crime mapping
B. crime analysis
According to the IACA (2014, p. 2),crime analysis is defined as the following:
A profession and process in which a set of quantitative and qualitative techniques are used to analyze data valuable to police agencies and their communities. It includes the analysis of crime and criminals, crime victims, disorder, quality of life issues, traffic issues, and internal police operations, and its results support criminal investigation and prosecution, patrol activities, crime prevention and reduction strategies, problem solving, and the evaluation of police efforts.
QUANTITATIVE METHOD
Crime analysts use quantitative data and methods when they conduct statistical analyses of numerical or categorical data. Although much of the work in crime analysis is quantitative, crime analysts primarily use fundamental statistical methods, such as frequencies, percentages, means, and rates.
QUALITATIVE METHOD
Crime analysts use qualitative data and methods when they examine nonnumerical data for the purpose of discovering underlying causes of crime. The qualitative methods specific to crime analysis include field research (such as observing characteristics of locations and talking to individuals with specific knowledge about a particular type of crime) and content analysis (such as examining police report narratives).
The central focus of crime analysis is the study of crime (e.g., rape, robbery, and burglary),disorder problems (e.g., disturbances, juvenile trouble, trespassing/loitering, suspicious activity), traffic-related issues (e.g., traffic collisions and citations), as well as information related to the nature of incidents, offenders, and victims, property, or targets. Crime analysts study other police-related operational issues, such as assisting to determine staffing needs, resource allocation, and determining geographic areas of police service.
Although many different characteristics of crime and disorder are relevant in crime analysis, three key types of information crime analysts use are sociodemographic, spatial, and temporal.
Sociodemographic information consists of the personal characteristics of individuals and groups, such as sex, race, and age. On an individual level, crime analysts use sociodemographic information to search for and identify crime suspects and victims. On a broader level, they use such information to determine the characteristics of groups and how these group characteristics are related to crime. For example, analysts may use sociodemographic information to answer the question "Is there a White, male suspect, 30-35 years of age, with brown hair and brown eyes to link to a particular robbery ?” or“ Can demographic characteristics help explain why certain individuals are victimized more often in tourist areas?"
spatial nature
The spatial nature of crime, disorder, and other police-related issues is central to understanding the nature of a problem. Advanced computer technology and the availability of electronic data have facilitated a large role for spatial analysis in crime analysis. Visual displays of crime and disorder locations (maps) and their relationship to other events and geographic features are essential to understanding the nature of crime and disorder. Results from criminological research within an area called "crime and place"(Weisburd, 2015) encourage crime analysts to focus on geographic patterns of crime by examining situations in which victims and offenders come together in time and space.
The temporal nature of crime, disorder, and other police-related issues is a major component of crime analysis. Crime analysts conduct several levels of temporal analysis, including examination of long-term trends of crime and disorder over several years, by season, and by day of week and time of day. This book will take a close look at specific analysis techniques used to examine the temporal nature of crime at each of these levels. The primary purpose of crime analysis is to support the operations of a police department. Without police, crime analysis would not exist.
Crime mapping is a term used in policing to refer to the process of conducting spatial analysis of crime and is the process of using a geographic information system to examine the spatial nature and relationships of crime and disorder problems as well as other police-related issues. Clarifying where different types of crime and other types of incidents occur is one of the many important functions of crime analysis. Crime mapping serves three main functions within crime analysis:
1. It facilitates visual and statistical analyses of the spatial nature of crime, disorder, and other types of events.
2. It allows analysts to link unlike data sources based on common geographic variables (e.g., linking census information, school information, and crime data for a common area).
3. It provides maps that help to communicate analysis results.
Crime mapping is an essential element of crime analysis, providing the spatial and visual framework that supports deeper analytical processes. While crime mapping focuses on the "where" of crime, crime analysis integrates this spatial data with other types of information to answer the "why," "when," and "how" of criminal behavior. Together, they form a comprehensive approach to understanding and responding to crime.
The 2018 Philippine Standard Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (PSCCS)
The 2018 Philippine Standard Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (PSCCS) is the first edition of the country’s classification of crimes. It is a hierarchical classification where criminal offenses are allocated into categories that have a certain degree of similarity. It is patterned after the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS, v. 1.0) developed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) as the standard international classification for crime statistics in March 2015.
The 2018 PSCCS serves as a comprehensive framework for classifying criminal offenses in the country to facilitate analysis of crime, harmonize data across criminal justice institutions, and facilitate assessment of gaps between crimes reported to the police and those experienced by the victims.
The 2018 PSCCS covers all criminal offenses in force in the Philippines under the Revised Penal Code and Special Penal Laws and mapped with the ICCS, v.1.0. The mapping was guided by the inventory of criminal offenses under national laws generated from the Philippine Crime Index Project of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The 2018 PSCCS contains eleven (11) sections designed to cover all acts or events that constitute a crime within the scope of the PSCCS.
The 2018 Philippine Standard Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (PSCCS)
Historical development of crime mapping
Even though crime mapping plays a significant role in crime analysis today, conducting spatial analysis and creating crime maps for distribution have become common over the last two decades in policing and crime analysis, thanks to advancements in technology. The history of crime mapping is somewhat distinct from that of crime analysis and begins not with the establishment of the first police force, but with the work of researchers long before the invention of computers.
