DCJ 107

ADVANCE TECHNIQUES FOR CRIME ANALYSIS

(Third Written Assignment)

SUBMITTED TO: ATTY. DODELON SABIJON

SUBMITTED BY: BIMBOY C. CUENO

 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND TYPES OF CRIME MAPPING

Crime is not exclusive. It does not occur in a single location, to a lone

person, or only to specific class. It sprouts in various preys depending on the
factors that precursor victimization. Theories of Karl Marx, Edwin Sutherland, and
Agnew suggest that crime indictment has something to do with social,
psychological, economic, and emotional bearings. Regardless of the targets, crime
usually rises and falls irregularly. As crime is considered a parcel of the
community existence, shifting might not be controlled however in some sort of
way it could be at least predicted. For example, more violent crimes occur in the
summer as compared to rainy seasons, while more crime against property occurs
during rainy seasons compared to summer. The same way as more crimes exist in
the urban areas compared to the rural. The spatial distribution of crime helps crime
analyst to somehow control its occurrences based on the relative geographical
location where it occurs. With this, crime mapping was coined. Recently, the use
of Geographical Information Systems technology to map crime is rapidly
expanding (Ratclife, 2004). This paper is primarily divided into two parts; the
history of crime mapping and its types. For the purpose of discussion, I am going
to adopt the following definition of crime mapping.

Crime mapping is the process through which crime analysts and researchers
use location information about crime events to detect spatial patterns in
criminal activity. Early crime mapping efforts typically involved placing
physical markers, such as pins, on maps to designate the locations where
crimes occurred. Patterns of criminal activity were determined primarily
through visual inspection of these maps (Swatt, 2009, p.398).

The history of crime mapping can be traced back in early times where police
officers needed an indication to signify the place of occurrence of a crime. Physical
markers such as pins, highlighters such as crayons, were used as designation of the
place (Swatt, 2009). From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, a group of
researchers in England, Canada, and the United States shifted their focus of the
study of crime away from what traditional criminology examined—criminal
offender—and toward the criminal event and its context, including the physical
and social environments that create opportunities for crime (Brantingham &
Brantingham, 1993). Even though crime mapping plays a significant role in crime
analysis today, conducting spatial analysis and creating crime maps have only
recently become common in policing and crime analysis. This advancement is
brought by recent technology. Unlike crime analysis, the history of crime mapping
begins not with the establishment of the first police force, but with researchers long
before computers were invented. Contemporary theorists in the field of
criminology in their respective empirical research studies examined crimes in
relationship to the geographical areas of occurrence so as it connection to
sociological factors. For example, in 1829, Adriano Balbi, an ethnographer and
geographer, and André-Michel Guerry, a lawyer, created the first maps of crime
using criminal statistics for the years 1825 to 1827 and demographic data from the
census (Santos, 2005). The first form of crime mapping could be credited to these
two prominent persons. French Lawyer André-Michel Guerry demonstrated the
effectiveness of crime mapping and analysis in a presentation to the French
Academy of Science in 1832 (Hart & Rennison, 2018). By using the frequency on
how the crimes often occur, and maps, he illustrated the spatio-temporal changes in
the levels of crimes and suicides across districts of France (Hart & Rennison,
2018). Also during this period, the Belgian astronomer and statistician Quételet
used maps to examine correlations between crime and transportation routes,
education levels, and ethnic and cultural variations (Weisburd & McEwen, 1997).
Furthermore, they examined crimes against property, crimes against persons, and
levels of education in France and found that areas with high levels of crimes
against property had a low incidence of crimes against people and that higher
numbers of educated people lived in areas with more property crime (Weisburd &
McEwen, 1997). The aforementioned individuals seemed to convince authorities
on the importance and relevance of crime mapping in crime analysis. In fact, from
their work, crime mapping flourish across the globe. It was known that the United
States of America was behind in terms of crime mapping. They were able to be
surpassed by Europe due to the reason that when crime mapping was develop by
Guerry, Balbi, and Quetelet, United States was still in its whining period (Santos,
2005). In 1800s, reliable maps were not readily available and census data were not
regularly collected, as they were in France and England at that time. The first
substantive spatial analysis of crime in the United States was conducted in the
1920s and 1940s by urban sociologists in Chicago. Their crime research and
related crime maps linked crime and delinquency to factors such as social
disorganization and poverty. In fact, these scholars’ spatial analysis of juvenile
delinquency and social conditions in Chicago is considered to be one of the
foremost examples of crime mapping in the first half of the 20th century (Groff &
La Vigne, 2002). These sociologists who studied delinquency and its spatial
distribution were Shaw and McKay (1942). Shaw and McKay made use of Park
and Burgess’s (1924) ecological model and divided the city into five different
zones. In their research, they found out that the zone adjacent to the central
business district, the zone of transition, perpetually suffered from the highest rates
of juvenile delinquency and other social problems regardless of the specific ethnic
group occupying the zone at the time. This research was instrumental in
popularizing social disorganization theory and inspired a number of similar
mapping projects in other cities of the United States (Swatt, 2009). The
development of crime mapping in America helps in determining proper solutions
against criminality. It becomes a versatile tool in crime analysis across various
American law enforcement agencies. In the early to mid-1990s, significant
improvements in computer technology and police data systems made electronic
crime mapping a much more practical tool for police and researchers. Swatt
(2009) stated that:

