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Why police and policing need GIS: An overview

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DOI: 10.1080/19475683.2012.691900

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Why police and policing need GIS: an overview

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Fahui Wang
a
Department of Geography & Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA,
USA

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 Annals of GIS
Vol. 18, No. 3, September 2012, 159–171

Why police and policing need GIS: an overview

Fahui Wang*
Department of Geography & Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA
(Received 16 February 2012; final version received 19 April 2012)

This article provides an overview of major application areas of geographic information systems (GISs) in police departments
and policing practices, mainly in the United States. It begins with a quick review of historical evolution of GIS applications in
law enforcement from prototype computerized crime mapping to sophisticated spatial analysis and its integration in policing
practices. Six major areas of GIS applications in police and policing are discussed with case studies to illustrate the value
of GIS as (1) a partner for field officers, (2) a crime investigation and prevention tool, (3) a policy implementation and
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 18:15 06 July 2012

evaluation tool, (4) a police force planning tool, (5) a tool for testing crime theories, and (6) a communication tool. The
article is concluded with an outlook for some emerging trends.
Keywords: GIS; crime analysis; law enforcement; policing; review

1. Evolution of geographic information system in
crime analysis and law enforcement
As in many application areas, mapping is the foremost
function of geographic information system (GIS) in crime
analysis. The review begins with tracing the concept and
practice of crime mapping. As early as in 1829, the Italian
geographer Adriano Balbi and the French lawyer Andre-
Michel Guerry used data from the first French national
system of crime reporting to draw three choropleth maps
of crimes (crimes against persons, crimes against prop-
erty, and school instruction) in France on a large sheet of
paper (as reviewed by Kenwitz 1987). The maps revealed
how the geographic patterns of various crimes were related
to each other and also to socioeconomic indicators such
as educational levels. The ecological perspective of crime
was expanded by Lambert Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian
astronomer-turned social statistician, who linked crime to
more contextual variables such as climate, poverty, trans-
portation routes, and ethnic and cultural variations in addi-
tion to educational levels (as reported in Stigler 1997).
In the United States, mapping of crime and related social
variables was widely used by the urban ecologists at the
University of Chicago (e.g., Park 1915, Sutherland 1924,
Shaw and McKay 1942). This group of sociologists rep-
resenting the Chicago School was credited for developing
the social disorganization theory for crime. The research of
ecological correlates of crime such as juvenile delinquency
‘necessarily begins with a study of its geographical loca-
tion’ (Shaw 1929, p. 5), and thus naturally relies on maps.
However, such an interest quickly faded, and attention was
shifted away from geographic variation and oriented to the
impacts of social disorganization on individual behaviors
(Robinson 1982). Such a shift may be partially attributable
to the large amount of time and effort required for col-
lecting crime data and the arduous process of manually
drawing maps (Weisburd and McEwen 1997, p. 7). In the
meantime, ‘spot maps’ were a common practice in police
departments in the United States by physically placing pins
on large street maps to indicate crime hazards (FBI 1944).
It seemed evident that both academic researchers and
practitioners could benefit from automated crime mapping.
Among early experiments of computerized crime map-
ping, Pauly et al. (1967) used the SYMAP program devel-
oped at Harvard University to map the distribution of
crimes in St. Louis, Missouri, at about the same time
the first GIS (i.e., Canada GIS) was developed (Clarke
1999, p. 9). At the time, computerized crime mapping
required major hardware investment and programming
efforts, and technologies for computer-based crime map-
ping were primitive. For example, shading of a black-and-
white choropleth map was implemented by overstriking
printer characters for darker symbols. The quality of maps
was understandably subpar, and yet the technique generated
much excitement, and was strongly advocated by several
police organizations (Buch et al. 1973, Chang et al. 1979).
The major draw is that the maps helped police focus more
resources on areas of high crime frequencies. As desk-
top computers became more affordable along with more

