Understanding the concept of ‘demand’ in policing: a scoping review and resulting implications for demand management

Figures & data

Figure 1. Search and filtering stages of the review.

Figure 2. Clusters and themes in the literature surrounding police demand.

Figure 3. Visualisation of police demand and its drivers.

Table 1. Studies distinguished by the demand measure and data sources used.

Author/year	Demand measure	Additional information
Adler et al. (2014)	Calls for service
Boulton et al. (2017)	Calls for service
Brooks et al. (2011)	Calls for service
Camacho-Collados and Liberatore (2015)	Crime Risk	Past crime data / interviews with service coordinators and agents involved in public safety operations to identify characteristics of ‘good’ patrol sector partition
Camacho-Collados et al. (2015)	Crime Risk	Case study of the Central District of Madrid, using past crime data (105,755 incident reports)
Curtin et al. (2010)	Calls for service
D’Amico et al. (2002)	Calls for service
De La Cruz (2016)	Calls for service
Decker et al. (2007)	Calls for service / official crime reports/ police arrests
Elliott-Davies et al. (2016)	Workload for individual officers	Semi-structured focus groups
Fleming and Grabosky (2009)	Calls for service
Greasley and Smith (2017)	Calls for service
Green (1984)	Calls for service /service time required
Groff et al. (2015)	Calls for service / Crime prevention
Heller and Markland (1970)	Calls for service
Heslin et al. (2017)	Cost (also attendance of officers), time, resources	Police Neighbourhood Harm Reduction Register (NHRR) and the National Strategy for Police Information Systems (NSPIS) Custody system (to measure police involvement) + RiO electronic patient record system within the local mental care trust (to measure mental health issues)
Johnson and Rhodes (2009)	Calls for service
Kane et al. (2018b)	Use of human and financial resources	Systematic literature review to answer questions about effectiveness of police-mental health service models for responding to people with mental disorder and suspected offending or public safety problems.
Maxfield (1982)	Calls for service
Mazerolle et al. (2002)	Calls for service / Public expectations
Moore and Braga (2003)	Calls for service / Crime prevention
Sacks (2003)	Calls for service / Crime prevention
Sarac et al. (1999)	Calls for service
Taylor and Huxley (1989)	Calls for service
Taylor Griffiths et al. (2015)	Calls for service
Walley (2013)	Calls for service
Walley and Jennison-Phillips (2018)	Need for policing and service (including failure demand)	Sample of non-urgent incidents as recorded by the police (recorded calls, emails, linked incident logs, crime logs) that occurred during the first two weeks of February 2017
Weisburd et al. (2015)	Crime reduction	Experimental study with a block-randomised design, analysing 232 police beats
Wilson and Weiss (2014)	Workload for individual officers	Systematic literature review
Zaki et al. (1997)	Calls for service
Zhang and Brown (2013)	Calls for service
Zhang and Brown (2014)	Calls for service

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Brooks, J.P., et al., 2011. Simulating calls for service for an urban police department. Proceedings of the winter simulation conference winter simulation conference, Chicago. IEEE, 1775–1782.

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Camacho-Collados, M. and Liberatore, F., 2015. A decision support system for predictive police patrolling. Decision support systems, 75, 25–37.

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Camacho-Collados, M., Liberatore, F., and Angulo, J.M., 2015. A multi-criteria police districting problem for the efficient and effective design of patrol sector. European journal of operational research, 246, 674–684.

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Curtin, K.M., Hayslett-Mccall, K., and Qiu, F., 2010. Determining optimal police patrol areas with maximal covering and backup covering location models. Networks and spatial economics, 10, 125–145.

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D’amico, S.J., et al., 2002. A simulated annealing approach to police district design. Computers & operations research, 29, 667–684.

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Decker, S.H., Varano, S.P., and Greene, J.R., 2007. Routine crime in exceptional times: the impact of the 2002 Winter Olympics on citizen demand for police services. Journal of criminal justice, 35, 89–101.

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Elliott-Davies, M., et al., 2016. ‘Getting a battering’ the perceived impact of demand and capacity imbalance within the police service of England and Wales: a qualitative review. The police journal: theory, practice and principles, 89, 93–116.

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Fleming, J. and Grabosky, P., 2009. Managing the demand for police services, or how to control an insatiable appetite. Policing: a journal of policy and practice, 3, 281–291.

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Greasley, A. and Smith, C.M., 2017. Using activity-based costing and simulation to reduce cost at a police communications centre. Policing: an international journal of police strategies & management, 40, 426–441.

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Green, L., 1984. A multiple dispatch queueing model of police patrol operations. Management science, 30, 653–664.

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Heslin, M., et al., 2017. Costs of the police service and mental healthcare pathways experienced by individuals with enduring mental health needs. British journal of psychiatry, 210, 157–164.

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Mazerolle, L., et al., 2002. Managing citizen calls to the police: the impact of Baltimore’s 3-1-1 call system. Criminology & public policy, 2, 97–124.

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Moore, M.H. and Braga, A.A., 2003. Measuring and improving police performance: the lessons of Compstat and its progeny. Policing: an international journal of police strategies & management, 26, 439–453.

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Sacks, S., 2003. Evaluation of police patrol patterns.

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Sarac, A., et al., 1999. Reconfiguring police reporting districts in the city of Buffalo. Or insight, 12, 16–24.

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Taylor Griffiths, C., Pollard, N., and Stamatakis, T., 2015. Assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of a police service: the analytics of operational reviews. Police practice and research, 16, 175–187.

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Walley, P. and Jennison-Phillips, A., 2018. A study of non-urgent demand to identify opportunities for demand reduction. Policing: a journal of policy and practice, 14 (2), 542–554. doi:10.1093/police/pay034.

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Zhang, Y. and Brown, D., 2014. Simulation optimization of police patrol districting plans using response surfaces. Simulation, 90, 687–705.

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