PrintYou will explore a website and a publication that lay out the basics of crime analysis and crime map production.
The website is from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The NIJ is the research and development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice.
The US Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) was established in 1994. Since then, COPS has provided over $11.3 billion in assistance to state and local law enforcement agencies that included hiring additional police officers and running specialized training and workshops. In 2001 COPS funded the Police Foundation to conduct an “Introduction to Crime Analysis Mapping and Problem Solving” training course.
Required Readings
- Explore the NIJ website content on Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety.
- Skim the Introductory Guide to Crime Analysis and Mapping. If you found this publication useful, the author, Rachel Boba Santos, published a 5th edition of Crime Analysis with Crime Mapping, SAGE, 2022.
Readings can be accessed from the Lesson 10 Checklist.
As you explore the NIJ website and the Guide to Crime Analysis and Mapping, do some critical thinking and consider these questions:
- Is the application of GIS&T to law enforcement and criminal justice really an application of geospatial intelligence? Why or why not?
- Given what you know of the application of geospatial intelligence to US national security activities, compare and contrast how the law enforcement community leverages GIS&T and the intelligence process.
- Given that GIS&T includes at least the four subfields of cartography, remote sensing, GIS, and GPS, consider the central role that mapping seems to play in crime analysis. Is the law enforcement community missing an opportunity to leverage the other components of GIS&T and geospatial intelligence?