Crime Mapping Research Articles

The Impact of Software on Crime Mapping

Criminology has been greatly affected by the field of crime mapping. This has mostly been because of advancements in geographic information systems (GIS) and other spatial analysis software programs. The field has gained prominence and acceptance by effectively using software to combine criminological theory and geographic analysis principles. This occurred due to the operationalizing of geographic analysis techniques and the progress of computers and software. However, it has not just been through these innovations that crime mapping has flourished; they were also facilitated by software development tools that allowed criminologists and geographers to write software for their needs. This introduction to the special edition of Social Science Computing Review on crime mapping traces the growth of crime mapping through the development of geographic software and its use in criminology for mapping out and spatially analyzing crime.

Book Review: Chainey, S., & Ratcliffe, J. (2005). GIS and Crime Mapping. London: Wiley. (422 pp., $60.00 paperback)

Book Review: Chainey, S., & Ratcliffe, J. (2005). GIS and Crime Mapping. London: Wiley. (422 pp., $60.00 paperback)

Software Review: Crime Analysis and Mapping with GeoDa 0.9.5-i

As a Windows-based application, GeoDa 0.9.5-i is now much more user-friendly compared to its predecessor, the SpaceStat package and its Arc View Extension, DynESDA. GeoDa provides some very useful tools for doing exploratory spatial data analysis, including dynamically linked windows and data brushing. As a stand-alone program, it has a variety of options for data manipulation and transformation, mapping, exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial weights construction, descriptive statistics, spatial autocorrelation statistics, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with spatial diagnostics, and spatial regression modeling.

Maturity model for mapping crime in law enforcement

The diffusion of computerised crime mapping in policing has been studied extensively. However, there is a lack of research concerned with the extent to which such systems are used after adoption. This paper develops a maturity model for geographic information systems in crime mapping. The model consists of eight maturity levels covering visualisation, communication, simulation, optimisation, organisation, and strategy. The purpose of such a model is to help practitioners and researchers study organisational evolution and determine future direction in police organisations' use of electronic systems when mapping crime.

Crime Mapping and Spatial Analysis in National Forests

Abstract We examined the spatial distribution of crime incidents on USDA Forest Service lands using a geographic information system and several spatial analysis techniques. Our primary objective was to examine whether patterns existed in the spatial distribution of crime and to explore the relationship of patterns to other geographic features using the Forest Service and other databases. We analyzed a database containing over 45,000 spatially referenced crimes such as felonies, infractions, and misdemeanors. Other spatial data layers included transportation networks, administrative boundaries, hydrology, elevation, and digital orthophotographs. Results at a regional scale showed crime densities concentrated in forests adjacent to population centers and transportation corridors. Nearest neighbor, quartic kernel density estimation, and quadrat analyses identified crime patterning and hot spots. Our results suggest that managers can use these spatial techniques as decision support tools to better understand the relationship between natural resources and crime.

“So what does all of this have to do with Criminology?”: Surviving the Restructuring of the Discipline in the Twenty-First Century

This commentary reflects back on an article that we published in the 1999 volume of this journal, which offered a number of observations about the condition of Canadian academic criminology at the turn of the new century. In this brief update, we consider some of the trends that have unfolded over the intervening six years, which have contributed to the continuing polarization of the discipline and the resurgence of traditional paradigms of state crime control and order maintenance (albeit under the purportedly new banners of risk management, computational criminology, administrative criminology, crime mapping, and the like). While innovative, progressive, and counter-hegemonic work continues to flourish in many quarters, the reward structures of twenty-first-century corporate university systems and criminological research environments militate overwhelmingly, and increasingly, in favour of the (re)ascendant “new orthodoxy.”

Book Review: Crime Mapping: New Tools for Law Enforcement

Book Review: Crime Mapping: New Tools for Law Enforcement

On The Application of Fuzzy Clustering for Crime Hot Spot Detection

One of the fundamental challenges in crime mapping and analysis is pattern recognition. Efforts and methods to detect crime hot-spots, or geographic areas of elevated criminal activity, are wide ranging. For aggregate data, such as total crime events in a census tract(s), measures of spatial autocorrelation have proven useful. For disaggregate data (i.e. individual crime events), kernel density smoothing and non-hierarchical cluster analysis (e.g. k-means), are widely used. Non-hierarchical techniques are particularly effective in delineating geographic space into areas of higher or lower crime concentrations, because each observation is assigned to one and only one cluster. The resulting set of partitions provides clear-cut spatial boundaries that can be used for hot-spot evaluation and interpretation. However, the strength of non-hierarchical methods can also be viewed as a weakness. Although the hard-clustering of observations into a set of discrete clusters is helpful, there are many cases where ambiguity exists in the data. In such cases, a more generalized approach for hot-spot detection would be helpful. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a generalized partitioning method known as fuzzy clustering for hot-spot detection. Functional and visual comparisons of fuzzy clustering and two hard-clustering approaches (medoid and k-means), across a range of cluster values are analyzed. The empirical results suggest that a fuzzy clustering approach is better equipped to handle intermediate cases and spatial outliers.