*Email: fwang@lsu.edu

ISSN 1947-5683 print/ISSN 1947-5691 online

© 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19475683.2012.691900
http://www.tandfonline.com
 160 F. Wang

user-friendly GIS software, GIS development passed the (Weisburd and McEwen 1997, p. 14). Among various the-
stages of ‘pioneer age’ from the mid-1950 to the 1970s ories of crime, the routine activities approach developed by
and ‘research and development age’ and ‘implementation Cohen and Felson (1979) explains the occurrence of crime
and vendor age’ in the 1980s, and entered the stage of as the confluence of three elements: a motivated offender,
‘client applications age’ in the 1990s (Foresman 1998). a desirable target, and the absence of a capable guardian.
Its applications in law enforcement experienced a signif- This perspective emphasizes the interaction of the three
icant growth in the late 1980s and 1990s. Based on a elements at the same place and at the same time for a
1997 survey conducted by the Crime Mapping Research crime to occur and thus has a focus on ‘place.’ Similarly,
Center (CMRC) of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ, the situational crime prevention approach pioneered by
the research arm of the US Department of Justice), comput- Clarke (1980) suggests reducing criminal opportunities in
erized crime mapping in law enforcement agencies in the very specific contexts as an effective crime control strat-
United States has experienced rapid growth since the late egy. The rational choice theory (Cornish and Clarke 1986)
1980s, as shown in Figure 1 (Mamalian et al. 1999). The argues that a potential offender consciously evaluates the
trend has continued into the twenty-first century (Weisburd expected costs and rewards of crime versus alternative
and Lum 2005) and resembles the S-curve of innovation behaviors and, thus, provides the theoretical foundation for
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diffusion (Rogers 1995). the situational crime prevention measures. Environmental

Three forces came together to make the ‘perfect storm’ criminology advocated by Brantingham and Brantingham
for the rapid growth of GIS adoption in law enforcement (1981) has an unequivocal focus on place. This theoretical
agencies and in crime research since the late 1980s. The shift has also helped change the fate of crime geographers
first and foremost was the advancement of computer and from being ‘displaced’ or marginalized to a major source of
information technologies. Expensive mainframe comput- knowledge and innovations for other criminological fields
ers were replaced by cheaper and more efficient desktop (LeBeau and Leitner 2011).
computers, and developments in mapping and GIS software GIS and related technologies have turned crime map-
made them more powerful and user friendly. Second, crime ping to a powerful decision-making tool for law enforce-
data reporting and archiving became mandatory in the US ment agencies. However, GIS is beyond mapping, and
criminal justice system. In particular, accurate location increasingly so for crime analysis and law enforcement
information (e.g., street address) for crime incidences has (Wang 2005a). The NIJ has been instrumental in promot-
been required in modern police departments. In the mean- ing the use of GIS and spatial analysis in crime research
time, other supporting data in GIS format also became (Wilson 2007). The efforts are exemplified in fund-
standardized and available. For instance, the obscure Dual ing the development of CrimeStat (http://www.nedlevine.
Independent Map Encoding spatial data model used by the com/nedlevine17.htm) and organizing the annual Crime
US census till 1980 was replaced by the more accessi- Mapping Research Conference (http://www.nij.gov/events/
ble Topologically Integrated Geocoding and Referencing maps/welcome.htm). Early applications of GIS in crime
in 1990. The third factor was the theoretical shift in analysis were limited to data archiving, automated pin
criminology from ‘offender-based approaches’ to a focus mapping, and cluster or hot-spot analysis (Harries 1999,
on ‘context of crime,’ that is, the ‘physical, organiza- p. 94), and gradually extended to applications of spatial
tional, and social environments that make crime possible’ statistics in testing spatial autocorrelation (e.g., Wasserman
and Stack 1993, Messner et al. 1999) and construct-
ing spatial-lag variables in regression (e.g., Roncek and
1997 CMRC survey: cumulative distribution of crime Montgomery 1995, Baller et al. 2001, Morenoff et al.
mapping adoption
2001). Most recently, collaborations among the academic
200
(criminologists, geographers, computer scientists, statisti-
Total number of departments

180
160 cians, and others), business, and practitioner communities
140 have led to important advancements, and GIS applications
120 have evolved from crime mapping to sophisticated spatial
100 analysis and its integration in daily policing practices, as
80 elaborated in the next six sections on major application
60
areas of GIS in police and policing.
40
20
0
2. GIS as a partner for field officers
1982?
1983?
1984?
1985?
1986?
1987?
1988?
1989?
1990?
1991?
1992?
1993?
1994?
1995?
1996?
1997?

