Google Map Hack & Chicago Crime Data

joepez writes "In recent weeks we've seen some great Google Maps hacks (HousingMaps, Google's own Ride Finder, etc.), but this weekend Adrian has brought us something truly innovative. He's merged Google map data with Chicago crime data to present a once a day updated crime map of the entire city, including some really nice summarized data. Adrian calls the project Chicagocrime.org. How long till we have real time crime data showing up on Google's map? Pull open HousingMaps next to Chicagocrime.org and figure out if that low rent apartment is truly worth it. Or is this all a clever trick on Google's part to build up more and more third parties dependent upon Google?" There's also a cheap gas hack as well.

Comments

Combine the Projects...

[DarthVeda]

Combine housing maps and crime maps to discover exactly where not to live in Chicago!

I doubt that was their intention...

[garcia]

Or is this all a clever trick on Google's part to build up more and more third parties dependent upon Google?

I doubt that Google intended on getting third parties dependent on GMaps. If they really wanted that to happen they would have released an open API rather than having to have people poke around in the code to figure out how it all worked.

Yeah, you can do some REALLY neat stuff with GMaps now (and even some of the things I suggested should be available when it first came out) but I just don't think that it was Google's main intention.

If anything, they just want to be a player in the same markets as Yahoo and MSN and not have to link to their competitor's mapping products.

Re:Prostitution

[geoffspear]

or the best places to get arrested trying to pick up a hooker.

The Fickle Slashdot Opinion

[PhantomHarlock]

"Or is this all a clever trick on Google's part to build up more and more third parties dependent upon Google?"

It's amazing how fast a company can go from being Slashdot's little darling to suddenly being suspected at every turn of being the new EvilEmpire(tm).

Guys, these people are making wonderful tools and making them available for free, and letting people mess with them. They're probably reading comments like that slack-jawed, thinking "man, you just can't win with that crowd!" Give em a break! :)

-M

PLEASE make Coral links mandatory

[LanMan04]

How hard is it for the editor who posts these stories to the front page of Slashdot to replace them with Coral Cache links?

Seriously, just make it an automated process or something. ALWAYS make it a Coral link.

Re:Sex Offender's Registry

[Capt James McCarthy]

Great. You want to punish someone forever from one mistake. Way to have a system of justice dude.

Besides that, you probably don't want to know who really lives beside you.

Re:Sex Offender's Registry

[rpresser]

The problem is that the sexual offender registry lists people who are NOT "known sexual predators". These people, who made a mistake -- for instance, a 19 year old whose 15-year-old girlfriend's dad is a raging lunatic -- are now forever branded as sexual predators, EVEN THOUGH THEY DID THEIR TIME ALREADY.

Yes, there are child rapists on the list too. But can you tell them apart just from the list? Are you going to bother to try? I doubt it.

Gas at $2/gallon *is* cheap.

[Colin Smith]

Just you wait until it's $6.50/gallon.

Re:Sex Offender's Registry

[pherthyl]

Bullshit. If that's considered a dumb mistake, then 30%-50% of college students make the same mistake all the time. You think if the guy is a couple months older than his girlfriend, they're going to stop having sex when he turns 18?

This does not fall under a stupid mistake.. It's a retarded law that was excercised because of a hysterical mother somewhere.

Re:Sex Offender's Registry

[jbarr]

I am certainly not against your idea, but what I don't understand is why we are so eger to have sex offenders' names and locations so easily publically accessible, yet we do not do the same for other criminals? Killers, corporate criminals, etc. Why are these crimes exempt from continued public scrutiny after the criminal has "paid his dues" while sex offenders are not? Yes, sex offenders are a despicable lot, but why do we limit these listings to just them?

Re:Cheap Gas Hack?

[Anonymous Coward]

U forgot about the dead Iraqi.....

1 gallon of gas = $2 and a dead Iraqi.....

certainly not cheap......but lotsOpeople don't seem to mind

Re:Sex Offender's Registry

[floodo1]

its not a matter of ignorance of the law. its a matter of punishment fitting the crime.

the sex offender database (in most states) is equiv to a single scarlet letter. a letter that carries no information other than sex offender.

the POINT is that there can be a HUGE difference between a single conviction of statutory rape and a true repeat sexual predator. just as there is a huge difference between offenders who violate children, and offenders who violate adults.

and i question teh sex offender database on the grounds that if you're giong to go so far as to label sex offenses as worthy of a public database, why not create a database of violent criminals?
why not create a database of thieves?
why not create a database of ALL criminals....i mean it would be good to know that the guy next door is a pyro!

so the question truly is where is the line? why are sex offenders that only ones worthy of a database?

not to mention that the database is a stop gap solution, not fixing the underlying problem......that the justice system isnt capable of allowing people to pay their penance to society and be done. a justice system that brands people is just a shitty justice system.

if there is a need for a database, there is a failure in the system. people need to be helped, or kept. if there where no repeat offenders (or very few) then we wouldnt need your "public safety" database!

Why?

