Police Service Crime Mapping as Civic Technology

Abstract

It is increasingly common for municipal police services in North America to make online crime maps available to the public. This form of civic technology is now so widely used that there is a competitive private sector market for crime mapping platforms. This paper considers the crime maps made available by three Canadian police forces using platforms developed by U.S.-based private sector corporations. The paper considers how these crime maps present particular narratives of crime in the city, evaluates the quality of the mapped data, and explores how laws shape and constrain the use and reuse of crime data. It considers as well the problems that may arise in using off-the-shelf solutions – particularly ones developed in another country. It asks whether this model of crime mapping advances or limits goals of transparency and accountability, and what lessons it offers about the use of private sector civic technologies to serve public sector purposes.

The Cost(s) of Geospatial Open Data

“…For example, in the case of crime data, producing a specific location of a crime incident report might identify the victim of that crime. In some cases, decisions may be made to exclude certain categories of data altogether (e.g., certain types of crime such as domestic violence, where the link to a geographic location makes re-identification risk too high) (Scassa, 2016).…”

Interpreting Felony Acts Using Georeferenced Data. Case Study in Ambato, Ecuador

“…The scientific interest in the theory of crime is one of the subjects being investigated since the middle of the nineteenth century through crime maps [1,2]. Although the possibilities and versatility of the geospatial analysis of crime have been convincingly demonstrated by criminologists and geographers, recent technology progresses require a reevaluation of established knowledge about the importance of the location where the crime occurred [3][4][5].…”