The advancement of geospatial technologies has made GIS

Year
a trusted ‘partner’ for police officers. This section discusses
Figure 1. Growth of computerized crime mapping in law how GIS is used in data reporting, mobile solutions, and
enforcement agencies in the United States (Mamalian et al. 1999). protecting police from lawsuits.
 Annals of GIS
The quality of data forms the foundation for creditable
research as well as data-driven intelligence-led policing
(Ratcliffe 2003). Crime underreporting is a common prob-
lem at various levels of jurisdictions. Crime researchers
often favor the use of data of serious crimes (e.g., homi-
cide) more than data of other crimes because of gen-
eral confidence in the quality of such data (Land et al.
1990). However, even the data of serious crimes are
not immune to the problem of data uncertainty. In the
United States, there have been significant discrepancies,
though converging over time, in homicide data between
the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime
Reporting (UCR) Program focusing on offenders and
the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS) from the victim’s perspec-
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tive (Ansari 2010). According to a report released by the
Home Office, the United Kingdom experienced a sudden
22% yearly rise in the most serious violent crimes (mur-
der, manslaughter, and severe assaults) in 2008 because
of underreporting of these crimes in the prior years
(Swaine 2008). Crimes could also be overreported, par-
ticularly in criminal victimization surveys (Levine 1976).
Inaccuracy in crime data invites the criticism of ‘garbage
in and garbage out’ and undermines the validity of crime
studies.
For spatially based studies and policing practices,
geocoding accuracy is a major issue for compiling crime
data. Traditional geocoding is based on address. Sources
for address-based geocoding errors include typographic
errors, abbreviations, address duplication, lack of standard-
ization, etc. (Ratcliffe 2004). Errors may also be caused
by loss of concentration by officers in the tedious address-
typing process, evidenced in a trend of increasing errors
in data input toward the end of the night shift (McCarthy
and Ratcliffe 2005). Modern GIS systems installed on
patrol cars or handheld GIS devices (e.g., Cody Mobile 7,
Spillman’s Mobile Office) detect and correct address errors
and increasingly rely on global positioning system (GPS)
for geocoding to release field officers from much of the
data entry labor. Automated law enforcement field inter-
view forms are also used to minimize other errors and save
officers time in crime reporting. A fully integrated GIS-
based mobile office for field officers does more than data
reporting. One useful function is to link to other contex-
tual information (neighborhood demography, business and
natural environments, historical crime records, etc.) so that
officers on patrol or dispatched in response to a call can be
better prepared on assignments. An automatic vehicle loca-
tion (AVL) module tracks the location of all GPS-equipped
fleet units in real time, identifies the closest officer for
backup, or optimizes response times by dispatching the
unit closest to a call by accounting for street network and
barriers. Information from the AVL system is fed back to
the command center to help improve the performance of
computer-aided dispatch services. A license plate reader
161
module gathers information of vehicles by a camera and
helps locate stolen or wanted vehicles.
Maps, modernized by GPS and GIS technologies, have
been used as a powerful tool in lawsuit. Here, a case
study illustrates how GIS was used to defend an officer
(Smith 2011). In 1999, a felon after being arrested and con-
victed filed a lawsuit against the City of Shawnee, Kansas,
claiming that police used excessive force while making the
arrest. A map (shown in Figure 2) was made in GIS to assist
the arresting officer’s testimony. It showed that the suspect
travelled at high speeds through residential areas, running
several red lights and bailing out of his car in a densely
populated housing project in order to evade the police. The
offender was considered posing a great danger to public
safety, and the officer was cleared from the case.
3. GIS as a crime investigation and prevention tool
This section discusses how GIS is used as an effective tool
in crime investigation and prevention. There are ample of
cases that have demonstrated the value of GIS in solving
crimes. Many murder cases were solved by police track-
ing cell phones used by victims (e.g., see the report on
solving the murder case of Kelsey Smith at http://www.
kmbc.com/r/13453443/detail.html), or tracking suspects by
GPS (e.g., see the report on the Brad Jackson case in
Leipnik et al. 2003). One caution needs to be taken since
the use of GPS for surveillance and evidence gathering
may involve a legal issue related to protection of privacy in
the United States, exemplified in the most recent Supreme
Court’s decision on the US versus Jones case (http://
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf). The
following discussion focuses on geographic profiling and
predictive policing because both use more advanced spatial
analysis.
Geographic profiling has received much media cover-
age after it helped solve several high-profile crimes. The
technique is to predict an unknown criminal’s most proba-
ble residence area by analyzing the geographic locations
of a linked series of crimes. Its theoretical foundation
is the well-established finding of distance decay behav-
ior on a criminal’s journey to crime (J2C) from his/her
residence to crime sites (Van Koppen and De Keijser
1997, Rengert et al. 1999). In other words, an offender
commits most offenses fairly close to home, and the pro-
portion of offenses committed decreases with increasing
distance. In addition, the criminal also tries to avoid com-
mitting crimes too close to home, within a mental ‘buffer
zone’ (Brantingham and Brantingham 1981), as shown in
Figure 3. Based on a distance decay function for J2C, a
probability surface is generated for every point in a study
area to represent the likelihood that any given point is
the offender’s base (most commonly home or work site).
Various functions and parameters have been proposed,
most available in CrimeStat, to model the distance decay
 162 F. Wang
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Figure 2. Paths of suspect and officer and surrounding areas in a legal case (Smith 2011).

