Crime mapping

Using GIS, crime analysts can overlay other datasets such as census demographics, locations of pawn shops, schools, etc., to better understand the underlying causes of crime and help law enforcement administrators to devise strategies to deal with the problem.

GIS is also useful for law enforcement operations, such as allocating police officers and dispatching to emergencies.

[1] Underlying theories that help explain spatial behavior of criminals include environmental criminology, which was devised in the 1980s by Patricia and Paul Brantingham,[2] routine activity theory, developed by Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson and originally published in 1979,[3] and rational choice theory, developed by Ronald V. Clarke and Derek Cornish, originally published in 1986.

That project was carried out by the CPD in conjunction with the Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University, reported on in the book, Mapping Crime in Its Community Setting: Event Geography Analysis.

[5] The success of this project prompted NIJ to initiate the Drug Market Analysis Program (with the appropriate acronym D-MAP) in five cities, and the techniques these efforts developed led to the spread of crime mapping throughout the US and elsewhere, including the New York City Police Department's CompStat.