CrimeStat II: Spatial Description, Part II

• NCJ Number: 195773
• Date Published: May 2002
• Length: 190 pages
• Grant Number(s): 99-IJ-CX-0044
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description

Annotation

In Part two of CrimeStat II, a spatial statistics software program supported by the National Institute of Justice, a spatial description of a program designed to provided statistical summaries and models of crime incident data is provided focusing on spatial distribution, distance analysis, and “hot spot” analysis I and II.

Abstract

Supported by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, CrimeStat II is a software program designed to provide statistical summaries and models of crime incident data. It offers crime analysts and researchers with a vast range of spatial statistical procedures that can be linked to a geographic information system (GIS). CrimeStat II is a full-featured Windows 2000 program using a graphical interface with database and expanded statistical functions. CrimeStat provides descriptions of the spatial arrangements of crime incidents. There are a variety of tools that can be used to describe these arrangements and they are useful in helping crime analysts detect patterns of crime and provide different perspectives on the arrangements, analyzing one or two variables affecting crime incidence. This report represents part two in a three part series providing a spatial description of CrimeStat. The spatial description is comprised of four sections beginning with a discussion of the spatial distribution of crime incidents followed by a description of the tools that identify characteristics of the distances between points, a description of seven tools for identifying clusters of crime incidents, and a discussion of hot spots. Part one and part three of CrimeStat cover and focus on the program overview and spatial modeling. Figures