Geographic Information Systems of Crime - Term Paper Example

Geographic Information Systems of Crime Abstract Crime maps have become invaluable tools in criminal justice system with advancements in the areas of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and information technology opening new prospects for the employment of digital mapping in the prevention programs and control of crimes. Crime maps are also helpful in the locational aspects as well as the study of the ecology of crime. Maps give a visual representation of areas of unusually low or high crime concentration. This paper explains/describes crime mapping, gives a basic background of crime mapping and discusses how it has helped the criminal justice system. Introduction Crime mapping is a term in policing and a law enforcement tool that refers to the process of carrying out spatial analysis of crime problems as well as other police-related issues using a geographic information system (Sagepub.com, 37). It is a sub-discipline of crime analysis that focuses on identifying hot spots where most crimes take place, mapping incidents in addition to carrying out the analysis of the spatial relationships of these hot spots and targets. Of late, crime mapping has become more established and in solving crimes, uncovering patterns has become of great significance. With the introduction of desktop computing as well as software programs known as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), computerized crime maps have become more common. Modern advancement in statistical analysis makes the addition of more social and geographic dimensions to the analysis possible. Crime mapping assists analysts in the identification of where the actual crime occurred, where victim and the person responsible for the crime ‘live, work, and play.’ They then combine the resultant visual display with other geographic data, investigate and analyze the crime causes and finally develop responses. Crime analysis has discovered that most criminals have a tendency of committing crimes in their comfort zones, and investigators and police use crime mapping to identify that comfort zone (Karpilo, 3, National Institute of Justice, 3). Smith defines a crime map as a visual demonstration of the crimes that go on in a neighborhood. In order to make the map easier to read, different crime types may be color-coded, and in places with higher numbers of crimes, the color of the map may be brighter, or the marks indicating individual events may be enlarged, to show the occurrence of multiple crimes in a small area. A quick glimpse at the map can display all kinds of information, such as a steady assaults pattern in a given region or a distinct rise in muggings in another region. When departments of police employ crime mapping as a tool, they also generally integrate neighborhood as well as demographic information. Crime maps, other than displaying data regarding crime statistics, may also represent/consist of businesses of interest such as pawn shops, such things as hospitals, schools’ locations, playgrounds, halfway houses, parks, clinics, housing projects, among others. Sometimes, crime maps may display demographic data such as race, average income, among others permitting departments to produce even more interest data for their neighborhoods (Smith, 3&4). It is important to note that crime mapping is complementary to all types of crime analysis since it plays a significant role in nearly every analysis. Crime mapping, being a process that takes place within the greater process of crime analysis, does not stand alone. Crime mapping is used in administrative crime analysis, in tactical crime analysis, and in strategic crime analysis. As far as administrative crime analysis is concerned, media organizations, police and researchers use crime mapping as a valuable tool for conveying information on criminal activity to citizens. Websites run by news organizations and police departments post maps depicting crime areas regularly, together with corresponding definitions and tables. a police agency, for instance, can decrease public requests for a region’s crime information by placing weekly or monthly crime maps on a Website that is accessible to citizens using computers. In tactical crime analysis, crime mapping identifies immediate crime patterns such as commercial and residential burglary, theft from vehicles as well as auto theft. For instance, auto theft incidents’ spatial analysis may disclose activity clusters at definite locations that may signify a crime pattern. In strategic crime analysis, crime mapping is used to examine the connection between indicators of disorder and criminal activity in long-standing applications; to help in temporal and geographic allocation of resources; to examine crime patterns around or at specific locations; to calculate crime rate data; and to integrate crime data with qualitative geographic data (Sagepub.com, 38-39). As Smith explains, crime mapping enables personnel to create a visual representation of crimes on a map or grid of an area. Organizing crimes this way enables the personnel of law enforcement to spot areas of concern, patterns, along with other information of interest that can be invaluable in helping them to become more effective. Crime mapping is common in most urban police departments and such maps are usually made public in order that citizens can obtain information regarding areas of concern as well as crime patterns in their regions (1). Within crime analysis, crime mapping has three main functions. To start with, it facilitates statistical as