A formula to measure the effect of police interventions

Abstract

Currently, there is not a clear and well-defined metric available that can be used to measure safety and in turn justify resource allocation within the police Department. This metric will help decision-makers understand the situation better prior to taking major decisions. The large amount of data available to the police is not yet used to its full potential when making these critical decisions. This project aims to translate and quantify the qualitative concept of safety by relying on measurable values found in the Netherlands. The creation of this metric will successfully allow the police to compare, over time, how police resource allocation and intervention tactics lead to a safer society in the Netherlands. The proposed final equation is put together, combining Crime-Harm Index, Utility, and Effectiveness factor of the police. Each of these individual components of the equation were studied individually and the final equation has been explained and validated with hypothetical values. This leads to a composite safety factor, which is bounded from 0 to 1. The safety factor can be
later visualised, essentially displaying a hot-spot map that updates frequently. This will help the police in determining the effectiveness of their decisions and measure the impact of their interventions to a certain extent. Moving forward, we believe the Dutch National Police should take such a form of measurement into serious consideration, as this equation explores a more holistic representation of safety in Dutch society through various factors