REBECCA J. STONE, PhD, MPH

Crime Mapping

Posted on by Rebecca Stone

Like many (most?) PhDs, I did not receive any formal training in teaching during my graduate studies. The teaching preparation in my program, at the time, was pretty much trial-by-teaching. Once we had completed our non-dissertation coursework, we could teach a course as a graduate instructor. We were paired with a supervising professor, given a past syllabus for the course, and entrusted with 30 or more undergraduate students for a semester. I was fortunate that my supervising professor pointed me in the direction of McKeachie’s Teaching Tips and asked me some prompting questions about how I would manage the course — most of my peers got less than that.

Teaching well has always been deeply important to me, so in the few years since then I have sought out more information and have been fortunate to find online communities of skilled, generous educators. I owe so much to scholars like Raul Pacheco-Vega, Jess Calarco, the Teaching with a Sociological Lens group, and many others. I am also very grateful to other communities committed to open access — for example, the R community.

To start giving back, I have decided to make a lot of my teaching materials public so that other scholars can adapt and use them in their courses. I am starting with my 300-level undergraduate course Crime Mapping.

I developed this course in part through the Suffolk University Center for Teaching & Scholarly Excellence Course Design Institute, a 3-day workshop that helps instructors create and align their course goals, learning objectives, and assessments. I had picked up some of this information along the way, but had never taken the time to sit down and do “backwards design” so thoughtfully. I taught the course for the first time this semester (Spring 2019) and I can see how well this time was spent. Though there were difficult moments in the semester (teaching software skills + content can be tricky), I was pleasantly surprised by how well the whole course seemed to “hang together.” The assignments reliably called back to earlier content or relied on skills that students had just been taught, we covered everything I wanted to cover without feeling rushed, and everything just seemed to work.

The course outline I developed in the CDI, with course goals in blue, objectives in yellow, formative assessments in pink, and summative assessments in orange.

 

Below, I am providing lecture slides, in-class assignments, and ArcMap assignments for a 15-week semester. In the interest of making this course even more open-access, I will be working on converting the ArcGIS assignments into R assignments for instructors who do not have institutional access to ArcGIS. I currently assign Rachel Boba Santos’ Crime Analysis with Crime Mapping, 4th edition , as well as some supplemental readings like NIJ reports, scholarly articles, and resources from the POP Center.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional crime analyst and this course is not intended to provide formal crime analysis training. This is a 300-level elective course designed to introduce students to the scholarship of crime and place, and to teach students some basic GIS skills.

First, the course goals, learning objectives, and assessments I developed in the CDI:

Goal

Learning Objective

Assessment
Upon successful completion of this course, students should…
Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
Students will be assessed on these objectives through…
Understand the environmental and social factors that shape the spatial distribution of crime.
·    Describe how environmental criminology differs from traditional criminology.
·    Explain and apply rational choice and routine activities theories of crime.
·    Explain and apply crime pattern theory and the idea of the “journey to crime.”
·    Analyze a given crime problem using the “crime triangle.”
In-class and out-of-class writing assignments
Midterm and final exams
Final project report
Know how to find, critique, and use geospatial and sociopolitical data to build crime maps and analyze crime patterns.
·    Identify useful secondary data sources for crime analysis and mapping.
·    Construct primary data collection instruments.
·    Critique crime data as a socially constructed product and explain what this means for our understanding, analysis, and prevention of “crime.”
In-class and out-of-class writing assignments
Midterm and final exams
Final project report
Know how to create informative, audience-specific crime analysis and mapping products.
·    Create a crime map by combining base map layers and crime data, using appropriate symbology and labeling.
·    Create informative tables and graphs for the visualization of crime data.
·    Write about crime analysis and mapping processes and results, targeted at specific audiences (e.g. the public vs. fellow practitioners).
·    Give spoken and visual presentations about crime analysis and mapping processes and results.
In-class ArcGIS assignments
Midterm and final exams
Final project report and presentation
Understand how to use GIS software, internet search engines, and other available resources to create maps and troubleshoot common software problems.
·    Identify and describe common GIS functions for assembling and manipulating geospatial data and mapping products.
·    Create base maps and geocode social data, including adding data layers, moving and hiding layers, changing symbols and labels, and manipulating data.
·    Practice problem-solving and troubleshooting skills including using search engines and other resources to learn more about error messages and how to retrace steps to resolve errors.
In-class ArcGIS assignments
Midterm and final exams
Final project report
Understand how crime analysis and mapping results connect to evidence-based crime prevention and reduction strategies.
·    Access practitioner and scholarly literature to research existing strategies and evaluation outcomes.
·    Apply the “crime triangle” or “problem analysis triangle” to a given crime problem to identify opportunities for intervention.
·    Describe the key principles of CPTED and apply them to design or redesign a public space to deter crime.
·    Describe, give examples of, and apply the five major situational crime prevention strategies.
In-class and out-of-class writing assignments
In-class ArcGIS assignments
Midterm and final exams
Final project report

 

And the course schedule — click links for materials. The ArcGIS assignments reference a folder of map files and data, which you can download here (all map files and crime data were publicly available through Census TIGER or Analyze Boston, I just compiled them in one place for students): Merged 2017 and 2018 Crime Data – Shapefiles and Dr Stones Map Layers and Data.

