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Mapping Crime Prevention: What We Do and Where We Need to Go

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Crime Prevention in the 21st Century

Abstract

Crime mapping is an activity that dates back to the early nineteenth century in the context of understanding crime in France. Crime mapping has become an important component in crime prevention because it can help in the identification of crime problems and the evaluation of crime prevention initiatives. In this chapter, I cover the state of the art in mapping crime prevention as well as stating where it needs to go. The current primary methodology, kernel density mapping, is explained, followed by a discussion of the caveats of this technique. I then discuss local spatial analysis and its importance for crime prevention, emphasizing that these methods are easily applied. Lastly, the importance of temporal scales are discussed, showing how space and time are interconnected and one cannot be done without considering the other. The chapter concludes with a statement that complicated spatial analyses are not necessary for mapping crime prevention. Rather, the analyst can be sophisticated without being complex.

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Correspondence to Martin A. Andresen .

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Andresen, M.A. (2017). Mapping Crime Prevention: What We Do and Where We Need to Go. In: LeClerc, B., Savona, E. (eds) Crime Prevention in the 21st Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27793-6_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27793-6_9

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