CompStat
Encyclopedia
CompStat—or COMPSTAT— is the name given to the New York City Police Department
's accountability process and has since been replicated in many other departments. CompStat is a management
philosophy or organizational management tool for police departments, roughly equivalent to Six Sigma
or TQM
, and is not a computer system or software package.
Instead, CompStat is a multilayered dynamic approach to crime
reduction, quality of life
improvement, and personnel and resource management. CompStat employs Geographic Information Systems
and was intended to map crime
and identify problems. In weekly meetings, ranking NYPD executives meet with local precinct commanders from one of the eight patrol boroughs in New York City
to discuss the problems. They devise strategies and tactics to solve problems, reduce crime, and ultimately improve quality of life in their assigned area. The system is also in use in other major cities including Washington, DC,Los Angeles
,
Philadelphia,
Austin
,
San Juan
, San Francisco, and
Baltimore, Maryland
(where the system is shown in use in The Wire
on HBO, though in the show it is referred to as "ComStat." In reality, Baltimore
's real-life system is called Citistat.),
In Canada
the CompStat system is currently in use by the Vancouver Police Department
.
when he was a Transit police officer. It was called Charts of the Future and was simple - it tracked crime through pins stuck in maps. Charts of the Future is credited with cutting subway crime by 27 percent. Chief of New York City Transit Police William J. Bratton
was later appointed Police Commissioner by Rudolph Giuliani, and brought Maple's Charts of the Future with him. Not without a bit of struggle, he made the NYPD adopt it after it was rebranded as CompStat, and it was credited with bringing down crime by 60%. There was a CompStat meeting every month, and it was mandatory for police officials to attend. The year after CompStat was adopted, 1995, murders dropped to 1,181. By 2003, there were 596 murders—the lowest number since 1964.
The report captures crime complaints and arrest activity at the precinct, patrol borough and city-wide levels, presenting a summary of these and other important performance indicators. The data is presented on a week-to-date, prior 28 days and year-to-date basis, with comparisons to previous years' activity. Precinct commanders and members of the agency's top management can easily discern emerging and established crime trends, as well as deviations and anomalies. With the report, department leadership can easily make comparisons between commands. Each precinct is also ranked in each complaint and arrest category.
analysis and map
s contained within the weekly CompStat reports. These meetings and the information sharing they generate are an important part of a Bratton's comprehensive, interactive management strategy: enhancing accountability by providing local commanders with considerable discretion and resources. The program also ensures that precinct commanders remain aware of crime and quality of life conditions within their areas of responsibility. By meeting frequently and discussing the department's ten crime and quality of life strategies, the initiatives are fully implemented throughout the agency.
Precinct and other operational unit commanders use this forum to communicate with the agency's top executives and other commanders, sharing the problems they face and successful crime reduction tactics. The process allows top executives to monitor issues and activities within precincts and operational units, evaluating the skills and effectiveness of middle managers. By keeping abreast of situations "on the ground," departmental leaders can properly allocate resources to most effectively reduce crime and improve police performance.
It is important to note that the weekly CompStat report and crime strategy meetings do not focus simply on enforcement of the seven major crimes comprising the FBI
's Uniform Crime Reports
(UCR) Index, but also capture data on the number of shooting incidents and shooting victims, as well as gun arrests. Summons and arrest activity are also captured. By arresting or issuing summonses to people who engage in minor violations and quality of life offenses--such as public drinking and public urination, panhandling, loud radios, prostitution
and disorderly conduct--ensures that those behaviors are deterred. As explained in the Broken Window Theory, aggressive enforcement of all statutes has been shown to restore a sense of order. By capturing enforcement data as reflected in summons and arrest activity, the department is better able to gauge its overall performance.
Every profile also captures some non-crime statistics: the amount of overtime generated by members of the command, the number of department vehicle accidents, absence rates due to sick time and line-of-duty injuries, and the number of civilian complaints lodged against members of the unit.
Community demographics and information on the unit's personnel is also included. With this data, executives can monitor and assess how commanders motivate and manage their personnel resources and how well they address important management concerns. The commander profile also acts as a motivational tool; profile subjects are familiar with the criteria used to evaluate them--and their peers--enabling report subjects to monitor and compare their own success in meeting performance objectives with others' achievements.
