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Every day, police work generates paperwork — victims report crimes; witnesses provide statements; officers gather evidence; individuals are booked into jails. Today, rather than relying on paper forms, most of this data can be entered into a records management system, or “RMS.”

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To help address these issues, the Policing Project has created a set of best practices for police use of RMS, with the goal of helping agencies and policymakers increase the benefits the public can derive from RMS while minimizing the harms. The intention is to provide useful guidance both to policing agencies and to the governmental officials — elected and otherwise — who fund, acquire, and use these RMS systems.

RMS systems enable police to aggregate, search, analyze, and share vast quantities of data of varying types: criminal histories, incident reports, court records, photographs and physical descriptions, employment information, medical conditions, personal affiliations, and more. This can have a substantial impact on public safety, civil rights, civil liberties, and racial justice — in ways both good and bad. For example, RMS systems can increase transparency and accountability by facilitating the collection and reporting of data about police encounters and use of force. But RMS can be used to collect data about individuals that invades personal privacy. The creation of gang databases through RMS systems can perpetuate racial bias, and there is a serious risk that inaccurate data might lead to erroneous police contact and enforcement.