In this section, several methods of identifying and analyzing geographic concentrations of criminal activity, or “hot spots,” are demonstrated. Demarcating hot spots is one of the most important contributions that crime mapping makes in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement. Knowing where the most dense areas of criminal activity occur may impact a broad range of police and government decision making, including officer deployment, precinct station location, and the geographic focus of both police and social service anticrime initiatives.

Precisely identifying hot spots, however, is conceptually and statistically complex. In Chapter 5, John E. Eck, Jeffrey Gersh, and Charlene Taylor use a method of research they call repeat address mapping, which ...