Among the Command and Control Center's high-tech capabilities is its computerized "pin mapping" which displays crime, arrest and quality of life data in a host of visual formats including comparative charts, graphs and tables. Through the use of geographic mapping software and other computer technology, for example, the CompStat database can be accessed and a precinct map depicting virtually any combination of crime and/or arrest locations, crime "hot spots" and other relevant information can be instantly projected on the Center's large video projection screens. Comparative charts, tables and graphs can also be projected simultaneously. These visual presentations are a useful and highly effective adjunct to the CompStat Report, since it permits precinct commanders and members of the Executive Staff to instantly identify and explore trends and patterns as well as solutions for crime and quality of life problems.
During their presentation, members of the Executive Staff frequently ask commanders probing questions about crime and arrest activity as well as about specific cases and initiatives they have undertaken to reduce crime and enforce quality of life offenses. Commanders are expected to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the crime and quality of life problems existing within their commands and to develop innovative and flexible tactics to address them.
As noted above, the weekly COMPSTAT meetings are but one facet of the Department's comprehensive system by which is monitored and used to evaluate the Department's performance. There are also pre-COMPSTAT briefings convened at the local patrol borough level, Precinct Management Team meetings in each precinct and strategy evaluation projects conducted by ranking members of the department. In addition, the Police Commissioner meets with New York City's Mayor on a weekly basis to brief them on the department's activities and performance. The Police Commissioner also provides the Mayor with a formal report capturing much of the data contained within the CompStat Report. Finally, a great deal of the CompStat data and other indices of performance are provided to the public through inclusion in the Mayor's Management Report. This Report and the preliminary report issued four months into the Fiscal Year provide detailed comparative data on the performance of every mayoral agency within city government. The process permits personnel at all levels to monitor and assess the effectiveness of their efforts and re-direct those efforts when necessary.
systems (such as by Esri], Microsoft MapPoint
or Google Maps
) and a database
collection system, which can be homegrown or obtained from off-the shelf providers such as Information Builders
, New World Systems, Tiburon, Versaterm
, Tritech, Intergraph, Spillman or FATPOT.
In some cases, police departments have started offering information to the public through their own Web sites. In other cases, police departments can either create their own XML
feed or use a third party to display data on a map. The largest of these is CrimeReports.com, used by thousands of agencies nationwide.
economist Steven Levitt
, have argued that COMPSTAT's crime-reducing effects have been minor.
The introduction of COMPSTAT happened alongside:
Another criticism of the COMPSTAT program is that it may discourage officers from taking crime reports in order to create a false appearance of a reduction of community problems. According to journalist Radley Balko
, "some recent reports from New York City suggest the program needs some tweaking to guard against the twin dangers of unnecessary police harassment and underreporting of serious crimes." An anonymous survey of "hundreds of retired high-ranking police officials . . . found that tremendous pressure to reduce crime, year after year, prompted some supervisors and precinct commanders to distort crime statistics." Similarly, crimes may be reported but downplayed as less significant, to manipulate statistics. As an illustration, before a department begins using CompStat it might list 100 assaults as aggravated and 500 as simple assault. If there were a similar pattern of underlying criminal activity the next year, but instead 450 assaults are listed in CompStat as simple and 50 as aggravated, the system would report that progress had been made reducing major crimes when in fact, the only difference is in how they are reported.
Manipulating reporting data may also negatively affect personnel and financial disbursement; communities whose improvements (on paper) show they need less resources could lose those resources—and still face the same amount of actual crime on the streets.
Many of these negative effects in the possible weaknesses of the COMPSTAT system were dramatized in HBO's The Wire
, as part of an overarching theme of systemic dysfunction in institutions. Indeed, "[o]ne of the central themes of the critically acclaimed HBO series . . . was the pressure politician
s put on police brass, who then apply it to the department’s middle management, to generate PR
-friendly statistics about lowering crime and increasing arrests." In the show, this was referred to as "juking the stats".
The issue was further publicized in 2010 when NYPD officer Adrian Schoolcraft
released recordings of his superiors urging him to manipulate data.
