Thursday, June 10, 2010

Topography of Crime: The Local Nature of Crime


Several current and former students alerted me to this beautiful topographical rendition of San Francisco crime, rendering crime rates as elevation. The image on the left depicts the city's narcotics crime map, with obvious peaks in the Tenderloin and the Inner Mission.

Beyond the half-amused recognition of familiar patterns, this nice depiction is a reminder that crime is, above all, a local phenomenon, and it would benefit more from local approaches (policing and problem-solving) than from state-wide mass incarceration.

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