Exploratory arrest analysis

[josh-chamberlain]

Context

• Part of Allegheny County, PA types of arrests by police force data-projects#18

Requirements

• Review the collected data referenced here
• Leave a comment on this issue
  • Is there enough information at the sources referenced to understand the types of arrests being made in agencies in the county?
  • If not, are there other potential sources for arrest records?

[BBarr-PDAP]

There is enough information from the WPRDC to perform an analysis on arrest trends in Allegheny County. The one issues I foresee, if the analysis requires it, is providing the portion of type of arrest (such as percentage of arrests which are theft, traffic violation, marijuana, assault, etc.). I do believe that the column INCIDENTZONE would capture the question of arrests for each agency because, implicitly, each zone is made up of the different agencies. Therefore, if the zone of the agency is known, then Zone would capture the type and characteristics of arrests by that agency.

[josh-chamberlain]

@BBarr-PDAP thanks for looking at it. Types of arrest are important to the question. Can we get those from the CDE website?

there are also crime maps, which are not exactly the same as arrest logs but more commonly posted online.

If we can't get types of arrest, we could focus on just the Pittsburgh data, which do contain types. We should focus the analysis on types of arrest, rather than the demographics which were not requested.

[josh-chamberlain]

If you do just go by Pittsburgh data, I wonder how you should go about doing types? There are codes for the arrests, maybe that's a clue?