Aiding Strategic Decision-Making Among Police Departments Using An Artificial-Intelligence Software Tool

More police departments than ever before are utilizing information technology for solving and combating crime. However, most of these uses are for operational or tactical purposes. This paper presents an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software, ‘Crime X-Windows Similarity (CXS)’ that helps police departments in having a strategic viewpoint toward decision-making. CXS utilizes socioeconomic, crime and enforcement profiles to generate a list of cities that are best candidates to cooperate and share experiences. By providing a list of relevant similar communities from whom past experience and learnings can be shared, this tool enables proactive decision-making in police departments. This software provides a user-friendly, front-end interface enabling easy usage by police department personnel. In an effort to better serve their communities and reduce crime, police departments of the cities of Camden, NJ and Philadelphia, PA have been partners in this development effort. Feedback from these two police departments has validated exciting possibilities this software offers for co-operation and information sharing among police departments nationwide. Evaluation of the system using human subjects showed that the software provided significantly better support than a conventional database tool for quality and speed of decision making. With an Internet interface effort already under way, this application will soon be accessible to a much wider audience across the United States.