Analytic Standards and Intelligence Analysis, Research Paper Example

A law enforcement agency has a role and duty to the community to protect and serve as well as investigate, plan and promote the intelligence side or activities of the agency. Of course depending upon the police officers duties and rank his role in these activities changes. The role and range of analytic products change as the roe of the enforcement agency deepens to a certain height. Parks and Peterson, 2001, state police reports must be done very well and with the utmost validity in order to “judge the intelligence of a police agency”. (Parks and Peterson, 2001).  Police agencies must set a minimum standard by which the entire unit follows to ensure proper and valid analytical procedures are assimilated. “Raw data gathered must follow a certain standard and protocol to ensure its validity.” (“National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan”). This data should be used to assist and direct investigations within the police department. This raw data should be an adequate and viable source to assist police agencies in solving crimes and helping to keep the crime rates down by predicting outcomes.

Emphasis placed on education for criminal intelligence is based on the dissemination of  factors including the need to know, the purpose to know, the urgency to know, different formatting for disseminating and solving crimes and the means of delivering information to law enforcement. The need to know addresses security and surveillance issues, general investigation methods versus secured investigative methods and the method by which the obtained information is delivered to authorized and unauthorized personnel including who makes the decisions to make this decision. This might include authorizing passwords, fingerprint entry or simple access to confidential files.

The law enforcement needs to know the urgency for each individual case in order to access which cases are more important in order to prioritize life and death situations, when to make arrests, when they should use their discretionary powers to make arrests, when they should use tactical and strategical measures from their force and other agencies to make arrests and who should receive the information they have collected. Logical skills and interpretations from analysts should be used to make viable assessments in solving crimes and preventing future crimes.

Delivering intelligence to make arrests should be addressed in many forms including paper trails, computer trails, and electronic transmissions, internal distribution methods through other officers, detectives and internal affair investigations. It is usually recommended that these investigations are given in oral and verbal presentations due to time limitations.

Education should consist of at least a four year degree, proper training, continuing education, certification and analytic attributes are one of the most important standards for analysts of law enforcement. Standards are built on behalf of the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan. “They should be actual, factual, relevant and able to recommend justified policies and action plans.” (“CCIC”).

“Analytic standards are only as accurate as the data produced by the technicians hence the technicians should be educated and trained to work in this line of work with superiority. Of course some data may not be valid because of misinformants and that must be taken into consideration.” (Shulsky, 1993). The most important issue of analytical intelligence is being able to interpret the information and convert it into useful information that can aid in making the police department more useful with solving crimes and preventing future crimes.

The Process of Analysis of Competing Hypotheses from Richards Heuer’s Psychology of Intelligence Analysis

CIA Analyst, Richard Huer wrote of the performance of analytical performance of the intelligence in the workforce of police. He thought ‘more is better’ and sought to inspire polic3 workers to strive for more. One phase is man-made denial creates a façade fog in a person’s mind that can clog their cognitive ability. Secondly, becoming aware of unmotivated biases does little to nothing to clear up the confusing and fog to deal effectively with uncertainly with an officers job. Using critical thinking skills can help a person raise their thinking to a higher level and release distorted views. This can help to enable structuring information and organization.  “Competitive Intelligence (1996) allows you to take unconnected information and turn it into intelligence. Paul and Andrews (1990) state that organization in a coherent information form raises information to a higher level and allows police to solve crime easier and to a higher level and coordination.

Written and oral assignments aid in producing a formal and effective way to deal with national security issues as stated by Steele (2000). Perhaps educational level is one of the most important factors to solving a case in an efficient and effective manner. The fusion and organization of information is the second most important effective tool of an analyst. Casting preliminary judgment on case material will form a bias opinion. Attempting to find past history of a topic at hand is another useful tool when trying to solve a case. Credibility gives rise to consulting with experts.

There are different scales that investigators and analysts use to verify information obtained through investigation and sources. They are reliable, usually reliable, fairy reliable and not usually reliable. Some information simply cannot be judged based on the information provided for various reasons. Based on this criteria information can be verified, probably verified, probably true or not true at all. Also some information cannot be judged at all.

The values that are assigned to each of these scales help analysts and investigators process the information and make a determination as to whether the police can rely on the information. Credentials, qualifications and history are further considered. There should be adequate reasoning or deductive reasoning by selective perception, reasoning by analogy, applying theories of criminology and competing hypothesis. The Mosaic Theory of Analysis is also considered when making such decisions. This involves collecting both public and non-public information about security of a company. It is very much an art.

Works Cited

CCIC (2008) Retrieved February 14, 2010 from, http://www.iir.com/GLOBAL/council.htm

(Robert Steele, On Intelligence-Spies and Secrecy in an Open World, 2000).

(Paul Andrews & Marilyn Peterson, Criminal Intelligence Analysis, 1990).

(Abram Shulsky, Silent Warfare – Understanding the World of Intelligence, 1993).