A Computer Based Criminal Records Management System Case Study of the Addis Ababa Police
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Date
1999-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Proper flow, management and use of records in any organization, whether profit oriented
or nonprofit, is critical as blood is for the life of the human being. It is difficult to imagine the
existence of an organization without a sound record management system.
This fact is particularly true to complex organizations like the Ethiopian Police Force,
whose entire operational activities mainly depend on the management and maintenance of crime
records. This calls for the introduction of modem crime record management tools for the
efficient and effective maintenance and use of police crime records.
However, the existing means and tools of crime record management system 111 the
Ethiopian police force is both traditional and manual. The existing traditional crime record
management system cannot cope with the large flow of crime information which the system is
required to handle on a continuous basis. Furthernl0re, the prevailing crime record management
system lacks basic crime classification methods and hence the institution is forced to deal with
crimes in their aggregate form. Police officers cannot also specialize on specific types of crimes.
The main objective of this project is, therefore, to analyze the existing CrIme record
management system and to identify its problems and design a computer based criminal records
management system.
To this end, the analyst has made an effort to learn the current system and has identifled
the requirements of its users. For tllis, the researcher has made several discussions with various
internal and external users of the system and has gathered sufficient data that helped to analyze
the existing system and specify the requirement of the users.
Once the existing system has been analyzed, then different design alternatives that would
solve the existing problems are considered. Finally one design al ternati ve, that would best satisfy
the req uirements of users, is selected and suffi ciently dealt with.Proper flow, management and use of records in any organization, whether profit oriented
or nonprofit, is critical as blood is for the life of the human being. It is difficult to imagine the
existence of an organization without a sound record management system.
This fact is particularly true to complex organizations like the Ethiopian Police Force,
whose entire operational activities mainly depend on the management and maintenance of crime
records. This calls for the introduction of modem crime record management tools for the
efficient and effective maintenance and use of police crime records.
However, the existing means and tools of crime record management system 111 the
Ethiopian police force is both traditional and manual. The existing traditional crime record
management system cannot cope with the large flow of crime information which the system is
required to handle on a continuous basis. Furthernl0re, the prevailing crime record management
system lacks basic crime classification methods and hence the institution is forced to deal with
crimes in their aggregate form. Police officers cannot also specialize on specific types of crimes.
The main objective of this project is, therefore, to analyze the existing CrIme record
management system and to identify its problems and design a computer based criminal records
management system.
To this end, the analyst has made an effort to learn the current system and has identifled
the requirements of its users. For tllis, the researcher has made several discussions with various
internal and external users of the system and has gathered sufficient data that helped to analyze
the existing system and specify the requirement of the users.
Once the existing system has been analyzed, then different design alternatives that would
solve the existing problems are considered. Finally one design al ternati ve, that would best satisfy
the req uirements of users, is selected and suffi ciently dealt with.In the detail design phase, entities about which the system maintains data, have been
specified and their relationship which are important to the system, established. The data items
maintained by the system are also normalized in order to avoid redundancy with regard to
inserting, deleting, and updating data into the database.
Furthermore, a prototype database is designed to demonstrate how the proposed criminal
record management system will operate in the real life situation.
Finally, conclusion and recommendations are presenteain order to fiiglilight the findings
of the study and for further completion of the analysis and implementation phases of the
proposed system.
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Keywords
Computer Based Criminal Records~anagemenLSystem