In the 1800s, European researchers adhering to the cartographic school of criminology examined crime within different geographic regions and its relationship to sociological factors, such as socioeconomic status (Groff & La Vigne, 2002). For example, in 1829, Adriano Balbi, an ethnographer and geographer, and Andr´e Michel Guerry, a lawyer, created the first maps of crime using criminal statistics for the years 1825-1827 and demographic data from the census. They examined crime and education in France and found areas with high levels of property crime had a low incidence of persons crimes and higher numbers of educated people lived in areas with more property crime (Weisburd & McEwen, 1997). The Belgian astronomer and statistician Quetelet used maps to examine correlations between crime and transportation routes, education levels, and ethnic and cultural variations (Weisburd & McEwen, 1997).
United states: 1900 – 1970
In the United States, crime mapping began a little later than it did in Europe. The United States was a relatively new country in the 1800s, so reliable maps were not readily available and census data were not collected as they were in France and England at that time. One of the first spatial analyses of crime in the United States was conducted in the 1920s and 1930s by urban sociologists in Chicago (Shaw & McKay, 1969). 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).
Crime mapping was an important component in the development of Shaw and McKay's concentric zone model, which asserts in urban settings different types of areas form around a central business district and some of these areas are more prone to crime than others. Researchers tested the model in Chicago and found gangs and crime were concentrated in parts of the city where social control was weak and social disorganization was high (Weisburd & McE- wen, 1997). They found it was not necessarily the nature of the individual but the nature of the area that was related to higher levels of crime. As illustrated in these examples, most of the crime mapping conducted in Europe and the United States examined aggregate levels of crime by area.
Through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, sociologists and others who were interested in crime and its causes continued to examine the sociological fac- tors associated with aggregate crime levels. The explanations and geographic methods of analysis used remained fairly uncomplicated during this period, possibly owing to the researchers 'focus on sociological factors and the lack of adequate technology (Groff & La Vigne, 2002). In the late 1960s, scholars began conducting spatial analysis of crime incident locations with the help of large computer systems and unsophisticated visualization methods (Weisburd & McEwen, 1997).
United States: 1970-2000
From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, a small group of researchers in England, Canada, and the United States shifted from focusing exclusively on the criminal offender to studying the criminal event and its context, including the physical and social environments that create opportunities for crime (discussed in Chapter 2). These researchers began using mapping to analyze discrete crime locations and incorporating information about geography and environment into their study of crime problems and related issues, such as rape (LeBeau, 1987) and a host of other crimes (Harries, 1980) as well as distribution of police personnel (Rengert & Wasilchick, 1985).
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. GIS software became available for desktop computers as these computers became capable of processing large amounts of data quickly. Police data on crimes, arrests, traffic crashes, and calls for service became available electronically through computer-aided dispatch systems as well as through electronic records management systems. Geographic data such as street and census information became widely available in electronic format and were provided free or at minimal cost by a variety of government agencies and commercial organizations. All of these developments helped to advance the field of crime mapping beyond manual methods and the use of large, costly mainframe mapping systems.
Around this time, the federal government, in a movement spearheaded by Vice President Al Gore, provided increased support for crime mapping technology and methods. Police agencies received federal funding to obtain crime mapping technology, and several programs were developed specifically to assist police agencies with the implementation of crime mapping. The COPS Office allocated a significant amount of funding for crime mapping software and equipment through a program called MORE (Making Officer Redeployment Effective). From 1995 to 2002, just over $53 million (90 individual grants) of MORE funding was allocated directly to crime mapping technology and staff (M. Scheider, personal communication, November 10, 2003).
The Crime Mapping Research Center, later called the Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety (MAPS) program, was formed within the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice in 1997. Its goal was to support research that helps criminal justice agencies by examining how to (1) use maps to analyze crime, (2) analyze spatial data, (3) use mapping to evaluate programs and policies, and (4) develop mapping, data sharing, and spatial analysis tools. Since its creation, the program has held annual conferences at which practitioners and researchers come together to discuss research and spatial analytic techniques. Other activities have included funding spatial analysis research and fellowships, a national survey of crime mapping, developing training curricula, publishing books on crime mapping, and bringing together police professionals and researchers in a technical working group to discuss spatial analysis of crime issues. From 1998 to 2007, the National Institute of Justice also funded the Crime Mapping and Analysis Program (CMAP), the mission of which was to provide technical assistance and introductory and advanced training to local and state agencies in the areas of crime and intelligence analysis and GIS.
An important influence in the use of crime mapping in policing was Comp- Stat, the data- and mapping-driven police management strategy created by the New York City Police Department in 1994 and adopted by many more police agencies across the United States (Police Executive Research Forum, 2013). Crime mapping, and more generally crime analysis, is a core component of CompStat-like programs. Maps are used for illustrating up to date crime locations and high-crime areas within specific geographic areas. Statistical tables are a crucial part of CompStat's accountability mechanism to assess the performance and impact of the geographic area commander's crime reduction strategies (Silverman & Eterno, 2019). Finally, a study done on the rate of crime mapping adoption in the 1990s concluded, "crime mapping was widely diffused among police agencies, that the diffusion process began in the late 1980s to early 1990s, it gained momentum in the mid-1990s, and that the adoption of crime mapping appears to follow the standard's’ curve of diffusion of innovation"(Weisburd & Lum, 2005).