Abstract

Law enforcement professionals use technology on a regular basis to aid and assist in them in their civil duties in areas such as police administration, mobile field work, dispatching, investigations and many other areas as well. The use of technology is crucial to crime reduction and prevention, especially in an era when information is key to not only solving a crime that has been committed but in preventing those crimes as well. This research focuses on one technology tool in particular that is in use in some form or another in almost every police agency, worldwide. The Police Records Management System (PRMS) is the software tool used by police agencies to gather all information from any existing case or incident, criminal or non-criminal, and stores that information for later retrieval by police personnel. As the main function of any information system is to enter, store, and retrieve data (Laudon, 2008) this study focuses on the retrieval of police information from a police records management system by its users. The study analyzed current RMS search capabilities, used term frequency and content analysis of random police narratives to identify narrative characteristics and then identified potential information retrieval tools and techniques that may be utilized and integrated into police records management systems based on the findings of the study.