the last ten years.

Who this course is for

This short course is suitable for:

• police
• community safety partnership (CSP) analysts
• researchers
• information officers

It's designed to cater for all levels. We introduce recently appointed staff to concepts, methods and techniques. We push more experienced analysts by introducing them to new techniques, ways to use data and how they can ensure their intelligence products are effectively used.

The course suits both tactical and strategic forms of analysis.

It may also be relevant to those in the following interest groups: problem-solving, data (from a diverse range of public agencies) and its use, information sharing, analytical methods and techniques, strategic assessments, problem profiles, tactical assessments, performance analysis, influencing decision-making, designing responses, assessing the impact of responses.

Detailed course information

You'll look at the following four areas.

Principles, concepts and theory that are relevant to crime analysis

We review the principles of problem-solving and thinking scientifically, and illustrate the differences between good and bad analysis. You'll explore the practicalities of doing analysis (within the processes and structures of policing and community safety partnerships) and identify what a good analysis product should consist of. If you're already familiar with certain problem-solving principles and theories we'll take this to the next level by critiquing their application and relevance to the current production of intelligence in police forces and Partnerships.

Crime analysis techniques

This part of the course involves exploring the diverse range of data that can be used for helping to understand crime (and ASB), and how we can apply a wide range of analytical techniques. You'll explore, in turn, data and analytical techniques that help to understand places, offenders and offender management/treatment, as well as victim/target vulnerability. In these three sessions, you'll find out about data that you probably weren't aware of, how it can be used, and analytical techniques that can be applied. We also illustrate analytical techniques that are usually unknown, yet which are simple to apply and can often offer significantly more than some of the routine techniques you may currently apply. In addition, we practically critique the role that hypotheses testing can play in assisting the production of good quality analysis, taking you through how this can be applied in practice.

These sessions are all about developing your awareness and knowledge of how to go about analysing crime problems by adding several new tools to your toolkit. The sessions are also about activating that imaginative and creative spark that all analysts have, but which has become clogged by some of the day-to-day routine you likely experience in the workplace. We aim to spark you back into life! 

Influencing decision-makers

Producing good-quality analysis that provides an in-depth understanding of the problem is all well and good, but unless it influences the decision-making on implementing effective responses, it's redundant. In these sessions we focus on helping you to build your confidence in ensuring that your analysis is used. This includes giving you tips on how to style the content of analytical products, present results, develop your knowledge of what types of responses work (and which don't), and the techniques you should use for monitoring, assessing and evaluating the impact of responses.

Overcoming the problems of problem-solving and being able to do good analysis

We'll conclude the course by reviewing the common problems associated with being able to conduct good analysis, and giving you tips on how these can be overcome. This can help you apply everything you've learnt when returning to your workplace. We provide you with advice on how to make the best use of what you've learnt on the course.

Cost and concessions

There's a 10% reduction for bookings of two or more people - all group delegates must be booked at the same time.

Course team

Spencer Chainey

Spencer is the Principal Research Associate at the UCL Department of Security and Crime Science. His particular research interests are in developing geographical crime analysis and crime mapping. He carries out most of his day-to-day work on developing the use of data, information sharing and analysis to aid intelligence development and decision-making by police forces, community safety partnerships, and national crime reduction and policing agencies.

His work has influenced national (UK) policy, and has contributed to policing and crime reduction developments in the USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Germany, Northern Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. His work is also used in examples of good practice by the UK Cabinet Office (Social Exclusion Unit), Local Government Improvement and Development, The Home Office, the Audit Commission, The Housing Corporation and the United States National Institute of Justice.

Lisa Tompson

Lisa is a Research Associate at the UCL Department of Security and Crime Science. She holds a BA(Hons) in Sociology and Criminology and an MSc in Crime Science. Her dissertation focused on the predictive nature of spatio-temporal hotspots. Since becoming a research associate Lisa has been involved in a broad portfolio of work relating to problem-solving and geographical crime analysis. She's actively involved in training practitioners in key theoretical concepts and practical techniques that allow them to optimise their analytical outputs. She is also a certified Geographic Profiling Analyst (GPA).

Lisa particularly enjoys employing innovative analytical techniques to emergent crime types. Her PhD is concerned with identifying the features of the natural, physical and social environment that help to explain temporal patterns in street robbery. She's the series editor for JDiBrief - an online library of briefing notes on crime, analytical techniques and security topics.

Course information last modified: 30 Nov 2022, 15:59