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
's accountability process and has since been replicated in many other departments. CompStat is a management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
philosophy or organizational management tool for police departments, roughly equivalent to Six Sigma
Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola, USA in 1986. , it is widely used in many sectors of industry.Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and...
or TQM
Total Quality Management
Total quality management or TQM is an integrative philosophy of management for continuously improving the quality of products and processes....
, and is not a computer system or software package.
Instead, CompStat is a multilayered dynamic approach to crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
reduction, quality of life
Quality of life
The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of...
improvement, and personnel and resource management. CompStat employs Geographic Information Systems
Geographic Information System
A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...
and was intended to map crime
Crime mapping
Crime mapping is used by analysts in law enforcement agencies to map, visualize, and analyze crime incident patterns. It is a key component of crime analysis and the CompStat policing strategy...
and identify problems. In weekly meetings, ranking NYPD executives meet with local precinct commanders from one of the eight patrol boroughs in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to discuss the problems. They devise strategies and tactics to solve problems, reduce crime, and ultimately improve quality of life in their assigned area. The system is also in use in other major cities including Washington, DC,Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
,
Philadelphia,
Austin
Austin
Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas.Austin may also refer to:-In the United States:*Austin, Arkansas*Austin, Colorado*Austin, Chicago, Illinois*Austin, Indiana*Austin, Minnesota*Austin, Nevada*Austin, Oregon...
,
San Juan
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...
, San Francisco, and
Baltimore, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
(where the system is shown in use in The Wire
The Wire (TV series)
The Wire is an American television drama series set and produced in and around Baltimore, Maryland. Created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon, the series was broadcast by the premium cable network HBO in the United States...
on HBO, though in the show it is referred to as "ComStat." In reality, Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
's real-life system is called Citistat.),
In Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
the CompStat system is currently in use by the Vancouver Police Department
Vancouver Police Department
The Vancouver Police Department is the police force for the City of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several police departments within the Metro Vancouver Area and is the second largest police force in the province after RCMP "E" Division.VPD was the first Canadian police force...
.
Origins
CompStat was started by Jack MapleJack Maple
Jack Maple served New York City as the Deputy Police Commissioner for Crime Control Strategies. He created the CompStat methodology of crime fighting and law enforcement strategy...
when he was a Transit police officer. It was called Charts of the Future and was simple - it tracked crime through pins stuck in maps. Charts of the Future is credited with cutting subway crime by 27 percent. Chief of New York City Transit Police William J. Bratton
William J. Bratton
William Joseph "Bill" Bratton CBE is an American law enforcement officer who served as the chief of police of the Los Angeles Police Department , New York City Police Commissioner, and Boston Police Commissioner....
was later appointed Police Commissioner by Rudolph Giuliani, and brought Maple's Charts of the Future with him. Not without a bit of struggle, he made the NYPD adopt it after it was rebranded as CompStat, and it was credited with bringing down crime by 60%. There was a CompStat meeting every month, and it was mandatory for police officials to attend. The year after CompStat was adopted, 1995, murders dropped to 1,181. By 2003, there were 596 murders—the lowest number since 1964.
Weekly crime reports
On a weekly basis, personnel from each of the NYPD's 76 precincts, nine police service areas and 12 transit districts compile a statistical summary of the week's crime complaints, arrests and summons activity, as well as a written report of significant cases, crime patterns and police activities. This data, with specific crime and enforcement locations and times, is forwarded to the chief of the department's CompStat Unit, where information is collated and loaded into a city-wide database. The unit runs computer analysis on the data and generates a weekly CompStat report.The report captures crime complaints and arrest activity at the precinct, patrol borough and city-wide levels, presenting a summary of these and other important performance indicators. The data is presented on a week-to-date, prior 28 days and year-to-date basis, with comparisons to previous years' activity. Precinct commanders and members of the agency's top management can easily discern emerging and established crime trends, as well as deviations and anomalies. With the report, department leadership can easily make comparisons between commands. Each precinct is also ranked in each complaint and arrest category.
