Increasingly, the analysis of information and intelligence has become routine in the police, influenced by a number of reform agendas, policing styles and strategic interventions, which require crime problems to be identified so that resources can be allocated effectively. In order to meet this demand, the role of the crime analyst has developed, somewhat inconsistently, across police forces and law-enforcement agencies. If analysis is defined as the process of deconstructing problems in order to understand them, it follows that crime analysis refers to the application of this process to crime data. A plethora of definitions of analysis varyingly refer to the function of detecting patterns and linkages in data (Canter, 2000; Osborne and Wernicke, 2003), while also stressing the importance of the interpretation of information (Cope, 2003) so that analysis is better able to support police or judicial interventions (Gill, 2000), and the development of operational or preventative strategies (Tilley, 2002a). O’Shea and Nicholls (2003), based on their study of crime analysis in the United States, describe three functions of police crime analysis: firstly, to assess the nature and distribution of crime in order to efficiently allocate resources and personnel; secondly, to identify crime-suspect correlations to assist investigations; and finally, to identify the conditions that facilitate crime and incivility so that policy-makers may make informed decisions about

prevention approaches. This highlights the extent to which crime analysis supports both reactive and proactive policing, where reactive refers to analysis that supports police activity after an incident has occurred. This includes analysis through to profiling, which is developed to support an investigation. Proactive refers to analysis which is developed to support ‘strategic, future-orientated, targeted approaches … [which focus] upon the identification, analysis and “management” of persisting and developing “problems” or ”risks” ’ (Maguire, 2000: 316).