NCJ Number
190418
Journal
Crime Mapping News Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Dated: Summer 2001 Pages: 1-4
Date Published
2001
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article presents the methodology and findings of an evaluation of the crime mapping website of the San Diego Police Department (SDPD).
Abstract
The SDPD was a pioneer in 1996 in putting crime maps on the Internet. Now, anyone in the world can query and view certain crime, arrest, call, and traffic data for anywhere in San Diego County. Searches can be geographic -- by street, neighborhood, police, beat, city, or council district -- as well as by incident type, time of day, and day of week. The evaluation of the website began in May 2000 and will be completed in June 2001. Through the use of surveys and focus groups, a substantial part of the evaluation was to get user feedback. Presentations and surveys began in November 2000 and will continue through the end of May 2001. Although the results of the evaluation were not complete at the time this article was written, a number of preliminary recommendations have been formulated and presented to the Board of Directors of San Diego County's Automated Regional Justice Information System. One recommendation was to add more data types and calls for service from other agencies. Other recommendations were to provide an option for looking at 1 year of data; change the symbols (black and white printouts make it difficult to discern crime types); expand incident identification to include landmark identification and lists of incidents that result from the query; improve and link crime statistics; and market the site in a more formal fashion. 6 figures