web101aa

TO: Students in CJ 160

FROM: R. B. Taylor

DATE: 4-15-99

RE: Web Research methods tools: crime mapping, looking up crime data, looking up census data

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GOAL.
Crime mapping, and using web research tools is not a topic usually covered in research methods courses. But if you're not going to cover it there, where are you going to cover it?
One particularly important tool for police departments in the last few years has been crime mapping, or the use of geographic information systems (GIS). New York City's "turnaround," begun under commissioner William Bratton, is due in part to the department's use of crime mapping and the COMPSTAT process. See:

Bratton, W (1998). THE TURNAROUND. New York: Random

Crime mapping is also proving extremely important in community policing. For an example of the possibilities and the difficulties see:

Maltz, M. et al. (1991). MAPPING CRIME IN ITS COMMUNITY SETTING. New York: Springer-Verlag.

The explosion in crime mapping in police departments has been funded by the COPS office, and other funds made available in the 1994 Crime Bill.

Enhanced mapping capabilities are now starting to make their way into other areas of the criminal justice system, including parole and probation, for example.

To learn more about mapping in general check out GUS 265, or go see Dr. Chakravorty in GUS

Our purposes today include the following.
1. To look at some examples of how police departments around the country are using crime mapping tools. What are they doing with it, and what information is being released to the public? If you lived in one of the jurisdictions we are looking at, would you want to see this information?
We also look up registered sex offenders in Kansas City, and see where they live and what they look like. The availability of these data reflect "Megan's law" being implemented. We want to think about the practical and ethical implications of these data being made available.

2. Once you have crime information about a location, you might want to learn about the population makeup in that area. We will take a look at looking up some census information. We will see that we can either look up information for an entire incorporated locale, like a county or town (e.g., DelRan, NJ), or for a zip code, or we can start with an address, and find the zip code, and then look that up.

CRIME MAPPING
The NIJ crime mapping research center (CMRC) is not a bad place to start. It's web address is as follows:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc
This site itself has a host of interesting weblinks about crime mapping: go to

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc/weblinks/welcome.html

Taking a look at some police departments, we decide to go to Evansille (IN).
http://police.evansville.net/
From the main department page we can go to look at specific crime maps
http://courier.evansville.net/crime/#maps
Moving over to the west coast, and the Monterey peninsula, we will check out the Salinas (CA) police department.

Salinas police department - downtown crime maps
http://www.salinaspd.com/
Their main GIS page, which talks about the uses they will be making of GIS information, the types of information that will be available, and uses to which the department can put it, for example, using it to predict crimes, appears below. Let's take a bit of time so we can learn about how they will be using this information.
http://www.salinaspd.com/gis_vb.html
One project they are working on in Salinas is recovering firearms. They have a map of recovered firearms, for the entire city. It is at this web address
http://www.salinaspd.com/maps.html
They also have crime maps of the downtown area
http://www.salinaspd.com/dbamap.html
Going back to the CMRC of NIJ, we could look at crime maps for San Antonio's (TX) crime in the central business district. If you want to go directly to the San Antonio police department, go here:
http://www.ci.sat.tx.us/sapd/
Then go to maps
http://www.ci.sat.tx.us/sapd/maps.htm
Here for example is a recent map of the central substation district
http://www.ci.sat.tx.us/sapd/mapdata/CENTMAPS.HTM

GETTING A ZIP CODE FROM AN ADDRESS
Say that you have an address, and want to find a zip code. Go here:
http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/adserv.html
Getting Census Bureau information for a zip code is something we can do from their main gazeteer. It will look up 1990 census information. The steps are as follows:

1. Select the zip code or jurisdiction you are interested in. For example, we could select 19122, or all of Philadelphia, or DelRan (NJ) or Camden (NJ) or Chester (PA) and so on.

2. Pick the variables (census calls these tables) you are interested in. It will take a WHILE for all the variables to load. One that I think is pretty interesting is P115A - per capita (per person) income by race.

3. Submit your request and hope the server you are requesting from is not too busy. Wait can be long.
The main census site for getting this information is:
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer

UMBC (University of Maryland - Baltimore County) has a good geography department, and a good site for links to map information. That site (also listed on CMRC) is:
http://research.umbc.edu/%7Eroswell/

SEX OFFENDERS IN KANSAS
Before we go to Kansas City, we decide to see if there are any sex offenders living near where my new apartment is.
http://www.ink.org/public/kbi/search.html
can search by city, and find names, addresses, and pictures

GETTING UCR ARREST AND CRIME INFORMATION
If you want arrest or reported crime information for any county, start here
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/socsci/crime/
Say we are interested in the changes in juvenile arrest rates from 1990 to 1993. Also, we might be interested in comparing the juvenile arrest rates per 100,000 people in Philadelphia and Camden. SO if we are going to compute rates, we want population.
Here are the steps:

Select Juvenile arrests

Select state

select all arrests

select Philadelphia County

Select variables including population and juvenile arrests

Select years, 1990 - 1993

REVIEW

I hope this gives you some idea of the kinds of stuff you can find. Some of this information is more useful than others. Crime mapping is probably not revolutionizing policing, but it is making police departments think differently about how they use information.