Crime mapping and the policing of democratic societies

Abstract

From the user’s point of view, computerized crime mapping is a flexible and efficienttool for organizing and displaying large volumes of data about crime in its context. Whatmakes this possible is the use of geographical information systems (GIS) that integrategeographic coordinates with records in traditional computer databases. Computerizedcrime mapping depends, therefore, on the existence of a computer database of crimereports, information about the location of those crimes, information about other items thatmay help explain crime patterns, and the availability of digital base maps onto which thecomputers can map these data.