Accompanying the early efforts of crime mapping were the developments in

the profession of policing that provided additional opportunities. One of the
main justifications for the creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
was for the explicit of documenting the extent of crime in the United States
through the uniform crime reporting program. In the late 1960s and early
1970s were critical for the development of crime mapping. In 1966, the
Harvard Lab for Computer Graphics developed SYMAP or Synagraphic
Mapping System which was one of the first widely distributed computerized
mapping software programs (Swatt, 2009, p. 399).

As indicated above, a large number of research findings have explicitly

argued that criminality is spatially distributed. The un-exclusivity of crime as far as
geography is concerned, usually differs across space and time. Taking into account
empirical results from rigid researches, crime mapping is the idealist intervention
that can be introduced into the community. A term which will refer to mostly
concentrated crime occurrences is “hot spots” which was coined by Sherman and
colleagues (1989). Hot spots as brought by crime mapping gained a lot of attention
both from novice and seasoned researchers. For example, in a randomized
experiment in Minneapolis, Sherman and Weisburd (1995) found that concentrated
patrol efforts in hot-spot areas produced a significant decline in calls for service.
Police responses to crime are not limited to enhanced patrol. In another
randomized experiment in Jersey City, New Jersey, Weisburd and Green (1995)
found that after identifying drug market hot spots using crime mapping, a
coordinated policy of engaging business owners and community members coupled
with police crackdowns yielded substantial decreases in disorder calls for service.
Types of Crime Mapping

In this section I will be discussing the different types of crime mapping as

classified by Santos (2005) in his book Crime Analysis and Crime Mapping. Crime
mapping are generally classified into four; one, single symbol crime mapping; two,
graduated crime mapping; three, density mapping; and, four, interactive crime
mapping. The discussion below will be anchored on the four mentioned types.

Single-Symbol is the simplest type of mapping. In here, the police officer or

the crime analysts used a uniform symbol to represent features such as location of
schools, markets, stores, roads, and many more. According to Santos (2005) an
important thing to keep in mind about single-symbol maps is that a Geographic
information system places all points on such a map that share the same address
directly on top of one another, making it impossible for the map to show how
many points there really are. An example to this is when many stores are located in
one place. Let us say there are five stores in one location. A crime analyst has to
put a symbol usually a circle to feature the five stores. This becomes more
complicated when in one location there are fifty to eighty stores. The problem here
is that when circles are drawn on the map, an overlapping among the five circles
may occur making it more difficult for an officer to analyze. This becomes worse
when the circles are on top with each other making it impossible to know the exact
number of stores in the specific location. If we will relate this to crime, as we have
known crime occurrences plays in random and in repeated manner. Single symbol
mapping can be very difficult to analyze once there is a large repeated of crime
volume in a single location. Let us take for example, two hundred theft occurrences
in a single place. The number of thefts will be represented by gray circles. Thus
two hundred circles in that instance. Considering the number, overlapping of the
gray circles is expected and anyone who will give scrutiny on the map will have
difficulty in analyzing. Single symbol mapping can be very effective if the area is
small and when the analyst is working with relatively small amounts of data that
do not overlap. Single symbol maps are not useful when analysts are dealing with a
large area and large amounts of data (Santos, 2005). Say for example, in large
metropolitan areas, single symbol mapping can be ineffective, but in small
municipalities having small territorial limits, such can be best put to significant
use.

The second type of crime mapping is Graduated Mapping. In this type the
analyst uses different symbols, colors, or shapes to feature a particular
representation (Santos, 2005). Like single symbol maps, the sizes of the symbols
used for point and line features of graduated size map reflect their value. As noted
above, single-symbol maps are not appropriate for displaying data about crimes
that occur at the same locations repeatedly. Analysts use graduated size maps for
this purpose, because these maps can account for multiple incidents at the same
locations (Santos, 2005). Be it made clear however that like single-symbol maps,
graduated size maps are subject to overlapping points if too many data are
analyzed at once. For example, if you use red shaded circle to represent crime
against persons and yellow shaded to feature crimes against property, the difficulty
of analyzing the map occurs when in a single location, same type of crimes occur
in large repetitions. The prevalence of overlapping of the symbols cannot be
prevented when the data which the analyst is dealing with, is bulky regardless of
the fact that different colors are used. However, if the data is not too large which is
enough for the symbols of different colors to occupy, graduated size map could be
very useful.

