Transforming Crime Analysis
Through criminal justice research and innovation, Rochester has become a model for how universities and cities can provide strategic crime-fighting solutions through the use of technology.
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A Partnership that Saves Lives
In 2006, the City of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology collaborated to create the Public Safety Initiatives Center (PSIC), charged with developing an anti-violence master plan that would involve law enforcement, government services, and community assets. The center, is located at RIT and has a presence in City Hall and police headquarters.
At the helm is PSIC director John Klofas, professor of criminal justice in RIT’s College of Liberal Arts and chairperson of the department—who continues to serve as loaned executive to the city.
As Klofas says, “It’s a great honor to work with such strong leaders in this community, but for me, my colleagues, and our students, there is an overwhelming sense of responsibility with RIT’s efforts to reduce violence and to improve the quality of life for our neighbors in Rochester and across the country.”
With $3.5 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Justice and New York state, all designated to help support local criminal justice, RIT has utilized its research capabilities in helping the Rochester Police Department’s (RPD) Crime Analysis Unit in identifying crime patterns, hot spots, and trends, and also provides deputies and investigative officers with information necessary to identify criminal offenders. The city’s Crime Analysis Unit consists of police officers and civilians working together to not only monitor the level of crime in the city, but proactively identify crime prevention opportunities.
Research Helps to Reduce Homicides
In charge of the “civilians” is Christopher Delaney, crime research specialist at RPD’s Special Investigations Unit. After graduating from RIT’s criminal justice program in 2001, Delaney was enlisted by Klofas to serve as his graduate research assistant under the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) federal grant.
“I focused on how qualified research could help reduce homicides in Rochester, and while I was pursuing my master’s degree in public policy, I spent time in the RPD’s Homicide Unit conducting research on the characteristics of homicide in Rochester and the implications for prevention,” Delaney says.
But as he explains about his current position, “the Crime Analysis Unit is not like CSI or forensics.” Instead, his team focuses on tactical analysis—responsible for the coding of crime data through a computerized reporting system while looking for “patterns and more patterns” in homicides, robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and youth gangs.
“The center acts as a force multiplier for our existing resources, and more importantly for what we are currently developing to be housed in RPD, the Monroe Crime Analysis Center, which is a single source for crime analysis for the entire county.”
Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy says it’s a good example of working smarter, not harder, and the police department “would never have had someone like Delaney 20 years ago, who now is literally running the show.”
“He really gets it and so does his team,” Duffy says. “It’s a seamless operation and works as one by taking theory and putting it into practice. When you look at crime analysis, maybe a police officer or a detective is very good at investigating and interviewing people, but as for analyzing complex data, they are not equipped to do that.”
“The past two years of our partnership have been an effort that comes down to one thing, one thing I care about deeply—it saves lives, it has saved lives, and it will save lives. Looking at what we do, we should have five homicides a year, not 30-plus.”
Data Speaks
Adding to Duffy’s continued frustration is the knowledge that many single crimes in the city are committed by high school dropouts. “There’s data to prove there’s an incredible connection between educational failures and crime. Right now we have 52 percent of kids dropping out of school and 40 percent graduating—and these statistics become a feeder chain for crime.”
On the other hand, the PSIC collaborative effort has been an instrumental resource for crime convictions, according to Monroe County District Attorney Michael Green. Since he took office in 2004, Green has been busy combating violent crime and homicides by targeting armed violent felons, drug dealers, and those illegally carrying guns.
“When I took over as D.A., I changed some policies on how we handled gun cases, how we handled non-violent felony cases, and changed procedurally some of the ways we handle felony cases such as not doing preliminary hearings or taking the cases to the grand jury,” Green says. “Anecdotally I would always hear, ‘Gee, you are losing more trials, you’re getting more acquittals, you’re indicting too many cases.’ But when you take 5,000 felony cases a year, and the conviction percentage goes down from 96 to 90 percent, but the overall number of convictions goes up 300—I needed some accountable data based on research to study the effectiveness of my plan, and that’s where John and his students came in.”
The end results showed that Green’s policies were doing exactly what he wanted them to do. “The reason we were losing more cases is that we were being much more aggressive as far as the cases we were seeking convictions on—convicting and sending more violent felons to prison, particularly those with handguns. These were tough cases, and we weren’t winning every one, but we were holding a lot more people accountable and also getting more prison sentences on non-violent felons.”
As Green admits, it’s hard to evaluate the effectiveness of a policy after it’s been implemented, even when the goal is to make the community safer by keeping armed felons, drug dealers, and repeat offenders off the streets. “We were testing the waters to see if stiffer sentences and limited plea bargaining would work, and John’s feedback on the changes we made—including comparisons of felony cases in Syracuse, Buffalo, and Albany— showed positive results that we were measuring up.”
Violence and Medical Costs
Janelle Duda is a researcher at the RIT center, and the crime data she is working on is something Klofas has been interested in studying and examining for
many years.
“I’m working on violence in the Rochester community and specifically on the medical costs associated with the violence,” says Duda.
“It’s something people don’t think about: the aftermath of street violence when victims are treated at area hospitals and medical facilities. Do they have insurance to cover the cost of emergency care and rehabilitation?”
Working with local hospitals and agencies, Duda is gathering information on gunshot wound victims, victims of stabbings and blunt trauma, and assault victims—tabulating those who have commercial insurance like Blue Cross Blue Shield or Preferred Care, those on Medicaid, and those with no insurance at all. “Part of our data will include how hospitals are recouping their losses for those without insurance,” Duda explains.
A Revolution in Law Enforcement
This kind of data can only add to the bigger picture, Klofas believes. “There’s been a revolution in law enforcement, policing, and criminal justice overall because of the use of analysis, information, and data. It’s a form of intelligence, building a database on who the serious criminals are in town, what places are crimes more likely to occur, the temporal patterns, the geographic patterns, and what kinds of individuals are involved.”
As Mayor Duffy affirms, “Looking at all the citywide crime, shootings, victims, and breaking it all down, it’s become a great merging of highly technical skills in this field. RIT is our MIT—and to have talented kids who are doing research in criminal justice and groom them to make a difference—it’s why RIT is a great research-building university.”
As part of RIT’s commitment to
experiential learning, Klofas, who has been teaching at RIT for 20 years, is currently working on establishing a master’s degree program in criminal justice to “continue on in this tradition
of locally relevant policy research.”
“We want to be the model for university and community relationships in addressing areas of local violence,” Klofas says. And according to Rochester’s mayor, Klofas has accomplished just that.
“I am proud to call John Klofas a friend as well as a colleague and he is one of the shining stars in this community who has never received enough credit for what he has done. Here he has a national profile, and travels across the country, but still attends weekly meetings with Police Chief David Moore. In essence he’s almost an adjunct crime-analysis leader with the police department. With John and the center on my team, I never get discouraged, because we are all rowing forward together.”