From Response to Foresight: Managing Knowledge and Integrated Criminal Justice

In this paper we report on our ongoing study of integrated criminal justice systems. Our focus here is on theorizing the nature of and arrangements among the policy issues, operational activities, and technical architectures to support knowledge sharing among personnel and across geographic and organizational boundaries. Here we draw on data from a comparative case study across three sites to report three findings. First, the aged computing infrastructures and dated technologies severely constrain the ability of criminal justice organizations to leverage information and communications technologies to support information sharing. Second, in contrast, criminal justice organizations have developed sophisticated work practices to support officer’s data collection and information sharing. Third, we note the central role that dispatch plays in information sharing and knowledge transfer among criminal justice personnel.