In the past two decades, many local police agencies in the USA have adopted the rhetoric of being ‘problem-oriented’, ‘evidence-based’ or ‘intelligence-led’ after investing in crime analysis technologies used for crime mapping, hot spot identification, criminal investigations and intelligence gathering. Scholars have presented general arguments concerning the environmental and organisational factors that have influenced this technological trend in policing; to date, however, no known studies have empirically tested these hypotheses at the national level. This study seeks to help fill this gap using a sample of data drawn from the Department of Justice's 2007 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 2006 Uniform Crime Reports. Results reveal that several organisational factors including community policing were associated with agency adoptions of crime analysis technologies. Implications for the policing literature and avenues for future research are discussed.
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