well as visual analyses of the spatial nature of crime in addition to other kinds of events. The second function of crime mapping is that it permits analysts to combine unlike data sources founded on common geographic variables (for instance, connecting school data, census data and crime information for a common region). Thirdly, crime mapping provides maps that aid in the communication of analysis results (Sagepub.com, 38). History of crime mapping Sagepub.com records that although crime mapping plays a major role in today’s crime analysis, creating crime maps and carrying out spatial analysis have just in recent times become common in crime analysis and policing, thanks to improvement in technology. It further documents that the history of crime mapping, unlike crime analysis, does not start with the founding of the first police force, but it started with researchers a long time prior to the invention of computers (47). The concept of crime mapping is not new – it dates back to near the beginning of 1800s in France. An assessment of the historical literature from 1800s to date reveals several periods during which there was great interest in crime mapping, although the interest later faded dramatically. Andre-Michel Guerry and Adriano Balbi created the first crime maps in the year 1829. This collaboration is of interest since it combined Balbi’s training in general mapping skills and in ethnography with Guerry’s training as a lawyer interested in criminality patterns. Balbi and Guerry developed crime maps against persons and education levels, and against property using demographic information from the latest census in France as well as criminal statistics for the years 1825-1827. They compared the maps and discovered that people from the northeastern part of France were better educated, that areas where property crimes were more had people with higher education levels, and that there were less incidences of attacks on people in regions with high crime rates against property. During this period, Lambert-Adolphe Quetet, a Belgian statistician and astronomer also used maps to examine the relationship between crime and ethnic and cultural variations, education levels, and transportation routes (Weisburd, 4-5). In the US, the first substantive spatial analysis of crime was performed in the 1920s and 1930s in Chicago by urban sociologists. Their crime research along with related crime maps associated crime and criminal behavior to such factors as poverty and social disorganization. The spatial analysis of social conditions and juvenile delinquency by these scholars is deemed one of the leading crime examples in the first half of the twentieth century. Mapping of crime was a theoretical constituent in the concentric zone model’s development, which asserts that different types of zones in an urban setting form about a central business district and that compared to others, some zones are more inclined to disorder. Researchers who carried out an analysis of gangs distribution and locations in Chicago based on the concept of the concentric zone discovered that in areas with high social disorganization and weak social control, gangs were more. The largest part of the early crime mapping carried out in both the US and Europe looked at collective crime levels by area. Evidence however exists of a map that Chicago school researchers created by hand in the year 1929 wherein over 9,000 delinquents’ home addresses were concentrated in certain areas in Chicago (Paynich & Hill, 12). During the 1950s-1970s, sociologists as well as other people who had interest in crime causes went on examining the sociological factors linked to crime. Geographic methods of analysis and explanations remained quite uncomplicated probably due to lack of sufficient technology and to their focus on sociological factors. Scholars began performing spatial analysis of crime towards the end of 1960s with the aid of simple methods of visualization and large computer systems. Beginning late 1960s to early 1980s, a group of researchers in the US, England and Canada changed their focus of crime study toward the criminal event as well as its context. They affected crime mapping since researchers’ focus changed from collective analysis of crime plus social factors to that of distinct criminal events plus their locations. They therefore started incorporating data about environment and geography into their study (Sagepub.com, 49). By early 1980s, client server technology had made Geographic Information Systems (GIS) more accessible, thereby allowing police departments to experiment with crime mapping in their daily work. By mid-1990s, electronic crime mapping was a more practical tool for researchers and police due to noteworthy improvements in police data systems and computer technology. In the year 1997, the Crime Mapping Research Center was established with the aim of promoting research, development, evaluation as well as distribution of GIS technology for criminal justice practice and research. The program is now known as the Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety (MAPS). In the year 1998, Crime Mapping and Analysis Program (CMAP) was formed with the aim of providing technical aid and training to state and local agencies in crime as well as intelligence analysis areas and GIS. In the year 2001, following a CMAP-held symposium on topics of crime mapping, ‘Advanced Crime Mapping Topics,’ a collaborative document by attendees of the symposium was published. It includes articles on the function of crime mapping in different areas. Compstat, a data and mapping-driven