Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
FROM DATA TO MAPS
A criminal justice data set is most commonly maintained and presented as a list.
It is designed to track people as individual cases. As individuals make their way
through the system, information is entered into a database and accumulates:
name, crime, length of sentence, home address, and so on. Individually, the infor -
mation forms a portrait of a case. Aggregated, the cases create a statistical portrait
of a society.
When maps are made from data such as these, they often stop at the very first
element: what crimes were committed and where. Crime maps have played a sig -
nificant role in the public discourse on cities over the last thirty years. These maps
have, in fact, become one of the most prominent instruments through which we
understand and interpret our cities.
Excerptfromdatabase,
www.chicagocrime.org.
 
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