Customer Reviews

GIS and Crime Mapping (Mastering GIS: Technol, Applications & Mgmnt)

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Crime definitely has a geographic component. The crime happens at a place with a geographical location, and the criminal must have come from some place (home, school, work) to get to the crime site, and he must have gone somewhere afterward. As early as the 1930, the 'Chicago School' began analyzing crime by sticking pins into maps on walls. By the 1970's sociologists began researching more deeply into 'mapping crime.'

Beginning in the 1960's Graphical Information Systems began to be developed for various applications, and was given a big boost by space based imagery systems.

In recent years the dramatic reduction in the price of computer processing power and the understanding of how crime mapping can be used to predict/prevent/solve crimes.

In the last very few years many of the major technical/social problems in crime mapping have been either solved or great strides have been made in finding a solution.

This book presents the state of the art in using GIS for Crime Mapping. It starts most chapters with tutorials devoted to some particular aspect, and concludes most chapters with a case study illustrating where these techniques are actually in use.

This book is a general, overall introduction to GIS and Crime Mapping. It will be of use to departmental officials and to academics beginning to work in this area. It is well written, well researched and up to date (Published: July 22, 2005).

Don't be misled by this book's publication date of 2005 -- its coverage and contents are excellent and it is the best of all the books currently available. It provides an excellent overview and examines the terrain of GIS and crime mapping, and the many case studies throughout are still good. Chainey is British and Ratcliffe is a former London police officer turned academic, currently at Temple Univerity in Philadelphia. The case studies are drawn from both the United Kingdom and the United States. Perhaps the book's one weakness (slight) is that it is essentially a textbook with no hands-on exercises and data as is the case with several other books on this subject.

Many dozens of software packages are used for crime mapping though most are quite specialized -- I used MapInfo during my stint as a crime analyst. The dominant software today is ESRI's ArcGIS. In fact, simple searching on the web reveals that some academic courses around the country do require Chainey and Ratcliffe's "GIS and Crime Mapping" but pair it with Rachel Boba Santos' "Crime Analysis and Crime Mapping." Chainey and Ratcliffe's references to mapping software packages are nearly a decade out of date. Despite these minor issues the authors know their material and have produced an excellent book.

However, if you were to buy just one book on crime mapping then the two others for you to consider are:

"Crime Analysis and Crime Mapping" by Rachel Boba Santos (Sage, 3rd edition, February 2012) covers similar content, though not as deftly, but with plenty of examples.

Wilpen Gorr and Kristen Kurland have "GIS Tutorial for Crime Analysis" (ESRI Press, 2012), and you may also download a trial version of ArcGIS 10 (the current version) from the ESRI website.

All of these are good books but if you were to buy just one and you want to get the hands-on knowledge as quickly as possible then the Gorr and Kurland book is the one to get. But buy both Chainey & Ratcliffe and Gorr & Kurland if you can afford it.

Good information but you have to be careful becasue it bounces between kilometers and miles, from chapter to chapter. However overall it is a good source of information but I also noticed it missed a few dates: for example when the Crime Buffer was first theorized, it tells you who theorized it but not an approximate date of whe.