Monday Map: Pinpointing Crime

Over the last two decades, police departments have relied more and more on maps to help them deploy their resources effectively, fighting crime where crime happens. As these departments have become more web savvy in the last few years, they've made the information available to the public - who can then use the data to learn more about a specific neighborhood, or to figure out what the ruckus outside their bedroom window was last night.

In recent years major cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans have made their crime maps public. London's map just went fully live last month. The National Institute of Justice will host its tenth annual conference on crime mapping in August.

While the maps have been a valuable resources to police departments across the country, some have argued that their impact is overvalued - and perhaps counterproductive. People question whether these maps compromise the privacy of crime victims, whether public reporting leads to police reluctance in launching proactive investigations (perhaps these people watch "The Wire" too much) or that a pure statistics-based approach undermines the nuance and depth required for good policing. Visit Wikipedia for a little history on the development of the theories behind crime mapping.

I support crime mapping and making information available to the public, but I'm worried that departments are too focused on trying to solve their problems with maps. I don't want police to rack up drug arrests, minor trespassing tickets and other violations that target the poor when they should be focusing on preventing violence and theft and protecting vulnerable citizens. I'm afraid that when police know their arrests will appear on a map, they'll be interested in making more arrests and not important arrests. They may also be pressured not to make arrests in neighborhoods that pride themselves for being "low-crime."

This is related to the "Broken Windows Theory" phenomenon, which suggests that by actively prosecuting minor crimes (like vandalism - hence the name), we save ourselves from the slippery slope to violence and chaos. This idea still gets a lot of support in New York City (the city where I live and one of the most active crime mapping jurisdictions) and I still think it's about 90% myth and 10% fact.

I disagree with "Broken Windows" in the same way I disagree with the belief that marijuana is a gateway drug. There's correlation but no causation. Yes, there is probably more crime in a decaying city and, yes, most people who use crystal meth probably smoked pot (or drank beer) first. But one didn't cause the other. Economic depression, broken families and lack of an effective police force were causes of both the "broken windows" in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s and the high crime rate. As Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner point out in "Freakonomics," New York officials praised the "Broken Windows Theory" for the drop in crime in the 1990s and 2000s, but rarely mentioned the huge increase in number of police officers that came with it (and the latter was likely a major factor in the drop in crime).

The problem is that it takes a holistic approach to truly lower crime and improve our cities, and that approach is neither cheap nor easy. So while maps and windows may seem like quick fixes, it's education and the economy that prevent crime. It's fine for our police departments to continue using maps and statistics track data and make projections, but they shouldn't let pure data replace thoughtful policing.