INTRODUCTION

Geography is the foundation for jurisdiction, zone, and incident locations. No matter what period in law enforcement’s history we look at, mapping has always been an essential tool. Like the other forms of law enforcement, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and crime mapping are simple a more advanced and updated application of older ideas.

Geographic Information Systems and crime mapping help the police in their tasks nowadays. Pin maps have been found in police chief’s offices since the pin was discovered. Those maps were being used to depict which neighborhoods were dealing with crime and where it was taking place. As computers have improved, software applications have found even more uses for maps.

The capacity of police executives to make rational choices regarding patrol assignments, improved personnel practices, and proactive crime prevention initiatives is greatly enhanced by the usage of GIS. In practice, GIS and crime mapping are used to get the query “Where?”. This could be employed, for example, to find out where the police should concentrate efforts to capture a criminal or where a patrol should be conducted to handle rising crime levels and/or “Where is crime most prevalent?”. By using the data from different resources, various user groups may draw conclusions, establish rules, and identify suitable new methods.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a system of geographically referenced data, technology, software, people, and geography that allows the capture, storage, updating, manipulation, analysis, and presentation of many kinds of geographic information. A great deal of promise rests with GIS, which not only can store the data, but also can produce a map that represents the data.