behavior (Levine and Block 2011). Some suggest more fac- Probability of target selection
tors than distance influencing the J2C trips (e.g., Rattner
and Portnov 2007), and others argue that the choices
of function forms have minimal effects on the outcome Buffer zone
of geographic profiling (Hammond and Youngs 2011).
‘Distance’ can also be measured as Euclidean, Manhattan
(as in Rossomo et al. 2005), shortest travel path, or quickest
temporal path (as in Kent et al. 2006). Research indicates
that not a single function or a distance measure is favored
because of the complexity of an offender’s behavior that is
‘predicated on the individual’s mental map’ – one’s own
Residence Distance
perception of the environment (Kent et al. 2006, p. 197).
Geographic profiling is usually applied to the analysis of Figure 3. Crime distance-decay function with buffer zone
series/repeated crimes because data volume is critical for (Rossomo et al. 2005, p. 104).
its success. It is intended to be used, in combination with
other information and investigative techniques, to prioritize factors associated with past events, analysts can predict
leads or direct the geographic focus of an investigation. areas statistically similar to locations where prior incidents
In addition to crime investigation, GIS plays a promi- occurred. In contrast to hot-spot policing, which focuses
nent role in predictive policing, which uses information on areas with a high density of past events (discussed
and advanced analysis to inform forward-thinking crime in Section 5), this approach also detects emerging areas
prevention (Uchida 2010). By identifying environmental with changed environmental factors and thus allows law
 Annals of GIS
enforcement to ‘proactively prevent and disrupt crime’ in
targeted neighborhoods (McCue 2011, p. 4). Gorr and
McKay (2005) applied a ‘tracking signal technique’ widely
used in management science to estimate trend and season-
ality and quickly detect step jumps and outliers in crime
trends. The method filters out regular noise and focuses
on detecting departures from established time trend pat-
terns. Based on the method with data inputs such as 5-year
monthly crime counts and land use, a crime early warn-
ing system (CEWS) was developed for 1-month-ahead
crime forecasts across 100 grid-cell areas in Pittsburgh.
The system helps police stay one step ahead of criminals
and proves to be a promising tool in proactive policing.
Predictive policing can be also successful in preventing
individual crimes. A recent example is the case of the ‘blue
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bandana bandit’ in Glendale, Arizona. Based on a series
of robberies, crime analysts used GIS and CrimeStat to
predict where the next one might take place, and police suc-
cessfully made an arrest at the predicted site (http://www.
nij.gov/journals/253/predicting.html).
4. GIS as a policy implementation and evaluation tool
Some law enforcement and correction tasks have an
explicit spatial component that requires the use of GIS-
based technologies for monitoring and evaluation.
On 20 May 2011, the former IMF chief Dominique
Strauss-Kahn was remanded to home confinement in a
New York apartment, and his whereabouts were moni-
tored by a GPS device (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/
2011/0520/House-arrest-What-ex-IMF-chief-Dominique-
Strauss-Kahn-can-expect). High-profile legal cases such as
this have certainly helped educate the public on the value
of GPS tracking in law enforcement. However, the use of
GPS and GIS is not limited to monitoring celebrities. For
example, the Electronic Monitoring Protection and Crime
Tracking (EMPACT) project in Florida automatically
correlated data from GPS tracking of offenders (proba-
tioners, parolees, and offenders on pretrial release) and
local crime incident data through a web-based interface,
and determined whether a tracked offender was at the
scene of a crime incident (Frost 2005). In the United States
since 2003, Megan’s Law has placed spatial restrictions
on the residential locations of sex offenders, prohibiting
them from residing within 1000 feet of any school-related
properties (Levenson and Cotter 2005). The implemen-
tation of Megan’s Law relies on the proximity analysis
tool (e.g., buffer) available in any major commercial GIS
software. A study in Hamilton County of Ohio assessed
the enforcement of the law and revealed that 45% of sex
offenders lived within the 1000-foot school restriction
zone (Grubesic et al. 2007), raising other social issues
such as housing availability and equity.
One issue in evaluating the effectiveness of crime
control strategies is spatial externalities associated with
163
these activities, whose measures could benefit from GIS-
supported spatial analysis. There are two types of spatial
externality. Spatial displacement happens when crime con-
trol measures cause crime to move away, and therefore,
crimes are reduced in target areas but increased elsewhere.
In this instance, there is no overall reduction in crime.
Spatial diffusion, in contrast, means that the benefits of
crime reduction ‘spill over’ to neighbors (free riders) and
lead to a decline of crime in nearby areas as well and
is thus more desirable. Both are unintended side effects
or spatial externalities, and lead to crime rates in nearby
areas to correlate with each other, that is, spatial autocor-
relation. Displacement is derived from the rational choice
theory (as discussed in Section 1). If some crime preven-
tion action is taken in one area, those seeking to gain from
crime move to other areas where detection and apprehen-
sion risks are expected to be lower (Cornish and Clarke
1987). Most criminals also obey the distance decay rule (as
discussed in Section 3) or the familiarity decay rule (Eck
1993), and take a short journey to commit crimes in nearby
areas. Therefore, in a spatial context, a decline in the crime
rate in one area is associated with an increase in the crime
rate in its nearby areas, and vice versa. Crime diffusion
or free-rider effect can be also explained by the rational
choice theory. As criminals have imperfect information,
some believe that certain areas have enhanced protection
but do not know the exact areas. Consequently, they are
deterred from sites with protection as well as sites with-
out protection (Miethe 1991, Clarke and Weisburd 1994,
Ayres and Levitt 1998). More likely nearby areas bene-
fit first. Thus, crime decline in one area leads to crime
reduction in adjacent areas as well. Several reviews (Eck
1993, Hesseling 1995, Braga 2001) found that spatial dis-
placement cases were in the minority, and other argued that
crime displacement in the short term coexisted with crime
diffusion in the long run (Fabrikant 1979).
The weighted displacement quotient (WDQ), devel-
oped by Bowers and Johnson (2003), has been used in
several recent GIS-based empirical studies for evaluating
the spatial externalities of crime prevention operations. The
implementation of WDQ requires the definitions of three
areas: (1) the target area where the crime reduction strategy
has been applied, (2) a buffer area where crime would be
displaced or the crime control benefits would be diffused,
and (3) a control area that acts as a baseline on general
crime trends in the region in general. The WDQ is written
as
 