police management plan is another current influence on crime mapping use in policing. The Police Department of New York City created it and other agencies of police all over the US adopted it (Sagepub.com, 49-53). How crime mapping has helped the criminal justice system Apparently, crime mapping is very helpful to Law enforcement agencies in the criminal justice system in that it helps them in mapping, visualizing analyzing patterns of crime incidents. Under the Operation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), crime mapping can be of great assistance to police departments in crime reduction since it gives them a better-informed understanding of their regions. This streamlined organization of data enables law enforcement management to create crime prevention strategies, target resources as well as better comprehend the reason as to why certain patterns take place (Criminal Justice Direct, 1). As discussed earlier, the police use crime mapping to literally map where certain criminal activities are taking place, the day of the week and even the time of day when crime generally takes place. Police officers can also use crime mapping to identify the most likely victims over and above mapping who the most likely perpetrators are and from areas where they usually come from. They can make use of this information to deploy better the limited available resources to obtain utmost effect. The process of crime mapping therefore has the potential of making crime-prevention partnerships needed for success among the police, citizens as well as other government agencies stronger. The exercise of mapping crimes and the subsequently discussing the findings with citizens encourages improved accountability among the partners (Hill, 2&5). Criminal Justice Direct documents that crime mapping is both quantitative and qualitative in nature. While a map most obviously indicates a criminal activity’s location, it can also give crucial information which suggests the underlying trend of or the theme of a topic. Crime mapping also helps investigators to view, for instance, victims of homicide by unordered categories such as age, sex, and race. It also points out the fact that crime mapping is beneficial in assisting to illustrate and differentiate the causes as well as geographical conditions of a crime. For example, some areas in rural areas, suburbs or cities have persistent high rates of crime. Bearing this in mind, particular neighborhoods may have a permanent anticipation for criminal activities. Other people in the criminal justice system who really profit from crime mapping are patrol officers. As professionals whose much of their duties take place on the street, patrol officers enjoy the benefits of having comprehensive and state-of-the-art information related to their areas of patrol. They use the data gathered from this system to spot trends in their regions, get to better comprehend activity that has taken place during earlier shifts, and make a more universal, macro opinion of important developments that take place in exceptional cases. A good example of an area in which crime mapping proved very effective was in a case in McLean County, Illinois relating to rural burglaries. Incidents were plotted on a country map using a crime mapping system and the information revealed all of the reported incidents to have taken place near major highways. This data made law enforcement officials to make the suggestion of involving traveling criminal troops, which concentrated in robberies. Findings also revealed that these crimes took place near cemeteries, which were deemed to be lookout places. Consequently, more patrols were positioned in these areas, eventually leading to the apprehension of affiliates of a group known as the Irish Travelers. After the arrest, law enforcement officials witnessed a sharp reduction of burglaries in that region (Criminal Justice Direct, 5&6). Conclusion Crime mapping has now become widely used especially with technological advancement. It is currently experiencing what might be referred to as an explosion of interest among both practitioners and scholars. Apparently, one sector that has greatly benefited from crime mapping is the criminal justice system/law enforcement agencies – it has helped them in determining and understanding crime patterns and they are able to examine where past offenders and victims lived and where crimes took place, which helps law enforcement professionals to determine which regions attract criminals and where unknown criminals may reside. This way, they are able to act accordingly thereby reducing crime rates. Crime-maps are also very useful to citizens as they give them a readily available way of comprehending crime patterns in their neighborhoods. They are therefore able to assess police performance as well as priorities and to make informed judgments regarding their well-being and safety. Works Cited Criminal Justice Direct. What is Crime Mapping and how can it Solve Cases? N.d. Web. Hill, Keisha. NCU Helps Police with Crime-mapping Training. 2011. Web. Karpilo, Jessica. Crime Mapping and Analysis. 2010. Web. National Institute of Justice. Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety. 2009. Web. Paynich, Rebecca & Hill, Bryan. Fundamentals of crime mapping. Sudbury, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning. 2009. Print. Sagepub.com. Introduction to Crime Mapping. 2005. Web. Smith, S.E. What is Crime Mapping? 2003. Web. Weisburd, David. Crime Mapping and Crime Prevention. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press. 1998. Print. Read More