Real-Time Crime Centers in Chicago: Evaluation of the Chicago Police Department's Strategic Decision Support Centers

By John S. Hollywood, Kenneth N. McKay, Dulani Woods, Denis Agniel

Strategic Decision Support Centers (SDSCs) are the Chicago Police Department's district-level real-time crime centers, launched in January 2017 and expanded in 2018. They serve as command and control centers for staff to gain awareness of what is happening in their districts and decide on responses. SDSCs support daily and weekly planning meetings and provide near–real-time support for detecting, responding, and investigating crimes as they occur. Their objectives are to improve districts' abilities to reduce crime, hold offenders accountable, improve officer safety, and reduce service times.

In this report, the authors evaluate the processes, organizational structures, and technologies employed in the SDSCs. They also assess the extent to which the introduction of SDSCs was associated with reductions in crime levels in the districts. They find that SDSCs are a promising tool for supporting crime reduction. According to the authors' models, a district that adds an SDSC can expect to see reductions in at least some of the ten types of major crimes modeled, including shootings, robbery, burglary, and criminal sexual assault.

More broadly, the authors see SDSCs as a promising model for improving law enforcement agencies' awareness of their communities, improving their decision-making, and carrying out more effective and more efficient operations that lead to crime reductions and other policing benefits.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2019. 98p.