Washington College Magazine

This image, from a conference presentation prepared by Gloria Laycock, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, and Nancy La Vigne, US Urban Institute, depicts the robbery hotspots of Croydon in South London. WC's Andrea Lange and Stewart Bruce propose to create similar maps of Maryland's Eastern Shore. Regional crime mapping can influence future allocations of police resources to prevent and combat crime.

College Launches Rural Crime-Mapping Project

Residents of Maryland's Eastern Shore used to leave their doors unlocked. Nowadays, people are much more cautious, without really understanding where and why crime happens.

Criminology professor Andrea Lange and Stewart Bruce, director of the College's Geographic Information Systems (GIS) lab, may shed some light on the subject. With a $95,000 grant from the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention, they'll be mapping out crime.

Though crime mapping is commonly used in metropolitan areas, it will be a new step for law enforcement agencies on Maryland's Eastern Shore, some of which still use old-fashioned pin maps to track the occurrence of crime.

"We'll be expanding the perspective, to look at trends that may be occurring across these jurisdictions," Lange said.

The project will be completed in three phases. The first phase assesses each law enforcement agency to learn how they collect data and what kinds of technology and personnel training they use.

Over the summer, with the help of several student interns, the project will analyze data reported to the FBI in Uniform Crime Reports and, using the GIS lab, map where crimes occurred.

Once the mapping is complete, the team will prepare a report of its findings and make recommendations for sustaining crime-mapping in the area.

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