To Map or Not to Map: Assessing the Impact of Crime Maps on Police Officer Perceptions of Crime

An increasingly popular strategy within community oriented and problem oriented policing is to provide patrol officers with crime analysis information in the form of crime maps. The strategy is designed to encourage officers to use maps to determine problem areas within their beats and to modify their patrol strategies accordingly. Despite the promise of crime maps and GIS in general, no research has evaluated the use of crime maps by patrol officers. This paper assesses the effects of crime maps on officers' perceptions of crime patterns and their subsequent patrol activities. Results indicate that simply providing officers with maps of crime distributions will not alone improve their understanding of crime patterns within their jurisdiction. Moreover, in order to have any real impact on officer perception and subsequent police activities, agencies need to invest in training and infrastructure to allow the full capabilities of crime mapping to be realised. In addition to a discussion of the relevant findings, the article also discusses general problems associated with the implementation and use of crime mapping as well as future research aims.