Accountability
The CompStat program involves weekly crime control strategy meetings. These gatherings increase information flow between the agency's executives and the commanders of operational units, with particular emphasis on crime and quality of life enforcement information. In the department's vernacular, these briefings are referred to as CompStat ("computerized statistics") meetings, since many of the discussions are based upon the statisticalStatistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
analysis and map
Map
A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....
s contained within the weekly CompStat reports. These meetings and the information sharing they generate are an important part of a Bratton's comprehensive, interactive management strategy: enhancing accountability by providing local commanders with considerable discretion and resources. The program also ensures that precinct commanders remain aware of crime and quality of life conditions within their areas of responsibility. By meeting frequently and discussing the department's ten crime and quality of life strategies, the initiatives are fully implemented throughout the agency.
Precinct and other operational unit commanders use this forum to communicate with the agency's top executives and other commanders, sharing the problems they face and successful crime reduction tactics. The process allows top executives to monitor issues and activities within precincts and operational units, evaluating the skills and effectiveness of middle managers. By keeping abreast of situations "on the ground," departmental leaders can properly allocate resources to most effectively reduce crime and improve police performance.
It is important to note that the weekly CompStat report and crime strategy meetings do not focus simply on enforcement of the seven major crimes comprising the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
's Uniform Crime Reports
Uniform Crime Reports
The Uniform Crime Reports are published by the United States Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting Program...
(UCR) Index, but also capture data on the number of shooting incidents and shooting victims, as well as gun arrests. Summons and arrest activity are also captured. By arresting or issuing summonses to people who engage in minor violations and quality of life offenses--such as public drinking and public urination, panhandling, loud radios, prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
and disorderly conduct--ensures that those behaviors are deterred. As explained in the Broken Window Theory, aggressive enforcement of all statutes has been shown to restore a sense of order. By capturing enforcement data as reflected in summons and arrest activity, the department is better able to gauge its overall performance.
Commander profile reports
The CompStat Unit also develops and prepares commander profile reports. These weekly reports help executives scrutinize commanders' performance on a variety of important management variables. All profiles furnish information about the unit commander's appointment date and years in rank, the education and specialized training he or she has received, his or her most recent performance evaluation rating, and the units he or she previously commanded.Every profile also captures some non-crime statistics: the amount of overtime generated by members of the command, the number of department vehicle accidents, absence rates due to sick time and line-of-duty injuries, and the number of civilian complaints lodged against members of the unit.
Community demographics and information on the unit's personnel is also included. With this data, executives can monitor and assess how commanders motivate and manage their personnel resources and how well they address important management concerns. The commander profile also acts as a motivational tool; profile subjects are familiar with the criteria used to evaluate them--and their peers--enabling report subjects to monitor and compare their own success in meeting performance objectives with others' achievements.
Crime strategy meetings
Crime Strategy Meetings are convened twice weekly in the Command and Control Center, a high-tech conference facility at Police Headquarters. These meetings are attended by all commanders of Precincts, Police Service Areas, Transit Districts and other operational unit commanders within a given Patrol Borough, including the commanding officers and /or supervisors of precinct-based and specialized investigative units. Depending on their weekly crime statistics, every commander can expect to be called at random to make his or her Crime Strategy Meeting presentation approximately once a month. Also in attendance are representatives from the respective District Attorney's Offices, command personnel from the Board of Education's Division of School Safety and a variety of other outside agencies involved in law enforcement activities, the Transit and Housing Bureau Commanders whose jurisdictions lie within the patrol borough, the Crime Strategy Coordinators from other patrol boroughs, Internal Affairs Bureau personnel, and ranking officers from a variety of support and ancillary units (such as our Legal Bureau and Management Information Systems Division) which do not perform direct enforcement functions. This configuration of participants fosters a team approach to problem solving, and ensures that crime and quality of life problems identified at the meeting can be immediately discussed and quickly addressed through the development and implementation of creative and comprehensive solutions. Because ranking decision-makers are present at the meetings and can immediately commit their resources, the obstacles and delays which often occur in highly structured bureaucratic organizations also tend to be minimized.Among the Command and Control Center's high-tech capabilities is its computerized "pin mapping" which displays crime, arrest and quality of life data in a host of visual formats including comparative charts, graphs and tables. Through the use of geographic mapping software and other computer technology, for example, the CompStat database can be accessed and a precinct map depicting virtually any combination of crime and/or arrest locations, crime "hot spots" and other relevant information can be instantly projected on the Center's large video projection screens. Comparative charts, tables and graphs can also be projected simultaneously. These visual presentations are a useful and highly effective adjunct to the CompStat Report, since it permits precinct commanders and members of the Executive Staff to instantly identify and explore trends and patterns as well as solutions for crime and quality of life problems.