Crime Mapping and the Crimestat Program

CrimeStat is a spatial statistics program used in crime mapping. The program inputs incident or point locations and outputs statistics that can be displayed graphically in a geographic information systems (GIS) program. Among the routines are those for summary spatial description, hot spot analysis, interpolation, space–time analysis, and journey‐to‐crime modeling. Version 3.0 has a crime travel demand module for analyzing travel patterns over a metropolitan area. The program and documentation are distributed by the National Institute of Justice.

The Diffusion of Computerized Crime Mapping in Policing: Linking Research and Practice

In this paper we examine the diffusion of computerized crime mapping drawing upon a more general approach to the ‘diffusion of innovations’ pioneered by Everett Rogers in 1995. We use data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey and the Crime Mapping Research Center at the National Institute of Justice to define the basic pattern of adoption of computerized crime mapping in larger American police agencies. As we illustrate in our paper, these surveys suggest that larger police agencies have adopted computerized crime mapping at a rapid pace. We supplement these data with a pilot study of adoption of computerized crime mapping that shows a continuing rapid adoption curve through 2001, and that illustrates that crime mapping innovation follows a period of crisis of confidence in standard American police practices. We also find that the widespread adoption of computerized crime mapping follows research evidence regarding the effectiveness of hot spots policing approaches, and is linked strongly to those approaches in police agencies with computerized crime mapping capabilities. Following the diffusion of innovation literature more generally, we show that there is a significant relationship between the likelihood of early adoption of computerized crime mapping and knowledge of research and interaction with the research community.

A randomized experimental study of sharing crime data with citizens: Do maps produce more fear?

The larger roles of the community in crime prevention and improvements in technology have increased police–citizen communication and the distribution of information from police departments to private citizens. Combined, these changes have led to the current movement among law enforcement agencies toward sharing both summary reports and maps of crime with community groups. Although the dissemination of crime information is intended to benefit community members, there is a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating the effects of crime mapping on citizen perceptions and fear of crime. This experiment compared three formats for disseminating crime data; two popular types of crime maps (i.e., graduated symbol and density) and the traditional tabular format of crime statistics. A randomized experimental design was used to measure residents’ fear of crime and their perception of the safety of different areas of Redlands, CA. Overall, residents who viewed either type of map reported less fear than those who viewed tabular statistics. Respondents who viewed graduated symbol maps consistently reported less fear than either density maps or tabular statistics. However, there were differences depending on the type of map. While graduated symbol maps were associated with the lowest levels of fear of robbery, theft or assault; density maps produced different reactions depending on the area of the city. Finally, the maps did not stigmatize high crime areas of Redlands. Where statistically significant differences existed, respondents who were given maps were more likely to recommend someone move into an area than those who were given tabular statistics.

インターネット上のひったくり発生マップに対する認知的評価と防犯行動との関連

The police disclose crime maps on the Internet to activate preventive actions against crimes. This paper examines the relationships between preventive actions and cognitive appraisals of the snatch occurrence map on the Internet provided by the metropolitan police department. 250 persons answered the questionnaire. Covariance structure analysis supports that cognizance of the map predicts cognitive appraisal and that cognitive appraisal predicts preventive action. Female viewers have more motives of preventive actions than male viewers before inspections of the crime map.

To Map or Not to Map: Assessing the Impact of Crime Maps on Police Officer Perceptions of Crime

An increasingly popular strategy within community oriented and problem oriented policing is to provide patrol officers with crime analysis information in the form of crime maps. The strategy is designed to encourage officers to use maps to determine problem areas within their beats and to modify their patrol strategies accordingly. Despite the promise of crime maps and GIS in general, no research has evaluated the use of crime maps by patrol officers. This paper assesses the effects of crime maps on officers' perceptions of crime patterns and their subsequent patrol activities. Results indicate that simply providing officers with maps of crime distributions will not alone improve their understanding of crime patterns within their jurisdiction. Moreover, in order to have any real impact on officer perception and subsequent police activities, agencies need to invest in training and infrastructure to allow the full capabilities of crime mapping to be realised. In addition to a discussion of the relevant findings, the article also discusses general problems associated with the implementation and use of crime mapping as well as future research aims.

The political mapping of cyberspace

As inherently spatial beings, our sense of space in cyberspace challenges all that is familiar in terms of our ability to define, organize, govern, and map social places. In The Political Mapping of Cyberspace, Jeremy Crampton shows that cyberspace is not the virtual reality we think it to be, but instead a rich geography of political practices and power relations. Using concepts and methods derived from the work of Michel Foucault, Crampton outlines a new mapping of cyberspace to help define the role of space in virtual worlds and to provide constructive ways in which humans can exist in another spatial dimension. He delineates the critical role maps play in constructing the medium as an object of knowledge and demonstrates that by processes of mapping we come to understand cyberspace. Maps, he argues, shape political thinking about cyberspace, and he deploys in-depth case studies of crime mapping, security maintenance, and geo-surveillance to show how we map ourselves onto cyberspace, inexorably, and indelibly. Offering a powerful reinterpretation of technology and contemporary life, this innovative book will be an essential touchstone for the study of cartography and cyberspace in the twenty-first century.

