Police use of checklists to improve investigative outcomes

The Manchester (NH) Police Department (MPD) proposes to implement an investigative checklist strategy via a mobile phone application during its FY2023 Smart Policing Initiative. The goal is to address a recent increase in violent and property crime by improving investigative clearance rates. The project will include developing an action plan to guide the project (Deliverable 1), conducting a review of past cases to identify correlates of case clearances, interviewing detectives on their perceptions of effective investigations, developing investigative checklists that can be deployed within a mobile application that integrates with MPD’s records management system, conducting a pilot of the strategy to improvement implementation, implementing the checklist strategy patrol-wide, executing a quasi-experimental evaluation of the strategy, and writing a final report (Deliverable 2) detailing the strategy and its impact as well as a formal policy (Deliverable 3). MPD will partner with the University of Cincinnati to evaluate the strategy.