Describe the different research questions crime mapping can answer.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Many of us have adopted the image of crime mapping that involves a police precinct wall with pushpins stuck all over it identifying the location of crime incidents. Crime mapping for general research purposes has a long history in criminological research. It is generally used to identify the spatial distribution of crime along with the social indicators such as poverty and social disorganization that are similarly distributed across areas (e.g., neighborhood, census tracts). Rachel Boba (2009) defines crime mapping as “the process of using a geographic information system to conduct special analysis of crime problems and other police-related issues” (p. 7). She also describes the three main functions of crime mapping:
1. It provides visual and statistical analyses of the spatial nature of crime and other events.
2. It allows the linkage of crime data to other data sources, such as census information on poverty or school information, which allows relationships between variables to be established.
3. It provides maps to visually communicate analysis results.
Although applied crime mapping has been used for over 100 years to assist the police in criminal apprehension and crime prevention, the type of crime mapping we will discuss here is related to mapping techniques used for traditional research purposes (e.g., testing theory about the causes of crime), not for investigative purposes. With the advent of computing technology, crime mapping has become an advanced form of statistical data analysis. The geographic information system (GIS) is the software tool that has made crime mapping increasingly available to researchers since the 1990s.
Crime mapping Geographical mapping strategies used to visualize a number of things including location, distance, and patterns of crime and their correlates.
Geographic information system (GIS) The software tool that has made crime mapping increasingly available to researchers since the 1990s.
Today, crime mapping is being used by the majority of urban law enforcement agencies to identify crime hot spots. Hot spots are geospatial locations within jurisdictions where crimes are more likely to occur compared to other areas. Being able to understand where crime is more likely to occur helps agencies deploy resources more effectively, especially for crime prevention purposes. These hot spots can be specific addresses, blocks, or even clusters of blocks (Eck, Chainey, Cameron, Leitner, & Wilson, 2005). Of course, crime mapping data with insight from criminological theory is the ideal. As Eck and his colleagues explain, “Crime theories are critical for useful crime mapping because they aid interpretation and data and provide guidance as to what actions are most appropriate” (Eck et al., 2005). This is important because the ability to understand why crimes are occurring has a great deal to do with underlying factors related to the environment in which they occur. Kennedy and his colleagues provide a very illuminating example.
A sole analytical focus on crime hot spots is like observing that children frequently play at the same place every day and then calling that place a hot spot for children playing, but without acknowledging the presence of swings, slides, and open fields—features of the place (i.e., suggestive of a playground) that attract children there instead of other locations absent such entertaining features. (Caplan, Kennedy, & Piza, 2013, pp. 245–246)
Through various symbols, maps can communicate a great deal of information. Exhibit 9.2, which was published by the National Institute of Justice, displays some common symbols used by crime analysts (Eck et al., 2005). As can be seen on the map, dots (A) point to specific places where crime is likely to occur, a crime site (B and C) indicates where crime is equally likely to occur within a particular site, and a crime gradient (D) indicates that the probably of crime is most likely inside the site and decreases as you move toward the edge of the site.