Compstat was designed to help fight and predict crimes. CompStat short for Computer Statistics was introduced to the New York City police department in 1994. Compstat was invented by a group of researchers, Mathematicians George Mohler and Martin Short, Criminologist George Tita, and an anthropologist Jeff Brantingham . (Goode, E. (2011, August 15). The researcher’s envision was that CompStat would predict crimes as meteorologist predict the weather. The program has been used by several police departments such as Washington DC, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Austin, San Juan, San Francisco and Canada. Compstat was even featured on HBO series “The Wire”.
The program works by compiling weekly statistics of crimes and police activities. The data is usually forwarded to the person in charge of the police departments CompStat unit. This person usually enter statistics into the database to produce a report. The report shows arrest activity, crime complaints, and crime patterns. At police departments, officers are given a list of high crime spots to patrol daily. These crimes spots are predicted using CompStat. Over the years, police departments have seen a major decline in crimes since the introduction of CompStat. (Pearsall, B. (2010, May).
CompStat uses the four basic functions of Information system. CompStat provides input by collecting statistics on crimes weekly. With this information police department can accurately predict and report crimes that have taken place that week. CompStat uses processing by having this information entered into a database to output data that the police departments can use to predict policing. Feedback is very important because police departments can evaluate CompStat program by measuring the improvement of crimes. This feedback should be measured over months and years by comparing crime statistics from previous years.
With these statistics this program allows a