  This work evaluates a novel structured method for reporting crime and
registering crime scene data by comparing the method with traditional
text-based crime reports. Swedish law enforcement officers were asked to
register a residential burglary using both methods in order to measure the
effectiveness of each method. The effectiveness was quantified as both the time
it took to register the crime as well as the number of relevant unique crime
scene details that were collected. The results show the structured method to be
significantly more efficient than traditional text-based crime reports (p <
0.05). Also, the novel method registers 2.96 times more relevant and unique
crime scene details on average. In addition to the differences in efficiency
this work also discusses more qualitative pros and cons with the novel method,
as well as various data analysis methods that could be used on the registered
data. It is concluded that the novel method can benefit law enforcement
agencies in two ways. First, related to increased quality and more elaborate
crime reports. Secondly, related to significant time-savings, which according
to a rough estimate is expect to lie in the range 11-30 full-time positions per
year for Swedish law enforcement agencies, particularly for volume crime
categories. Those resources could instead be used for unburden the workload for
our law enforcement officers, and to some extent free resources that could be
used in other parts of the organization.
  Note: this pre-print manuscript is written in Swedish.
