Crime Mapping for the Purpose of Policing in Slovenia - Recent Developments

Abstract

The development and use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a method of crime analysis is a relatively new analytical method, where geographical maps present an integral part of the crime analysis. A review of previous studies on crime mapping in Slovenia confirmed that GIS enables fast, efficient and with the analytical methods used, supported decision making about the problem of crime in the studied environment. The aim of this study is to present the use of GIS as a tool for crime mapping in Slovenia for the purpose of policing and criminal investigation. In the present paper, the use of GIS for crime analysis in two studies are presented: 1) property crime analysis for year 2010 in the two largest Slovenian cities, Ljubljana and Maribor, using crime hot spot analysis; and, 2) the project Krimistat.si, where police statistics database and Google maps application are combined in order to prepare a web-application that would be user friendly and possibly accessible to everyone that uses the internet. The results of the property crime analysis in Ljubljana and Maribor in 2010 using crime mapping show similar situations as in surveys conducted in 2003 and 2004. The highest density of property crime is in the city centre of both cities and expands alongside the main roads to the outskirts of the city, thus the increase of the property crime is detected also in the shopping and entertainment areas. Finally, the encountered advantages and obstacles are discussed. The Krimistat.si is a new project that enables that public is informed about the distribution of reported crime occurrences. However, there is a legal obstacle related to the protection of personal data that prevents the public use of this web-application. Despite that, the web-application and other crime mapping analysis represent a progress in this field, because they follow the contemporary police trends in crime analysis. This is the beginning of research in this field with the use of contemporary analytical tools and techniques in Slovenia.