During their presentation, members of the Executive Staff frequently ask commanders probing questions about crime and arrest activity as well as about specific cases and initiatives they have undertaken to reduce crime and enforce quality of life offenses. Commanders are expected to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the crime and quality of life problems existing within their commands and to develop innovative and flexible tactics to address them.
As noted above, the weekly COMPSTAT meetings are but one facet of the Department's comprehensive system by which is monitored and used to evaluate the Department's performance. There are also pre-COMPSTAT briefings convened at the local patrol borough level, Precinct Management Team meetings in each precinct and strategy evaluation projects conducted by ranking members of the department. In addition, the Police Commissioner meets with New York City's Mayor on a weekly basis to brief them on the department's activities and performance. The Police Commissioner also provides the Mayor with a formal report capturing much of the data contained within the CompStat Report. Finally, a great deal of the CompStat data and other indices of performance are provided to the public through inclusion in the Mayor's Management Report. This Report and the preliminary report issued four months into the Fiscal Year provide detailed comparative data on the performance of every mayoral agency within city government. The process permits personnel at all levels to monitor and assess the effectiveness of their efforts and re-direct those efforts when necessary.
Technology
Because it often relies on underlying software tools, CompStat has sometimes been confused for a software program in itself. This is a fundamental misconception. CompStat often does, however, incorporate crime mappingCrime mapping
Crime mapping is used by analysts in law enforcement agencies to map, visualize, and analyze crime incident patterns. It is a key component of crime analysis and the CompStat policing strategy...
systems (such as by Esri], Microsoft MapPoint
Microsoft MapPoint
Microsoft MapPoint is both a technology and a specific software program created by Microsoft that allows users to view, edit and integrate maps. The software and technology are designed to facilitate the geographical visualization and analysis of either included data or custom data...
or Google Maps
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...
) and a database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
collection system, which can be homegrown or obtained from off-the shelf providers such as Information Builders
Information Builders
Information Builders is a privately held software company, with its headquarters in New York City. The company was founded in 1975 by Gerald D. Cohen, Peter Mittelman, and Martin B. Slagowitz. Information Builders is known for their business intelligence tools FOCUS and...
, New World Systems, Tiburon, Versaterm
Versaterm
Versaterm is a Canadian corporation based in Ottawa, Ontario that develops information systems for police agencies.Versaterm was founded in 1977 by principals after spending a number of years building and refining the Canadian Police Information Centre computer system, the Canadian equivalent to...
, Tritech, Intergraph, Spillman or FATPOT.
In some cases, police departments have started offering information to the public through their own Web sites. In other cases, police departments can either create their own XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
feed or use a third party to display data on a map. The largest of these is CrimeReports.com, used by thousands of agencies nationwide.
Critique
Some, such as University of ChicagoUniversity of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
economist Steven Levitt
Steven Levitt
Steven David "Steve" Levitt is an American economist known for his work in the field of crime, in particular on the link between legalized abortion and crime rates. Winner of the 2004 John Bates Clark Medal, he is currently the William B...
, have argued that COMPSTAT's crime-reducing effects have been minor.
The introduction of COMPSTAT happened alongside:
- The training and deployment of around 5,000 new better-educated police officers
- The integration of New York's housing and transit police into the New York Police Department
- Police decision-making being devolved to precinct level
- The clearing of a backlog of 50,000 unserved warrants
- Robust "zero tolerance" campaign against petty crime and anti-social behavior under Mayor GiulianiMayoralty of Rudy GiulianiRudy Giuliani served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from January 1, 1994 until December 31, 2001.-Crime control:...
and Police Commissioner Bill BrattonWilliam J. BrattonWilliam Joseph "Bill" Bratton CBE is an American law enforcement officer who served as the chief of police of the Los Angeles Police Department , New York City Police Commissioner, and Boston Police Commissioner.... - Widespread removal of graffitiGraffitiGraffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
- Programs that moved over 500,000 people into jobs from welfare at a time of economic buoyancy1990s United States boomThe 1990s boom in the United States of America was a period of economic prosperity, largely coinciding with the presidency of Bill Clinton and the Republican Revolution.- The "long boom" :The term "long boom" was also used during the 1990s when the U.S...