Crime Mapping in India: A GIS Implementation in Chennai City Policing

In India, though the Police agencies of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Trivandrum use customized GIS, its application is still in a rudimentary stage. There is a felt need for the fullest application of this potent technology in Indian policing. Hence, researchers in the University of Madras collaborated with the Chennai Police department and developed this study. This research work was submitted to the Police Commissioner, Chennai city and was implemented. The findings of this study showed that, using GIS is a much more compatible means of crime pattern analysis than current processes because of its geographic referencing capabilities. This research has provided valuable information concerning property crimes in Chennai city, including data on the social and physical characteristics of these areas that contribute to localized criminal activity.

Prospective Hot-Spotting: The Future of Crime Mapping?

Existing methods of predicting and mapping the future locations of crime are intrinsically retrospective. This paper explores the development of a mapping procedure that seeks to produce ‘prospective’ hot-spot maps. Recent research conducted by the authors demonstrates that the risk of burglary is communicable, with properties within 400 metres of a burgled household being at a significantly elevated risk of victimization for up to two months after an initial event. We discuss how, using this knowledge, recorded crime data can be analysed to generate an ever-changing prospective risk surface. One of the central elements of this paper examines the issue of how such a risk surface could be evaluated to determine its effectiveness and utility in comparison to existing methods. New methods of map evaluation are proposed, such as the production of search efficiency rates and area-to-perimeter ratios; standardized metrics that can be derived for maps produced using different techniques, thereby allowing meaningful comparisons to be made and techniques contrasted. The results suggest that the predictive mapping technique proposed here has considerable advantages over more traditional methods and might prove particularly useful in the shift-by-shift deployment of police personnel.

Patterns of Rural and Urban Crime: A County-Level Comparison

Community policing, crime mapping, and the recent attention to theories of social disorganization are all examples of the renewed appreciation for understanding the social and environmental context within which crime occurs. However, most studies of the ecological context of crime have focused on urban settings, with little research attention in less metropolitan areas. Despite a growing interest in rural crime, it remains an under-studied issue. The study reported here used a national county-level data set to consider whether variables commonly used to predict urban crime patterns can be applied similarly to more rural settings. The results showed that, although ecological and structural factors did a good job of predicting urban patterns of crime, they were less predictive of crime rates in more rural counties. Further, the constellation of variables that best predicted urban crime rates was not identical to the set that best predicted rural crime rates.

The Adoption of Computerized Crime Mapping by Municipal Police Departments in New Jersey

A mail survey of 347 municipal police departments in New Jersey was conducted to determine the number of departments currently doing computerized crime mapping, as well as how long they had used the innovation and, if they were not currently mapping, whether they had plans to start in the future. The overall rate of adoption, as of the end of 2002, was 13.8 per cent. Department size was strongly associated with mapping use—agencies with 100 or more sworn full-time officers were six times more likely to have adopted crime mapping than agencies with fewer than ten officers. Despite this finding, there was no evidence of hierarchical diffusion. Large departments had not typically adopted the innovation earlier than had small departments. The article concludes with a discussion of the barriers facing crime mapping adoption by small departments.

Evaluation Leads to a Better Understanding

Evaluations for jurisdictions with Weed and Seed and similar community policing initiatives can sometimes fail to tell the full story because of the complexity of the issues involved. Complete evaluations require many complex graphs and charts that could overwhelm all but the most interested reader. Crime mapping, using the same data used for the extensive display graphs and charts, has proven to be an effective way to present large volumes of complex information. This article describes the Wilmington Crime Index, a unique mapping method that takes into account year-to-year changes in both reported crimes and arrests.

A Critical Review of Street Lighting, Crime and Fear of Crime in the British City

The UK government has recently made £300 million available to help local authorities to modernise their street lighting. In consideration of such future funding, this paper reviews the relationship between lighting and crime, explores the current theoretical explanations, and discusses the limitations of the existing BS 5489 lighting standards as they relate to crime reduction. British street lighting standards rely largely on official recorded crime statistics as the preferred measure of crime and, crucially, fear of crime maps have been shown to differ markedly from the reality suggested by recorded crime statistics (Brantingham et al, 1977; Vrij and Winkel,1991). The implications of utilising the current classification of streets according to levels of recorded crime and levels of pedestrian and traffic flows to determine acceptable lighting levels are presented. In the light of recent research on crime and street lighting, local authorities might usefully critically review lighting levels following the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Acknowledging the emergence of the 24-hour city, the policy implications for improving the crime reduction potential of street lighting are discussed.