Cartographic Crimonology: An Assessment and Proposal for an Integrated Approach to Crime Mapping

To inform an emerging cartographic criminology, this thesis considers cartographic and geographic literatures that are not often present in criminological research. It offers both an historical overview of the way crime has traditionally been mapped within criminological discourse; and a critical review of contemporary crime mapping as an empirical criminological practice. It argues that contemporary "geographies of crime" are too often constructed in very abstract and dehumanising ways. As a result, they obfuscate and thus hamper our true understanding of the spatial dimension of crime.

Cartographic criminology reconciles the relevant literatures in several vast disciplines (cartography, geography, criminology, and sociology) to address the growing use of crime and crime control maps. Focus is placed on dozens of different types of maps as case studies in this thesis to assist in developing a critical understanding of the many roles maps play, along with their consequences. By exploring these literatures and emphasising imagination in the mapping of deviance, crime, and control, cartographic criminology (re)imagines ways maps inform and shape our criminological knowledge. Cartographic criminology undertakes conventional criminology’s failure to critique its employment of crime maps and the consequences of their publications. This thesis values the multitudes and significance of maps and assembles interdisciplinary knowledge to strengthen its mission.

This thesis establishes a fundamental appreciation of cartography by offering a brief review of cartography and identifying the insights that this field offers as a framework for situating crime maps. Additionally, it offers an overview of criminology’s engagement with maps and demonstrates the discipline’s failure to engage with the maps that are so often used. Various branches of geography (social, political, and cultural) inform the remaining chapters which focus on maps depicting a variety of criminal and deviant activity, the acquisition of the maps, and the general consequences of their use.