 

Week

Topic and Materials
1
Topic: Intro to Course 
Complete syllabus quiz
Final Project and Presentation Assignment
Topics: Introduction to Crime Analysis // The Role of Crime Analysis in Policing
Before class: Read textbook chapters 1 & 3
W1 Crime Analyst Job Search
2
Topic: Environmental Theories of Crime I 
Before class: Read textbook chapter 2 and “The Routine Activity Approach” (on Blackboard)
Week 2.1 – Environmental Criminology and Routine Activities Theory
W2 Applying theories
Topic: Environmental Theories of Crime 
Before class: Read “The geometry of crime and crime pattern theory” (on Blackboard)
Week 2.2 – Geometry of Crime and Crime Pattern Theory
Mapping activity spaces (see slides)
3
Topic: Crime Analysis Process and Data
Before class: Read textbook chapters 4 & 5
Week 3.1 – Crime Analysis Process and Data
Topic: Environmental Surveys
Before class: Review the example environmental surveys on Blackboard and come prepared to discuss!
Week 3.2 – Environmental Surveys and Direct Observation
Creating an environmental survey (see slides)
4
Topic: The Past and Present of Crime Mapping
Before class: Read NIJ Report Chapter 1 (on Blackboard)
Week 4.1 – Past and Present of Crime Mapping
Topic: ArcGIS Introduction and Data Management
Before class: Make sure you have your USB storage drive! Today we will start working with maps and you will need to save your work.
W4 Introduction to ArcGIS
5
Topic: Building base maps
Before class: Read NIJ Report Chapter 2 (on Blackboard)
In class: ArcGIS Exercise 1, building a base map of Boston
W5 Building Your Base Map of Boston
Topic: Symbols: Points, Lines, Polygons
Before class: Review NIJ Report Chapter 2
Week 5.2 – Points, Lines, and Polygons
6
Topic: Geocoding
Before class: Read NIJ Report Chapter 4 (on Blackboard)
Week 6.1 Geocoding
In class: ArcGIS Exercise 2, adding ADDRFEAT layer to your Boston basemap and geocoding your crime data
W6 Adding Data
7
Topic: Mapping Applications; Queries, Selections, and Buffers
Before class: Read Zgoba et al. (on Blackboard) – focus on method and results.
Week 7.1 – Queries, Selections, and Buffers
W7 Policy Analysis Writing Activity
In class: ArcGIS Exercise 3, exploring the potential impact of sex offender residency restrictions in Boston
W7 Using Mapping for Policy Analysis
8
Topic: Choropleths and hot spot maps
In class: ArcGIS Exercise 4, making shaded grid maps/choropleths using Boston crime data
W8 Creating Choropleths
In class: MIDTERM EXAM
9
Topic: Preparing Maps for Sharing
Before class: Read NIJ Report chapter 5 (on Blackboard)
In class: ArcGIS Exercise 5, turning your Boston maps into share-ready layouts
W9 Preparing Maps for Sharing
Topic: Current and Future Issues for Crime Analysis
Before class: Read textbook chapters 8 & 9
In class: Pre-Crime documentary
W9 Pre-Crime Viewing Guide
10
Topic: Tactical Crime Analysis I & II
Before class: Read textbook chapters 10 & 11
Week 10 Tactical Crime Analysis
In class: ArcGIS 6, tactical analysis of a crime series
W10 Tactical Crime Analysis
11
Topic: Strategic Crime Analysis I & II
Before class: Read textbook chapters 12, 13, 14
In class: “Case of Places” and problem-oriented policing
Week 11 – Strategic Analysis
Week 11 – 2012 Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy – Hot Spots Policing presentation
Week 11 – Case-Places-Guide
In class: ArcGIS Exercise 7, strategic analysis and mapping chronic/long-term crime problems
W11 Strategic Crime Analysis – Hot Spots
12
Topic: Strategy Development
Before class: Read “Situational Crime Prevention”and “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design”(on Blackboard)
Week 12 – Strategy Development
W12 Situational Crime Prevention
Before class: Review your “Environmental Survey” results.
W12 Strategy Development
13
Before class: Read textbook chapter 15
In class: No class meeting – online lesson on Blackboard!
Week 13 – Mapping Products
Topic: Effective presentation: Reports and PowerPoint
In class: Final project preparation time.
14
Project Presentations
Project Presentations
15
Final exam review