GIS ROLES IN POLICING AND PREVENT CRIME

Crime mapping can play an important role in the policing and crime reduction process, from the first stage of the data collection through the monitoring and evaluation of any targeted response. It can also act as an important mechanism in a more pivotal preliminary stage, that of preventing crime by helping in the design of initiatives that are successful in tackling crime problem. Crime mapping can produce such following application :-

• Recording and mapping police activity, crime reduction projects, calls for service and crime incidents.
• Supporting the briefing of operational police officers by identifying crime that have recently occured and predicting where crime may occur in the future.
• Identifying crime hotspots for targeting, deploying and allocating suitable crime reduction response.
• Helping to effectively understand crime distribution, and to explore the mechanisms, and generators to criminal activity, through pattern analysis with other local data.
• Monitoring the impact of crime reduction initiatives
• Using maps as a medium to communicate to the public crime ststistic for their area and the initiatives that are being implemented to tackle crime problems.
  

Case study : Crime mapping in Lincoln, Nebraska

This is exactly what had happened to the Lincoln Police Department in 1990s. In 1997 we began our first GIS application in policing, making extensive use of the accurate basemap components, such as streets, land parcels and other geographic information and its being added by police data about places. All of dispatch records, incident reports, citations, crimes by placing the 'pins' on the map.

GIS is used for operational and tactical purposes: locating crime series and for crime investigations (print large maps of crime scene and the surrounding area as a visual aid) . It also helps identify other crimes that may being done by same suspects. By adding the geography to the modus operandi can reveal information about the offender target selection. Also can help identify other cases that are prospects for a multiple clearance by GIS analysis.