The Location and Mapping of Crime

As mentioned previously, the location of crime is important in understanding why crime occurs. Things such as large population (meaning greater opportunity), good road and transport links (easier to move around) and public spaces which don’t ‘belong’ to anyone are all likely to increase rate of crime. Criminals are more likely to commit crimes in areas which they know well, can easily hide and escape from and in places where there is greater opportunity for crime.

This video is really good for explaining mapping of crime…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/mapping-crime-geographical-profiling/1128.html

At the end of the video it talks about designing out crime, which I will go into in my next blog post.

The London riots of 2011 are a great example of people committing crime because there was the opportunity and the knowledge that because of the scale of the riots, the law was not being enforced to the same degree. The map below (from BBC Bitesize) details where the London rioters originated from. The map is really interesting and shows how social media and technology meant that people in other parts of the UK got involved. As can been seen from the map, in the first couple of days of the riots, it was just locals involved, but by the third day people with direct links to London were rioting and by the fourth day people from all over the country were rioting.

Whenever a crime is reported, it can be plotted onto a map. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has made it easier to combine information onto a map and as such we can see the spatial patterns. The mapping of crime is a fascinating concept. On the website http://www.police.uk/ it is possible to see all the crimes logged in any one mile radius of a given post code… with the break-down of how they were classified. To be honest, I’m not sure I’d want the students looking at the areas they live in, as it may spark a rivalry between students and where they live. I think it may well be better to find a few examples which show the sort of distributions we can talk about - possibly even look at big cities, versus small villages?

It is important to also have a look at how crime affects the local communities. I have mentioned before about circles of decline in MEDCs and LEDCs, but crime also has a role to play in declining areas. Communities are affected with declining housing prices if an area is known to be a crime hotspot, they may also have to pay higher insurance premiums, as well as being fearful of going out alone in the dark. The local services become strained as they struggle to cope with the number of people in local prisons and the number of people affected physically by crime needing help from the local health service. Shops may no longer stock certain items for fear of shoplifting and the council will need to spend more money on ensuring peoples safety (CCTV and Street lighting) and less on other things (such as education).

  

References

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/geography/spaces/crime/revision/3/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/mapping-crime-geographical-profiling/1128.html

http://www.police.uk/