Distribution Pattern of Urban Crimes in Sri Lanka; with Special Reference to Mirihana Police Division

Abstract

Attached

Crime records of arrests and crime events in police stations (police records) are kept manually. No sufficient systems have been still developed for crime mapping, and other types of recording. Therefore, this study focuses on finding out the identification of crime locations, time and the factors that directly and indirectly affect crimes. Geographic Information System (GIS) uses geography and computer-generated maps as an interface for integrating and accessing massive amounts of location-based information. Hence it plays a very important role in crime mapping and analysis. In addition, GIS allows police personnel to make plans effectively for emergency response, priorities, analyze crime events, and predict future crime control. The objective of the study is to identify the relationship between crime and geographic environment. In addition, finding out hot spots in a location where different crimes keep occurring over an extended period of time and finding out the location which signals the police personnel to be more attentive. The Mirihana police station was selected to study the problem using different techniques and secondary and primary data. The analysis was mainly carried out using GPS and GIS techniques. The relationship between environment and crime is very clear. Specially, road network and commercial clusters and low income settlement areas have a positive relationship and other factors like open space, government institution, parks, grounds etc. have no direct relationship with crimes in the Mirihana Police Division in Sri Lanka.