The IACP Center for Police Research & Policy partnered with the Tulsa Police Department (TPD) to conduct a problem analysis regarding domestic violence in the City of Tulsa. A problem analysis is a systematic examination of the underlying conditions of local problems police are tasked with solving. This process is critical to developing solutions that fit the police problem in a community.

The problem analysis was completed in mid-2018 and resulted in some important findings for the TPD. One important and unintended finding was the discovery of substantial measurement error within the domestic violence data coding—but these inconsistencies led the agency to identify important patterns on which to focus their efforts. The problem analysis also revealed that many of the promising practices implemented in other agencies to combat specific types of domestic violence problems were somewhat inapplicable to the specific problem patterns identified in Tulsa. This demonstrates that evidence-based solutions which are readily available in other jurisdictions may not necessarily fit the crime problems in a different setting.

A problem analysis is an extremely helpful process to conduct when considering implementing an evidence-based solution to a problem. It is vital to start with the problem rather than solutions, because what works in one jurisdiction may not fit a specific problem in another locale.