I've never been completely convinced of the legitimacy of criminal offence maps. There are obvious dangers of stigmatizing neighborhoods in addition to areas every bit hot-spots of criminal offence based on criminal offence information which may non hold upward only accurate. The accuracy of criminal offence information depends on a pose out of factors, including victims reporting crime, the constabulary accurately recording the information in addition to the information beingness accurately plotted to the right location.
This final betoken was apparent inwards this Seismograph San Francisco Bike Theft Map. While creating the map Seismograph constitute that in that place was a hot-spot of bike thefts at 850 Bryant Street. It turns out that this is the address of a constabulary station. Stolen bikes amongst no place information were exactly plotted past times the constabulary at the address of the reporting constabulary station. 850 Bryant Street is thence the bike theft equivalent of Null Island.
I'm besides fairly certain that nearly criminal offence heat-maps are non normalized for population density. The resultant is that criminal offence heat-maps oft seem to closely resemble population maps. Areas amongst a high population density seem to hold upward criminal offence hot-spots, although they actually only exhibit that where in that place are to a greater extent than people in that place is proportionally to a greater extent than crime.
Brazilian criminal offence map Radarea has attempted to overcome around of these occupation past times crowd-sourcing the reporting of crime. By allowing the victims of criminal offence to conduct input the details in addition to locations of criminal offence they presumably promise to tape around of the crimes non reported to the constabulary in addition to to eliminate around of the errors inwards the recording of criminal offence data.
Radarea claim that the map volition assistance tourists visiting unfamiliar areas to position neighborhoods amongst high levels of criminal offence in addition to volition besides assistance locals detect the safest areas inwards their neighborhoods. These are around bold claims. I'm non convinced that crowd-sourcing crimes volition furnish information that is whatsoever to a greater extent than accurate than official criminal offence data. It seems to me Radarea are running the same run a hazard of providing inaccurate criminal offence maps which may good hand users an only imitation moving painting of the relative security of unlike locations.
