Introduction to Crime Analysis and Mapping

Crime analysis is both a profession and a set of techniques. The professionals who perform crime analysis, and the techniques they use, are dedicated to helping a police department become more effective through better information. Crime mapping is used by analysts in law enforcement agencies to map, visualize, and analyze crime incident patterns. It is a key component of crime analysis and the CompStat policing strategy. Mapping crime, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), allows crime analysts to identify crime hot spots, along with other trends and patterns. This book focuses mostly on crime analysis mapping, but includes a discussion of predictive modeling, a special handling of modeling terrorism, and appendices which include a review of probability and statistics and possible board questions. The book is not intended to be all inclusive, nor does it handle the subjects in depth. Rather, it is more of a "survey" of a few crime analysis topics that are dealt with more rigorously by other authors.