No abstract

A review of the development of criminal profiling demonstrates that profiling has never been a scientific process. It is essentially based on a compendium of common sense intuitions and faulty theoretical assumptions, and in practice appears to consist of little more than educated guesses and wishful thinking. While it is very difficult to find cases where profiling made a critical contribution to an investigation, there exist a number of cases where a profile, combined with investigative and prosecutorial enthusiasm, derailed the investigation and even contributed to serious miscarriages of justice. As a result, police agencies should carefully consider whether the development of in-house profiling capability, or use of external consultants to provide such services, is justified.

Traditionally, police agencies have allocated resources in response to their operational demands or requirements, with the majority of resources being distributed in response to political demands and public calls for service. The changing operating environment to a public service ethos of accountability and ‘do more with less' means that historical methods of allocating police officers may not meet an agency's strategic goals. The relationship between social, economic and demographic factors with the number of police officers is not well understood. This study examines this issue through the presentation of the econometric method of Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) linear regression based on New Zealand social data for the period 1997 to 2002. A model, Police Resource (PRM), is developed and used as the basis to investigate a resource allocation formula for the New Zealand Police. The findings identify that the econometric resource allocation model developed is more defensible than the allocation method currently used by the New Zealand Police or any allocation method based solely on population.

No abstract

No abstract