Future directions in crime mapping

Abstract

There is little doubt that crime mapping has come a long way over the past decade. Ever since the days of simple pin mapping, law enforcement practitioners vendors and academics alike have sought ways in which to continuously improve upon the use of GIS in law enforcement. The establishment of the Crime Mapping Research Center by the National Institute of Justice about five years ago not only helped to legitimize the field of crime mapping within law enforcement and academia, but through its annual conferences and research grants also provided a means for practitioners, academics and vendors to communicate and share research and ideas. The result has been an almost unprecedented level of cooperation among all organizations interested in the field of crime mapping in the United States. Compared to other, more established fields however, crime mapping is only in its infancy. For the most part, GIS is still primarily used as a standalone tool for digital pin mapping rather than for more sophisticated spatial and temporal analysis. This is not because other tools and methods for crime mapping do not exist, but for the most part it is due to the fact that many recent advances in crime mapping have yet to be incorporated into commercially available software. In addition, many crime analysts continue to undergo a daily struggle just to obtain and geo-code the data required for mapping, with little or no access to data warehousing facilities or even direct access to records management (RMS) or computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems. However, these problems can all be attributed to “growing pains” and are not unlike those experienced in other emerging technologies. In fact, considering that crime mapping is a relatively small field, it is all the more surprising that it has come so far in such a short period of time. This is surely a testament to all the dedicated professionals that have worked hard over the past years to make crime mapping what it is today. There is no doubt that crime mapping will continue to grow over the next decade. The question is: where will the next decade lead us? While recent crime mapping conferences have offered a glimpse of what lies ahead, the number of possibilities is boundless. Consequently, exploring all of the possibilities would be beyond the scope of this chapter. For that reason I will concentrate on two approaches that in my opinion show great promise for crime mapping.