Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Police Use of GIS Systems Discuss the Range of Uses to Which Geographical Information Systems May be put in the Police Service. 1. Crime Pattern Analysis The geographical mapping of crimes is an important element of policing and even since the early 1900’s paper maps have hung on the walls of police departments, covered in pins, used to represent crime events (Alexander, Groff and Hibdon, 1997). As pins are stuck into the map any existing spatial patterns begin to emerge, allowing the pattern of crime in a district to be analysed. The underlying assumption is that individual crimes are not unique random events, but rather share a number of common characteristics. Although they have long been recognised as an aid to detection in policing circles, and indeed are regarded as the default ‘first step’ in a crime analysis operation (Nulph, Burka and Mudd, 1997), these pin maps have proved to be difficult to maintain, especially since the huge rise in reported crime during the 1980’s and early 1990’s (Openshaw, Cross and Waugh, 1993). The sheer volume of crime in many large urban areas has made interpreting these maps increasingly difficult, especially since there is no simple way of analysing crime patterns by fa