- Offering housing vouchers to enable poor families to move to better neighborhoods.
- Demographic changes including a generation raised in the social welfare systems started in the 1970s and 1980s.
- End of the crack epidemicCrack EpidemicThe United States crack epidemic refers to the surge of crack houses and crack cocaine use in major cities in the United States between 1984 and 1990...
and a shift to a marijuana-based drug economy with a larger consumer base and less competition. - Advances in medicine play a role in the declining number of homicides.
- Gentrification, displacement of lower income individuals more likely to commit crimes from gentrifying or gentrified communities.
Another criticism of the COMPSTAT program is that it may discourage officers from taking crime reports in order to create a false appearance of a reduction of community problems. According to journalist Radley Balko
Radley Balko
Radley Balko is an American libertarian journalist, blogger, and speaker.- Education :Balko earned a B.A. in journalism and political science in 1997 from Indiana University.- Employment and publications :...
, "some recent reports from New York City suggest the program needs some tweaking to guard against the twin dangers of unnecessary police harassment and underreporting of serious crimes." An anonymous survey of "hundreds of retired high-ranking police officials . . . found that tremendous pressure to reduce crime, year after year, prompted some supervisors and precinct commanders to distort crime statistics." Similarly, crimes may be reported but downplayed as less significant, to manipulate statistics. As an illustration, before a department begins using CompStat it might list 100 assaults as aggravated and 500 as simple assault. If there were a similar pattern of underlying criminal activity the next year, but instead 450 assaults are listed in CompStat as simple and 50 as aggravated, the system would report that progress had been made reducing major crimes when in fact, the only difference is in how they are reported.
Manipulating reporting data may also negatively affect personnel and financial disbursement; communities whose improvements (on paper) show they need less resources could lose those resources—and still face the same amount of actual crime on the streets.
Many of these negative effects in the possible weaknesses of the COMPSTAT system were dramatized in HBO's The Wire
The WIRE
the WIRE is the student-run College radio station at the University of Oklahoma, broadcasting in a freeform format. The WIRE serves the University of Oklahoma and surrounding communities, and is staffed by student DJs. The WIRE broadcasts at 1710 kHz AM in Norman, Oklahoma...
, as part of an overarching theme of systemic dysfunction in institutions. Indeed, "[o]ne of the central themes of the critically acclaimed HBO series . . . was the pressure politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
s put on police brass, who then apply it to the department’s middle management, to generate PR
PR
PR commonly stands for* Public relations, a field concerned with maintaining public image* Puerto Rico* Proportional representation, a property of some voting systemsPR, P...
-friendly statistics about lowering crime and increasing arrests." In the show, this was referred to as "juking the stats".
The issue was further publicized in 2010 when NYPD officer Adrian Schoolcraft
Adrian Schoolcraft
Adrian Schoolcraft is a suspended New York Police Department officer who in May 2010 released secretly recorded tapes to The Village Voice. Schoolcraft alleges that these tapes show corruption within New York City's 81st Police Precinct...
released recordings of his superiors urging him to manipulate data.
TrafficStat
The NYPD's TrafficStat was modeled after CompStat. TrafficStat tracks motor vehicle, bicyclist and pedestrian crashes.External links
- How Compstat Began, an Interview with creator Jack Maple
- Compstat and Its Enemies, City Journal Online, 2-16-10
- NYPD CompStat Process
- LAPD Citywide COMPSTAT Information
- Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, DC Crime Mapping
- LAPD Interactive Crime Map derived from COMPSTAT data
- LAPD COMPSTAT Plus
- Philadelphia Police Department COMPSTAT
- City of Baltimore Citistat
- City of Buffalo Citistat
- The Trouble With Compstat