ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some terms for describing the organizational pathologies of police intelligence systems. It overviews police intelligence systems as described by some of the people who have attempted to engineer them, with specific reference to the UK. The chapter draws principally from the findings of a study funded by the UK Home Office. It provides many insights into the organizational pathologies manifest in police information systems. Models of the 'intelligence system' are reflective of a number of institutional hierarchies that comprise the policing sector, including, but not limited to, police constabularies, intelligence services, customs services and private security agencies. Institutional friction may result in a specific set of pathologies relating to the intelligence function: 'information hoarding' and, what is but a structural expression of the same thing, 'information silos'. The introduction of criminal intelligence analysis into the police sector casts new light on the occupational subcultures that comprise it.