Bt1 Ct1 − Bt0 Ct0
WDQ =  
At1 Ct1 − At0 Ct0
where A, B, and C are crime counts in the target area,
buffer area, and control area, respectively, and t0 and t1
are the time periods before and during the intervention.
 164 F. Wang

attributable to the turning tide of crime theory to focus

No Diffusion or Displacement
Displacement > Direct effects

Displacement = Direct effects

Displacement < Direct effects

on place instead of people, as explained in Section 1. The

Diffusion < Direct effects

Diffusion = Direct effects

Diffusion > Direct effects

concentration of crime in limited areas is astonishing, and
naturally invites place-based policing (Weisburd 2008). For
example, 3% of the city’s addresses accounted for 50%
of calls for service to the police in Minneapolis (Sherman
et al. 1989), and about 4% of streets and intersection areas
generated nearly 50% of the city’s narcotics arrests and
almost 42% of the disorder arrests in Jersey City, New
Jersey (Weisburd and Mazerolle 2000). This section dis-
cusses two practices that rely on GIS for effective police
–1 0 1 WDQ
force planning: hot-spot policing and police districting.
Displacement increases Diffusion increases Hot-spot policing plans and adjusts the deployment
of police force in accordance with the geographic varia-
Figure 4. Seven scenarios for WDQ-based evaluation of spatial tion of crime and focuses police patrol on crime hot spots
externalities in policing.
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 18:15 06 July 2012

(Weisdud 2005). A common definition of hot spot is an

  area with ‘a greater than average number of criminal or
The numerator (Bt1 Ct1 − Bt0 Ct0 ) represents a buffer disorder events’ (Eck et al. 2005, p. 8). Earlier studies

displacement measure, and the denominator (At1 Ct1 − of hot spots used basic methods such as visual interpre-

