Crime mapping is used by analysts in law enforcement agencies to map, visualize, and analyze crime incident patterns. It is a key component of crime analysis and the CompStat policing strategy. Mapping crime, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), allows crime analysts to identify crime hot spots, along with other trends and patterns. CrimeMapping.com is one of the major websites that provide information about recent crime activity by neighborhood. ClearMap is the Chicago Police Department offering. Using SpotCrime, it's possible to look at crime mapping in Dublin:
http://www.spotcrime.com/ie/dublin
Economists have some timely insights to offer on the cyclicality of crime behaviour. Derek Deadman and Ziggy MacDonald from the University of Leicester have shown that the general level of recorded crime fell in the United States and many European countries in the ten years previous to 2008. However, a recent issue of Scientific American asks "Will the Recession Spark a Crime Wave?". This fear is also becoming notable in the American media: Will Recession Make Cities Dangerous Again?
Bruce Weinberg from Ohio State University and his collaborators Eric D. Gould of Hebrew University and David Mustard of the University of Georgia have examined the crime behaviour of young males with no more than a high school education — the demographic group that commits the most crime. These authors find that average wages and unemployment rates were directly linked to the incidence of property crimes. Rick Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, says: “I don’t think that newly unemployed people become criminals,” Rosenfeld notes, but “marginal consumers—the shopper who goes to discount stores—many of those consumers turn to street markets during an economic downturn. These are often markets for used goods, but some are stolen goods. As demand increases, incentives for criminals to commit crimes expand.”
Kevin Denny and Colm Harmon from UCD, along with Reamonn Lydon from the University of Warwick, have done an "Econometric Analysis of Burglary in Ireland". They model the level of burglary in Ireland between 1952 and 1998. The share of young males in the population is associated with higher levels of crime. Imprisonment and detection act as powerful forces for reducing crimes. The effects of aggregate consumption are more difficult to pin down but Denny, Harmon and Lydon show that higher spending is associated with more lucrative but probably fewer crimes. One somewhat surprising result is that they were unable to find any robust effect from direct measures of labour market activity such as unemployment rates or wage levels.
