Gun Crime Incident Reviews as a Strategy for Enhancing Problem Solving and Information Sharing

• NCJ Number: 252230
• Journal: Journal of Crime & Justice Volume: 40 Issue: 1 Dated: 2017 Pages: 50-67
• Author(s): Natalie Kroovand Hipple; Edmund F. McGarrell; Mallory O'Brien; Beth M. Huebner
• Date Published: 2017
• Length: 18 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2013-R2-CX-0015
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Description
• Award: A Tale of Four Cities: Improving Our Understanding of Gun Violence

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)