At0 Ct0 ) represents a success measure. Based on Bowers tation, choropleth mapping, and grid-cell density analysis
and Johnson (2003), there are seven likely outcomes corre- (Jefferis 1999). Grid-cell density analysis uses the kernel
sponding to the value of WDQ falling in different ranges as density estimation, the empirical Bayes estimation, and
shown in Figure 4. other spatial smoothing methods to convert discrete points
Hall and Liu (2009) used a modified spatiotemporal of crime events to a continuous density map, which shows
WDQ index to examine the effects of an aggressive polic- relative concentrations of crime in certain areas. However,
ing operation in Cincinnati, Ohio. Specifically, the control local pockets of crime concentration or elevated crime
area was defined as the same area as the target area (or rates may arise simply by chance alone, and require rig-
the buffer area) but with data from a prior time period in orous statistical analysis to detect clusters (hot spots) that
order to mitigate the problem of the control area being cor- are statistically significant (Wang 2006, p. 167). Free soft-
rupted by large-scale displacement. By using various buffer ware such as CrimeStat, SaTScan (www.satscan.org), or
sizes to define the buffer area, they found a diffusion of GeoDa (geodacenter.asu.edu) contain the tool that iden-
benefits to be taking place at the immediate neighboring tifies hot spots within regular shapes such as circles or
areas, but crime displacement at a greater distance from eclipses. Attempts have also been made to detect flexi-
the operation deployment area. In addition to examining bly shaped clusters (e.g., Grubesic and Murray 2001), as
the changes in crime density maps and based on the mean shown in Figure 5, but the challenge remains to develop
centers of crimes, Lowry and La Vigne (2011) also used the robust geometric and statistical measures for determining
WDQ index to measure whether the installation of a camera cluster significance. Among the various spatial autocorre-
surveillance system in a neighborhood in Chicago gener- lation indices, the Gi∗ statistic developed by Getis and Ord
ated spatial externalities in the crime pattern. The results (1992) is used most often to identify local clusters with sta-
revealed no definitive signs of diffusion of benefits beyond tistically significant high or low crime rates (corresponding
the camera viewsheds and no findings of displacement. to hot and cold spots), available in the popular GIS software
Ratcliffe and Breen (2011) used the WDQ index to assess ArcGIS. Empirical studies have shown that hot-spot polic-
the effects from a series of directed and geographically tar- ing is largely effective with no apparent or major crime
geted enforcement initiatives in Camden, New Jersey, in displacement (Weisburd 2005).
2005. To address a major concern of the WDQ for lack of a The basic objectives in police districting include meet-
measure of statistical significance, a phi statistic was devel- ing the agency’s response time threshold, minimizing the
oped to measure the level of association between the target cost of operation, and balancing workload across districts
and the buffer areas. The study found a diffusion of benefits (Taylor and Huxley 1989). Few of the advanced mathe-
approximately equal to the direct effects of the operation in matical models for districting, proposed several decades
the target area. ago (Reinier et al. 1977), were implemented until the
advancement of GIS and computer technology enabled
the computation in a reasonable time period. Several
5. GIS as a police force planning tool case studies of police districting were presented in a
The rising role of GIS in law enforcement in general and recent issue of Geography & Public Safety (http://www.nij.
police force planning and deployment in particular can be gov/maps/gps-bulletin-v1i4.pdf). ArcGIS has a districting
 Annals of GIS
Cluster 1
Hull/Member Ratio = 0.0662
Avg. Distance = 677.9
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 18:15 06 July 2012
Cluster 3
Figure 5. Detecting flexibly shaped clusters (Grubesic and Murray 2001, p. 9).
extension that helps analysts test various scenarios of
district boundaries and review the outcomes including
projected workloads (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/
extensions/districting/). However, studies integrating GIS
and mathematical modeling for police districting remain
a rarity. One exception is a study by Curtin et al. (2005)
that applied an optimal covering model to define the most
efficient police patrol areas (i.e., maximizing the number
of incidents served while meeting an acceptable response
time). The method took GIS data layers of incidents (e.g.,
service calls) and road network, used linear programming
to formulate the optimization problem, and found heuristic
solutions that increase the current level of police service.
The study shows great potentials of ‘optimal districting.’
More work needs to be done to explore other goals such
as minimizing total costs (response time), minimizing the
number of districts (dispatch centers), maximizing equal
accessibility or a combination of multiple goals (Wang
2012), and evaluate the benefits of various scenarios.
6. GIS as a tool for testing crime theories
There is a large body of literature on GIS applications
in crime research. This section briefly reviews a few
case studies of using GIS to test crime theories, all with
165
Cluster 2
Hull/Member Ratio = 0.1554
Avg. Distance = 434.8
Hull/Member Ratio = 0.3904
Avg. Distance = 278.87
significant implications in methodological development in
spatial analysis.
The first set of case studies uses the agent-based
modeling (ABM) to simulate and test the routine activity
theory. Liu et al. (2005) used a cellular automaton model
to simulate street robbery patterns in a small neighborhood
near downtown Cincinnati. Based on the routine activity
theory, the model considered offenders, targets, and crime
places as individual agents and simulated crime patterns
based on the interaction between these three agents at a
specific time. The model was implemented in Visual C++.
The calibrated simulation model generated crimes simi-
lar to actual crimes in both the total number of crimes
and their spatial distribution, as shown in Figure 6. The
work by Groff (2007a, 2007b, 2008) was similar in that
ABM was used to examine robbery patterns based on the
routine activity theory. In implementation, she used the
software product Agent Analyst to pair the GIS software
ArcGIS with the ABM software RepastPy (North et al.
2006). By doing so, individuals were modeled in a real geo-
graphic environment and various scenarios were simulated
through the inputs of ABM. Although the models reviewed
here remain simple, the approach demonstrated its promise
as a virtual laboratory for ‘exploring the impact of policy
decisions’ (Groff 2008, p. 114), where various scenarios
 166 F. Wang

