I always tell my first-year criminology students not to be fooled by these graphic-enhanced "crime counters", "crime clocks", and similar so-called alert tools. They do not give you enough information to chart crime RATES (i.e. incidents per 100 thou) over a long enough period of time to make any sort of decision about crime "on the rise" in an area, nor do they indicate "risk levels". They also ignore the principle that not everyone is equally at risk of being a victim of a particular kind of crime, and worst of all they completely de-contextualize incidents. All these things do is make people feel insecure under the guise of informing the public. I mean, what does this even actually tell you? How would you use this as a "tool" to help you in your daily life? Thanks for the link though - i'll be sure to bring this one into class in September.

Agh! That graphics map is nerve-wracking with all the little violent symbols crammed on it. i'd never heard of this site.

One night after watching LITTLE CHILDREN, my neighbor and I went on the Sex Offender Registry site and typed in our zip code ... we freaked when we saw there were over 200 sex offenders registered in our neighborhood.

Until we realized our zip code also includes Ryker's Island. d'uh.

Thank you kittystockings for putting this in context.

Also, keep in mind that in wealthier neighborhoods, crimes are much more likely to occur inside. There may be just as much drug dealing and drug use, assault, and rape, but behind closed doors.

Basically, I think these kinds of tools are useless and only encourage false paranoia or false security. Use common sense and self-defense wherever you are.

Yes, we should stop reading the newspaper too, because all the bad news just makes us feel bad.

I live about 100 miles south of you in Richmond VA and our police department has this service too. It seems pretty extensive--the names of registered sex offenders and what kind of offender they are and occurrences of everything from break-ins to car accidents are listed. I don't feel paranoid or even particularly informed since lots of crimes are never even reported. Also, I've lived in this city for the past 15 years and know which areas to avoid.

Who is responsible for adding these incidents to the map on the SpotCrime website? I just checked the maps for some towns in my area and found the information to be highly inaccurate.

Most large cities have crime maps that get information directly from the police department. Check the police department's own website to find them. I find the information that comes directly from the city to be far more accurate than this SpotCrime website.

I'm wondering what you mean by "...it's startling to see the starkly lower amount of crime in MD and NoVa (Northern VA) on a map..."

The site you link to only displays crime by jurisdiction so if you look at the map of crime in DC... it seems to show a stark difference in amounts of crime with MD and VA because the map doesn't include ANY crime in MD or VA. The site doesn't have crime statistics for Montgomery County or PG County (MD) at all, although if you go to the Virginia page they do have Arlington (VA) crime stats at least. For the best data on crime in DC go to the DC Police Department's website and use their mapping application -- it is based entirely on police reports, so if a crime is reported to the police, it is included. You can't view the entire city, but you can search by address and by date for comparison.

Do you live in DC? If so, check to see if your local police station or substation has a listserv you can subscribe to for your neighborhood or PSA. The Columbia Heights/Mt. Pleasant area (3D) seems to have a great list going via yahoogroups.