NCJ Number
189234
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 28 Issue: 6 Dated: June 2001 Pages: 64-68
Date Published
June 2001
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article describes the procedures and benefits of crime mapping as used by various police departments to analyze crime patterns and allocate police resources.
Abstract
Based on a research-based model called Risk and Protective-Focused Prevention and advanced GIS, the Redlands Police Department (California) focuses on root causes of crime, particularly crime by juveniles. Using ESRI's ArcView software and its Spatial Analysis tool, the department compared and contrasted statistics such as juvenile home address arrest records with foreclosures and voting patterns as well as with academic failures and antisocial family histories. The department has plotted the frequency of carrying guns to school, the percentage of students who report being drunk or high on drugs at school, and expulsions and suspensions by neighborhood and by school. Like the Redlands Police Department, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Departments uses a suite of software from ESRI, which is ArcView-driven. It also uses extensions for the application, such as StreetMap and Spatial Analysis, as well as MapObjects, a stand-alone program that can be used to write custom solutions. Data from the system are used to identify cyclic criminal behavior. A significant use of the crime analysis is for serial crimes, the most common of which is robbery. The Toronto Police Department (Canada) uses mapping to react more quickly to crime trends, and the Decatur Police Department (Alabama) uses topographic mapping for tactical preparation for public demonstrations common in the jurisdiction.