(a) (b)
1 5 8 13
6 9

14
7
20
19
17
2
Historical crime pattern Simulated crime pattern
1 1
2–3
15 2–3 4–5
4–5 6–8
10 6–8 9–15
3 16 9–15
11 12 16–23
18 16–23
4 24–31
Streets
Streets

Figure 6. Spatial pattern of street robberies: (a) actual crimes 1997–98 and (b) cellular automaton-simulated crimes (Liu et al. 2005,
p. 209).
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 18:15 06 July 2012

of experiments are costly to design and implement. See jobs to resident workers within a reasonable commuting
Liu and Eck (2008) for more case studies of GIS-based range from a residential location. The index value changed
simulation of crime. as the targeted residential location moved from place to
The second set of case studies is related to the small place, and thus captured the variation of local job mar-
population problem, often encountered in the analysis of ket condition across the study area. They found that the
crime data, where the rate estimates for rare crimes such as index was highly correlated with crime rates in Cleveland,
homicide in small populations are unstable and very sus- Ohio. Another study by Wang and Arnold (2008) devel-
ceptible to data errors. One viable approach to mitigate oped a localized income inequality (LII) index to measure
the problem is to construct larger areas from small ones so the relative inequality when people compare their situa-
that the base population is sufficiently large and compara- tion to those around them. The LII, defined as the ratio
ble across areas, commonly referred to as ‘regionalization.’ of average income of a neighborhood’s contiguous areas
Several GIS-based automated regionalization methods to its own income (Figure 7), added a new dimension to
have been proposed to merge similar and adjacent areas
to form larger regions including the AZP (Openshaw
1977, Grady and Enander 2009), MaxP (Duque et al.
2007), and REDCAP (Guo 2008). Wang and O’Brien j=2 j=3
(2005) used some regionalization methods to test the $30,000 $50,000
herding-culture-of-honor hypothesis proposed by Nisbett
(1993) and Reaves (1992). The hypothesis argues that areas
where topography or precipitation limited agriculture to j=1
marginal farming and herding (dry plain and moist hill $70,000
i=4
counties) had a chronic threat of livestock theft and should $25,000
have higher homicide rates than those areas where farming
was the major form of agriculture (moist plain coun-
ties). The result indicated that the herding-culture-of-honor
hypothesis proposed by Nisbett (1993) and Reaves (1992)
was merely an artifact of less reliable estimate of homi-
cide rates in counties with small population than counties i=5
of large population in southeastern United States. In other $40,000
studies, a regionalization method based on the scale-space i=7
theory was applied to the analysis of homicide rates in i=6 $50,000
Chicago (Wang 2005b, Mu and Wang 2008). The results $60,000
showed that the method was able to minimize informa-
tion loss in data aggregation and mitigate the modifiable
area unit problem, another problem common in analysis of
Subject area
geographic data.
Contiguous area (Rook)
The final set of case studies involves the construction Contiguous area (Queen)
of localized measures in crime studies. Wang and Minor
(2002) used the GIS-based network analysis technique to Figure 7. Defining contiguous areas and localized income
measure a localized job accessibility index as the ratio of inequality (Wang and Arnold 2008, p. 263).
 Annals of GIS
concentrated disadvantage in urban areas and made it a
stronger predictor of homicide rates across various areal
units in Chicago.
7. GIS as a communication tool
Two functions highlight the value of GIS as a commu-
nication tool in law enforcement: (1) facilitating inter-
jurisdictional and cross-departmental data sharing and
(2) enhancing information dissemination to the public and
encouraging public participation.
In the era of rapid growth in transportation and
telecommunication, criminals are becoming increas-
ingly mobile. The need for data (including spatial data)
sharing among law enforcement agencies over differ-
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 18:15 06 July 2012
ent jurisdictions has become more pressing. Many law
enforcement fusion centers have been created across
the United States to integrate data from multiple agen-
cies and help facilitate local, state, county, and federal
data sharing. Even within the same municipality or
county or state, lack of communication across various
departments can seriously hinder the ability of data-
led intelligent policing. GIS plays an important role in
Figure 8. The COMPASS project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
167
breaking down barriers between jurisdictions and agencies.
One example is the Community Mapping, Planning and
