The purpose of this assignment is for you to use interactive online crime mapping systems to create crime maps. Note that some of these web sites allow you to map multiple cities and jurisdictions as they are general companies that have data from a wide range of places (e.g., raidsonline.com, crimereports.com, spotcrime.com). Other web sites are hosted by individual cities or police departments (e.g., Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle).
In this assignment, you are to use four different websites to create four different maps from different cities. Importantly, the point of the assignment is to see the different systems that are available and that can be used to map crime online. To complete this assignment, you will create a map from each separate web site examining all or some of the crime or other available criminal justice data on the site. Be sure to conduct queries that make sense and are interesting to you. It may take more than a few queries to produce usable maps with data. For each map, you will complete the following items….
Use the headers below for the write up of each map:
- Title: Title the map with the city name, crime data shown in the map, date range covered in the map.
- Image of the map: Copy and paste your map from your desktop into Word. You can use the print screen button on your computer or other editing or “snipping” tools. Crop the image the best you can so only the legend and the map are showing.
- Source: The name of the city hosting the website and the web address
- Description: Include a paragraph describing what is shown on the map with a brief interpretation (i.e., what is it telling you or an average citizen about crime or activity in that city).
- General Impressions: For each map, describe your general impressions about using the site (e.g., ease of use, understandability, quality of maps that you were able to create, etc.).
