“Missing the Community for the Dots”: Newspaper Crime Maps, Territorial Stigma and Visual Criminology

Abstract

By drawing on research on territorial stigmatization, critical cartography, and visual criminology, this article develops a critical literacy of crime maps to scrutinize their ability to function as adequate representations of crime. Focusing on online newspaper crime maps of homicides published by one of Chicago’s major newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times, this article argues that crime maps assign a criminogenic character to urban spaces by spatially inscribing homicides onto community maps. In particular, this article devotes attention to the power of crime visualizations through cartography, developing strategies to educate readers about how to critically think about and read crime maps’ visualizations of the spatiality of crime. This article is intended as both a critique of crime maps’ spatio-visual practices as well as an attempt to develop a critical literacy of crime maps.