Analysis for Safety Strategies (COMPASS) project in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin (http://compass.milwaukee.gov/
website/compass/viewer.htm; Figure 8). The project
brought together a wide range of data (traffic, property,
crime, public services, health, etc.) from different depart-
ments and used a web GIS platform to support better
access to crime-relevant data and facilitate communi-
cation among citizens, the scientific community, and
policy-makers (Albrecht and Pingel 2005).
GIS is also used as an effective way to inform citi-
zens of updated crime information in their neighborhood
and empower citizens to take caution or report valuable
information. For example, the Citizen Law Enforcement
Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR) MAP web application,
maintained by the Chicago Police Department (http://gis.
chicagopolice.org/), enables citizens to search crimes in the
past 90 days by an address, around a school or park, by var-
ious geographic areas (community area, ward, police beat,
and district). The ‘IdentifyLA’ (http://identifyla.lsu.edu)
web site, maintained by the FACES laboratory of Louisiana
State University, maps all missing and unidentified people
 168
in Louisiana online and allows users to search cases by
keywords, location, parish, etc. The program invites wide
citizen participation in solving pending cases. By doing so,
GIS, particularly through various web GIS platforms, will
become truly ‘people’s GIS,’ a concept promoted by those
advocating participatory GIS (Dunn 2007).
8. Concluding remarks
The preceding sections provide a glimpse of major appli-
cation areas of GIS in crime analysis and law enforcement.
The overview is intended for readers, many working in
the field of GIS but not familiar with its police applica-
tions, or others in law enforcement but not aware of the
full potentials of GIS. The related literature has grown
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tremendously along with the growth of GIS technologies.
The topics and case studies (usually most relevant or most
recent work) are chosen to illustrate related concepts. The
limitation of space and the author’s paucity of knowledge
and experience prohibit the reviewer from a more in-depth
examination of the topics, each of which deserves a full
paper to cover.
Here, concluding comments are directed to some areas
with much work to do. One exciting emerging field is
the use of GIS-related 3D visualization technologies to
develop some avatar-like virtual world systems for police
force training. The Federal Law Enforcement Training
Center (FLETC) in the United States has a Simulation
Integration Management Branch that is leading the efforts
in this endeavor. Some of the existing police training cur-
ricula already include the use of computer-based video
games to train officers how to respond in simulated crime
scenes. However, the quality of most of these training
games remains primitive, and rare (but exerting major
impacts) crimes such as those involving hostages or ter-
rorist attacks are usually not covered. Several technology
challenges need to be tackled in order to make it feasi-
ble and affordable for popular use: capturing complex real
world in 3D, efficiently managing a large volume of 3D
data, designing a system interactive with planted crimi-
nals, and modeling the senses of distance, blind side, shade
and shadow, etc. Another area is to continue the pursuit
of interdisciplinary collaborations to inject new perspec-
tives, new methods, and new insights into spatially oriented
crime analysis and policing. For example, the application of
social network analysis (e.g., Radil et al. 2010) has shown
promises in analyzing organized crimes. Implementing
the complex network analysis in a spatial context takes
an interdisciplinary team of criminologists, computer sci-
entists, geographers, and perhaps physicists. Finally, the
advancement of police GIS and the full cultivation of
its benefits rely on mutual trust, effective communica-
tion, and close collaboration between academia and law
enforcement professionals. A practitioner may ‘perceive an
academic’s research as suggestive’ (LeBeau and Leitner
F. Wang
2011, p. 167) and, thus, hinder its dissemination. One
proven effective channel to bridge the two is ‘career migra-
tion’ between the two. A practitioner-turned academic or
an academic-turned practitioner certainly commands more
respect from the colleagues working in the conjunction of
GIS and policing.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of the article was presented as a keynote
speech at the National Conference on GIS Applications in Police
in Beijing, 19–20 July 2011. I benefited from another keynote
speech by Susan Smith, and insightful comments by Rixing He
and Daliang Zhou at the Conference.
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