ABSTRACT
When a serious crime occurs, the police are expected to react immediately. They must provide help and reassurance to victims and move fast to arrest offenders. Yet we have seen that many times the police are not able to arrest the culprits and may not be able to secure a conviction when they do. We have also seen that random patrolling, which the public expects, is not an efficient way to apprehend criminals, even when guided by crime analysis to focus on high-risk times and places. This means that much police work done to meet public expectations is of limited value in controlling crime.
