Job Duties
Criminal analysts are responsible for predicting and deterring crimes. Their work is very complex and includes a lot of various kinds of tasks.  Generally, they learn crime and profile supposed criminals. They examine information on crimes to find out when certain crimes will take place. They reinforce the competence of law enforcement by telling their results on crime patterns to detectives and others working in this sphere.
As a rule, criminal analysts work in police departments, but almost all of them are not police officers. They don’t examine crime scenes or evidence, but work on a computer studying crime-connected information form police reports.
Criminal analysts work in one in three spheres: strategic, administrative or tactical.
Tactical crime analysts concentrate on crimes creating an instant hazard like burglary, rape, robbery and serial murders. They establish models for such crimes by considering a number of factors and then giving the results to detectives who can deter the crimes from happening.
Strategic criminal analysts take decisions concerning different levels of police presence to deter crime.
Administrative criminal analysts prepare specific reports to the chiefs of police and city councils, deliver speeches on crime deterrence, write grants to boost their agency’s budget and explore criminal relations and organizations.
Job Skills
Criminal analysts should be able to handle various details at the same time and make ties between numerous factors. They must possess a strong analytical capacity. Besides, they should be able to efficiently communicate with people as they are frequently called on to report their findings to detectives, officers and politicians.
Training and Education
Almost all criminal analyst jobs require applicants to have a bachelor’s degree with majors in psychology, criminal justice or sociology. Some police agencies require just two years of practice and almost all police departments require no less than one year of experience typically in dealing with criminal data or in analytical information handling in a sphere not related to law enforcement. Law enforcement knowledge may be a great benefit in the process of employing.
Job Outlook
The demand for crime analysts has increased significantly for the last fifteen years. For that reason this profession is becoming more and more popular and complicated at the same time.
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