Crime is the convergence of an offender, a victim, and a law. Many crime prevention methods attempt to prevent the convergence of these factors. Important to this prevention is location. Location is where offenders, victims, and law interface. As such, the location of people in time and space is a critical factor in knowing where crime may occur.
The ambient population is one way to know where people are at a certain time and location. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is one venue to attain a 24 hour estimate of the average population in a spatial area. Using data from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Andresen & Jenion view the average location of people at particular times through the lens of the Primary-Secondary-Tertiary (PST) model.
The PST model is derived from the medical model. Using the PST model, intelligence specialists can identify the particular stages crime occurs and then diagnose problems of crime. For instance, the tertiary level of the model is characterized by offender involvement in the courts or with corrections. The secondary level of the model is characterized by the identification of potential offenders and intervening in a way that prevents future crime. The primary level of the model is characterized by preventing crime from ever developing. For obvious reasons, primary prevention is the ideal.
Based on these models, one can see how it can be useful to attain information about population location. From the primary perspective, an environment conducive to crime can be modified to prevent crime from occurring, and from a secondary perspective certain interventions can be devised that address the population, and by extension, the crime problem.
It has been established that people move throughout their environment to go home, go to work, or go to shop. For instance, ambient data from Houston, Texas showed that there was a resident population of 7,000 people in an area of downtown Houston but an ambient population of 180,000 people in that same area. Thus, there were many times more people in the area than actually lived in the area. It is important to know about the presence of a population away from home because that population is an important factor in explaining increased crime.
Ambient data (where people are at a point in time) as used in tertiary prevention amounts to determining where crime prevention should take place. Ambient data in secondary prevention is used to identify areas at risk of becoming crime hot spots. Potential crime generators can be identified on the secondary level. Crime generators bring together targets and victims in large numbers which leads to increased opportunity for crime. Ambient data can be used in primary prevention to make changes in the environment that will lead to the prevention of crime.
The use of ambient data to facilitate law enforcement is a 21st century method for controlling crime. Ambient data is useful intelligence that can aid in the prevention of crime, but it can also help in the prevention of terrorism. However, it goes without saying that using ambient data for predictive purposes is not a simple methodology.
As such, the use of this technology may require an intelligence education. Ambient data can be used for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. People with an intelligence education such as an intelligence degree or a counterintelligence degree are good candidates to employ ambient data for intelligence purposes. Law enforcement personnel who have an intelligence degree can integrate ambient data into their crime forecasts and those with a counterintelligence degree can work to prevent future crime by allocating resources in high crime areas. Thus, law enforcement personnel who have an intelligence education can use ambient data to their benefit and are in a position to make other innovations in their line of work.
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Dan Sommer works for Henley-Putnam University, a leading educational institution in the field of Strategic Security. For more info on Henley-Putnam University, intelligence education, counterintelligence degree, call 888-852-8746 or visit us online at http://www.Henley-Putnam.edu
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