Given city authorities’ requirements for transparency and effective use of taxpayers’ funds, one of the most important criteria for infrastructure spending – whether on roads or IT services – is the ability to demonstrate value for money and return on investment.
The Memphis Police Department in Tennessee experienced a sharp increase in crime in 2004 and 2005 and decided it needed a way to respond faster to crime as it happened. With the time-consuming process of searching through an array of spreadsheets and paper files, officers were spending several hours looking for information vital to solving or preventing crimes instead of responding faster. The MPD was eager to exploit new practices to predict, track, and respond promptly to crimes committed. Equally important, it sought a way to cost-efficiently upgrade its resources, use funds in the most effective way, and increase the overall effectiveness of the department.
In 2005, the MPD partnered with the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Memphis to create a predictive analytics system called Blue Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History and selected IBM SPSS predictive analytics software to support the system.
Following deployment, the MPD reported increased overall visibility into crime activity – with the capability to evaluate incident patterns throughout the city based on previous and current crime patterns – improved communication and increased productivity. In addition to meeting all of the MPD’s strategic goals for the project, Nucleus Research calculated that it generated an annual return on investment of an astounding 863%, giving a payback time of just 2.7 months and an average annual benefit of $7.21 million.
