Crime+Analysis

An important theory to crime analysis is situational crime prevention. In situational crime prevention, there are tactics an agency can use to deter offenders depending on how police resources are applied. Part of situational crime prevention and crime analysis are the theories of routine activity and rational choice. In routine activity it is believed that offenders commit crimes during their routine activities, as targets present themselves. In rational choice, it is essentially said that offenders choose to commit crimes based on their assessment of the reward and risk factors involved in the commission of the crime. There are two key points from the analysis of the burglary problem. First, most agencies rely on crime mapping as a means to point out hot spots of increased crime activity. Secondly, the more sophisticated use of crime analysis is in giving police officers information about serial offenders. Crime analysis can be used for general police operations like deploying more officers to a hot spot and specific actions like surveillance of an area a serial offender is predicted to strike. Crime mapping and crime analysis have uses outside the everyday function of the agency. Crime mapping can provide other city services, non-profit agencies, city leadership and other jurisdictions with information that may be critical to a wide variety of problems. Indeed, the use of GIS software in state and local government is not peculiar to police work. It is being used by planning departments, fire departments and other city entities to assist in the spatial and temporal analysis of problems associated with their particular venue. As crime mapping and analysis continue to mature it is likely that the public will hear more stories of the techniques being used for geographic profiling. Once a geoprofile is established on a serial offender, other mapping data can be overlaid and the search for the offender hastened. For instance, imagine an analysis of a series of sex related crimes is able to narrow the offender's residence to a relatively small area. An agency could then overlay other data(recall GIS layers can be added and removed) like the known addresses of registered sex offenders.
 * Crime Analysis**

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