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This manual assumes that you are already working as an analyst and that you are accustomed to providing the kind of information needed to support police operations. This means that:

you know how to use modern computing facilities and how to access and manipulate comprehensive databases;

you know how to use software to map crime, to identify hot spots and to relate these to demographic and other data;

you routinely produce charts showing weekly or monthly changes in crime at force and beat level, perhaps to support Compstat-style operations;

you are accustomed to carrying out small investigations into such topics as the relationship between the addresses of known offenders and local outbreaks of car theft and burglary;

you have probably carried out some before-and-after evaluations of crackdowns, say on residential burglaries or car thefts; and

you have some basic knowledge of statistics and research methodology such as provided by an undergraduate social science degree.

This manual builds on this experience to prepare you for a different analytic role as a key member of a problem-solving team. Indeed, the latest writings on problem-oriented policing see crime analysts as central to this new way of policing communities. They argue that many of the weaknesses of current practice in problem-oriented policing result from the insufficient involvement of well-trained crime analysts at each stage of the problem-solving process.