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| US Sheriff |
Starting under Commissioner Bill Bratton, the New York Police Department made a substantial investment in technology and data analysis as a management tool to increase the accountability of local precinct commanders (COMPSTAT).
One of the benefits of the COMPSTAT approach was that it helped break down the cities crime problems into more manageable smaller units of analysis; instead of a citywide maze of information, police could focus on distinct precincts and individual neighbourhoods with specific problems.
In the city Minneapolis 50% of the crime came from 3.5% of the cities address's. This led them to develop Hot Spot Policing to bear down on Crime. They concentrated resource in tackling drugs parks, as you know when this has been suggested in the UK the argument followed that you would simply displace crime to adjacent areas, the data didn't corroborate this, in fact they found that adjacent areas actually benefited from Hop Spot Policing.
In the USA they have elected District Attorneys, and this gives scope for small scale innovation by individual DA's on a District by District basis. One of these innovations that started in the 1990's was community justice through Community courts, particularly Drugs Courts and Youth Courts, these are run by the community for the benefit of the community and even have many ex offenders involved in the process, they achieve a 94% approval rating from communities. This seems such a commonsense idea to reduce the cost of our Justice system and to make it much more relevant to the people passing through the system.
The CPS in the UK prosecutes on behalf of the Crown, but I can see situations where the Elected PCC can challenge the CPS in how they run things and also encourage them to introduce new ways of processing cases and prosecutions. Drugs are a driver of crime and rehabilitation is the way to break the cycle of crime and reform lives.
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