Gis Tecnologias De Informacion

The Technology of Policing

N ew Perspecti v es i n Cr i m e ,
Devi anc e, and Law S e r i e s
Edited by John Hagan
Clean Streets: Controlling Crime, Maintaining Order, and
Building Community Activism
Patrick J. Carr
Gender and Crime: Patterns in Victimization and Offending
Edited by Karen Heimer and Candace Kruttschnitt
The Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race,
Ethnicity, andCrime in America
Edited by Ruth D. Peterson, Lauren J. Krivo, and John Hagan
Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence
Edited by Ramiro Martinez Jr. and Abel Valenzuela Jr.
Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in
Adult and Juvenile Courts
Aaron Kupchik
The Technology of Policing: Crime Mapping, Information
Technology, and the Rationality of Crime Control
Peter K. ManningThe Technology
of Policing
Crime Mapping, Information
Technology, and the Rationality
of Crime Control

Peter K. Manning

a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London

new york university press
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2008 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Manning, Peter K.
The technology ofpolicing : crime mapping, information technology,
and the rationality of crime control / Peter K. Manning.
p. cm. — (New perspectives in crime, deviance, and law series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8147-5724-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Crime analysis—United States—Data processing. 2. Information
retrieval—United States. 3. Crime prevention—United States.
4. Digitalmapping. I. Title.
HV7936.C88M356 2008
363.250285—dc22
2007037271
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Annie

Contents

Preface

I

ix

Theorizing

1

Rationalities

2

The Dance of Change

22

3

TheMusic and Its Features

43

4

Technology’s Ways: Imaginative Variations

63

II

3

Case Studies
Overview of the Case Studies

87

5

Western City and Police

92

6

Metropolitan Washington and Police

130

7

Boston and Police

164

III
8

Appraising
Contributions of Structure, Content and Focus
to Ordering

201

9

Seeing and Saying in the BostonCAM

216

10

Generalization

250

Epilogue

266

Appendix A: Data and Methods
Appendix B: Professional “Faery Tales” and Serious
Organizational Ethnography Compared
Notes
References
Index
About the Author

271
286
293
305
319
323

vii

Preface

Books leave more unsaid than said; more to be imagined
than to be read; more in the wholly created than in thecreated. I began
the work that in time became this book, as Heidegger might say, as a
wanderer along a path rather than a focused and directed researcher. An
opportunity arose and fieldwork ensued in an available and convivial
police department; I transferred my interest to the Metropolitan Washington Department, moved to Boston, and walked across the street to
the BPD. The uncritical and rathernaïve idea that crime mapping-in-use
was the cause of a crime drop arose during the course of the study and
was neither the impetus to nor the result of my research. The axial and
organizing idea that there are several contesting rationalities, and not
just one—modes in which we relate to the world of others—emerged
over the course of the study. I assumed initially that crime mapping
(CM) andcrime analyzing (CA) is a “technological package,” a means
by which work is accomplished, that has symbolic (the way it is represented and thought about—its meaning) and instrumental (what work
it actually does where and when) facets. However, while it is that, a
pragmatic tool, it is above all a stimulus to systematic imagining.
As the work unfolded I narrowed my interest to the way, in a...