Abstract
This article describes the use of crime seriousness information in police operations. It is based on a project at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department funded by the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Eight weeks of crime information were coded using the Sellin-Wolfgang seriousness index. Statistics were then derived which quantified the seriousness of the various categories of crimes. Several applications were investigated based on the crime seriousness data. These included (1) case assignment to detectives, (2) allocation of patrol per sonnel, and (3) determination of the size and location of patrol beats. Finally, areas for future research involving the use of crime seriousness data are presented.
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