Crossing the Borders of Crime: Crossing the Borders of Crime: Factors Influencing the Utility and Practicality Factors Influencing the Utility and Practicality Factors Influencing the Utility and Practicality of Interjurisdictional Crime Mapping of Interjurisdictional Crime Mapping of Interjurisdict

Recent improvements in mapping software have made GIS applications to crime relatively inexpensive and effective. This has raised interest in mapping crime across borders and giving police managers the capability to see larger crime patterns. This capability suggests that Cross Boundary Crime Mapping Systems (CBCMS) have great utility. A CBCMS is a group of police agencies that share mappable data on a routine basis. This paper will discuss factors that influence the utility of creating a CBCMS, including the willingness to act on discovered patterns, the presence of shared crime patterns, data quality, administrative arrangements, and concerns about privacy and data sharing. Although technology has made cross-jurisdictional mapping possible, these issues are the most critical to success. During the European Middle Ages, western mapmakers, who had forgotten the lessons of the Greek geographers, and not yet developed modern cartography, believed that unknown regions neighboring the small known world were inhabited with beasts we now know to be mythical. These creatures symbolized their fears of outlying perils that might threaten the known world. Fear of these creatures slowly receded as mapmakers learned more from explorers, sailors, and merchants (Wilford, 1982). Today, as crime mappers use increasingly sophisticated software they are able to show crime patterns in ever greater detail. But, like the old mapmakers, they remain apprehensive about what lurks beyond our jurisdiction’s borders. Do hidden forces across the line create crime on our side of the line? Are the citizens and police in the areas beyond our