CRIME MAPPING

The Use of Crime Maps

[Instructor name]

Introduction

Crime mapping is the practice by local law enforcement agencies, comprising the police, to provide the public with maps that identify the crime vulnerable sites and the locale of crime. In this way, the public is able to view the maps to see their neighbourhoods and identify the crime zones and places where crime took place in the recent and distant past. This ensures that the citizens are safe and they are able to safeguard themselves against potential crime by being informed (Crime Mapping, 2012).

Recently, the police and other law enforcement agencies have been utilising the technology of crime mapping and other GIS (Geographic Information Systems) tools to effectively safeguard and inform the community (Wartell and McEwen, 2001). The practice of crime mapping falls within the purview of intelligence gathering and integration. The integration of intelligence gathering has been the order of the day with the localisation of information. Now, the local police intelligence officer gathers all of the information related to recent crimes, and compiles the information to include surveillance results and intelligence from the informants. This trend of integrated information has now included crime mapping as an integral tool for circulation of intelligence data. These data are also provided by the command and control centres which receive the crime information. Further, the GIS technology has enabled the police to develop maps and analyses of these data (Ratcliffe, 1999).

Some of the recent examples of crime mapping in Australia have been a success. One successful crime mapping project integrated data available from the law enforcement agencies, defence forces, and other intelligence agencies. This involved enhancing the capability through mobile transfer of spatial data which was used for intelligence collection. The field operatives were mandated to transfer the crime data from PDA devices which appeared on the crime mapping system of the main operations centre. In addition, the crime mapping was also used as an incident response system. These crime maps were later also used to counter car theft in sensitive areas (Chainey and Tompson, 2008).

Advantages and disadvantages of crime mapping

Advantages

There are numerous advantages of using crime mapping to counter crime. One of the advantages of crime mapping is that it has resulted in the use of hot-spots policing approach whereby the police now only target very small geographic areas. Another benefit has been the use of problem-oriented policing with the help of crime mapping. This way the police is able to easily scan crime problems, analyse them, and are able to assess the responses (Chamard, 2006).

This recent splurge in the use of crime mapping has occurred due to improvements in the availability of desktop technology. Now, the crime maps can be easily developed without much effort or handwork.

In addition crime maps and mapping and other geographical analysis have also greatly helped the law enforcement agency. The police were able to arrest the bank robber, Roosevelt Erving, with the assistance of applied spatial analysis principles. In addition, crime mapping has been efficaciously used to conduct ...