Density Mapping is the third type of mapping. Like graduated crime

mapping, density crime mapping uses point data to shade surfaces that are not
limited to area boundaries (Santos, 2005). The difference between density mapping
from other types, is that density mapping gets use of different locations.
Furthermore, in their most basic form, density maps are shaded according to the
concentration of incidents in particular areas (Santos, 2005). Hence, the darker
colors represent areas in which the incidents are more concentrated, and the lighter
colors represent those in which the incidents are less concentrated (Santos, 2005).
To simply put, the darker the color the more crime while the lighter the color the
less crime which occurs in a particular location. Density mapping can easily be
analyzed considering the concentration of the symbols. Such maps are used to
compare small variations in crime levels from one area to another rather than to
compare levels of crime within fixed artificial geographic boundaries, as in area
maps (Santos, 2005). This means that unlike other types of mapping, density
mapping purely focused on the rates of crime in different locations other than in
one boundary only. For example, if you want to know the level of theft
occurrences from district one to five, density mapping could be applied. Finding
that district two has the highest theft occurrences, the police officer can represent it
with the darkest shaded circle while district five which has the lowest theft rate,
shall be given the lightest shaded color.

The last type of mapping is the Interactive Crime Map. Rather than a type of
mapping, the term interactive crime mapping refers to simplified geographic
information systems made available to novice users over the Internet (Santos,
2005). Of the four types of mapping, this is the only type which is accompanied by
technology. Crime mapping in this type is simply computer based. Many police
departments have interactive web sites where citizens and police officers can
conduct basic crime mapping themselves without looking, scrutinizing, or holding
actual physical maps. According to Santos (2005) these applications typically are
not flexible or sophisticated enough to be useful to crime analysts. One of the
reasons of its inflexibility is the limited functions built in its system. However, in
the fast modernization of technology, such weakness can be corrected and
eliminated. One example of this is the Community Mapping Planning and Analysis
for Safety Strategies or simply COMPASS which is an interactive website hosted
by the California Police Department (Santos, 2005). In that type of mapping, the
user can navigate and choose what data he wants to know. Say for example, if the
user wanted to identify the crime levels from one district to the other, the
interactive website will display details corresponding to the request. If number of
arrest is the data that is being requested, the web will automatically supply the
information.

References:

Brantingham, P. J., & Brantingham, P. L. (1993). Nodes, paths, and edges:

Considerations on the complexity of crime and the physical environment. Journal
of Environmental Psychology, 13, 3–28.

Groff, E.R. and LaVigne, N.G., (2002). "Forecasting the future of predictive crime
mapping", In: Tilley N (ed.) Analysis for crime prevention 13. Monsey NY:
Criminal Justice Press, pp. 29-58.

Groff, Elizabeth & La Vigne, Nancy. (2001). Mapping an opportunity surface of

residential burglary. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency - J Res Crime
Delinq. 38. 257-278. 10.1177/0022427801038003003.

Hart, T. & Rennison, C. (2018). Research methods in criminal justice and

criminology. USA. Sage Publications

Jerry H. Ratcliffe . (2004). The hotspot matrix: a framework for the

spatio‐temporal targeting of crime reduction. Police Practice and Research 5:1,
pages 5-23

Park, R. E., & Burgess E. W. (1924). Introduction to the science of sociology (2nd
ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ratcliffe, J. (2010). Damned if you don't, damned if you do: crime mapping and its
implications in the real world. Police Practice and Research .
doi.org/10.1080/10439460290018463

Santos, R. (2005). Crime analysis and crime mapping. London. Sage Publications.

Shaw, C.R. & McKay, H.D. (1942). Juvenile delinquency and urban areas: a study
of rates of delinquents in relation to differential characteristics of local
communities in american cities. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Sherman, L.W., &Weisburd, D. (1995). General deterrent effects of police patrol

in crime “hot spots”: A randomized, controlled trial. Justice Quarterly, 16, 633–
654.

Sherman, L.W., Gartin, P. R., & Buerger, M. E. (1989). Hot spots of predatory
crime: Routine activities and the criminology of place. Criminology, 27, 27–55

Swatt, M. (2009). Crime mapping. edited by J. Mitchell Miller. 21st Century

Criminology: A Reference Handbook, Volume 1. California. Sage Publication

Weisburd, D. and McEwen, T. (1997). Crime prevention studies. Criminal Justice

Press

Weisburd, D., & Green, L. (1995). Policing drug hot spots: The Jersey City drug
market experiment. Justice Quarterly, 12, 711–736.