[xant]

Because sex offenses of a particular kind are actually related to sexual addiction, and there is an extremely high recidivism rate due to the fact that prisons don't treat addiction very effectively, and treating addiction at all is difficult in the first place, and these are people that are extremely deep into their addictions to have committed their crimes.

Having said that:
* Why don't we fix the prison system so it does treat addictive behaviors related to sex?
* Why don't we distinguish between sex crimes that are connected to an addition and those that are not, and not track sexual offenders who are unlikely to commit a new crime?
* Why are there so many people on the list who don't deserve to be there? (Misguided applications of the statutory-rape laws come to mind, as others have pointed out.)

Without fixing these problems I am opposed to the sex offender registry, but I do understand why it exists.

Re:Why?

[Maestro4k]

Because sex offenses of a particular kind are actually related to sexual addiction, and there is an extremely high recidivism rate due to the fact that prisons don't treat addiction very effectively, and treating addiction at all is difficult in the first place, and these are people that are extremely deep into their addictions to have committed their crimes. To some extent you're correcct, prisons are quite bad at actually treating the addiction (or any underlying reason for criminal activity) so it's no surprise that there's a high rate of recidivism in general. Granted it is higher with sex offenders, probably because prisons don't seem to even _try_ to treat the problem. The person just spends years in prison thinking about what they wish they could do again.

However, I don't think it takes a deep addiction to cause these acts, what info I can find with some quick googling indicates that pedophiles (which fall into a class of disorders called paraphilias) and that they litteral don't think the way you and I do. One example given in discussing treatment states "A pedophile observing a young girl wearing shorts may erroneously think, 'she wants me.'" That's not something most "normal" people would think of a female of any age. The more normal thought process would be "I want her" instead.

The treatments listed don't look terribly useful. All are variations of positive and negative reinforcement. For instance:

"In olfactory aversion therapy, for example, the pedophile is trained to pair and associate the chain of events preceding pedophilic acts with the odor of ammonia, supplied by smelling salt capsules. In covert desensitization, the pedophile practices imagining the chain of events leading to pedophilic acts, and then inserts imagined negative consequences into the chain."

This sounds destined for failure because it requires the willful cooperation of the pedophile. You can't be certain they're associating the smells or negative images with what they say they are after all.

Why don't we fix the prison system so it does treat addictive behaviors related to sex?

Better why don't we fix the prison system so it treats the underlying problems for all crimes, not just sex crimes. While we're at it why don't we work at reintroducing prisoners to normal society and assisting them in finding work/etc. If they know they can have a better life and we help remove the obstacles in the path for former convicts it would likely help lower crime rates for all crimes.

Why don't we distinguish between sex crimes that are connected to an addition and those that are not, and not track sexual offenders who are unlikely to commit a new crime?

Good question for the first part. I know my state doesn't, most of the sex offenders in my area are for statutory rape. (At least the website lists what the crime was if they committed it in state, for out of state crimes it just says unknown, not very helpful). How about we work hard to treat the underlying problems the ones who historically have a high rate of recidivism have and track them through required therapy as a requirment of their parole instead? If they seem to be making progress, or are cured (although I doubt this is possible, I've seen quite a bit of literature flatly state there is no cure for pedohpilia) then we don't track the publically. I have no problem with the police knowing their whereabouts but publishing the info to the world just invites cases of vigilante justice -- often against the wrong targets because the info was out of date.

Why are there so many people on the list who don't deserve to be there? (Misguided applications of the statutory-rape laws come to mind, as others have pointed out.)

Frankly because all the avid supporters of laws like this seem to forget there are different level of sex offenders. If you asked them, I'll bet a good 99% of them would tell you all sex crimes are equally horrendous

Re:Sex Offender's Registry

[Anonymous Coward]

In our state, offenders are coded, and level 1 offenders like your 19 year old with a 15 year old girlfriend don't even show up. Some people think I am paranoid and overprotective about my children, I look at the map of level 2 and 3 sex offenders near my house and feel quite justified in that. The real question though is do you look at those, see there's no one nearby for example and assume your kid(s) are pretty safe? If so you've lowered how secure your kids are and actually raised the possibility they might be attacked. Sex offender lists and such only give a false sense of security. Look at cases from the past few months (mostly from Florida for some strange reason) alone:

• In one the sex offender had registered but wasn't living where he said he was. Lot of good that list did therel.
• In another the sex offender was/had been dating the girl's mother. Even if he reported his address correctly it didn't help, after all the girl's mother decided that it was OK to date a former sex offender. In his defense he apparently didn't rape her, just murdered her, but hey that sex offender list sure helped predict THAT didn't it?
• In the most recent one the girl was raped and left for dead in a trash bin by a 17yo "friend" who was also staying at her Godmother's house. He had only a minor criminal record (for instance he was on probation for throwing a rock through a car window). That sex offenders list sure helped there too didn't it!

In any case the point is: look at the lists all you want, but if you don't teach your kids to avoid strangers, don't keep an eye on them as much as possible and don't bother to check up on what kind of people they associate with, you're not protecting them any at all. Just telling them to avoid the "1900 block of 25th Avenue" won't help much if the sex offender's staying with a friend on the 1700 block for instance so it's not really useful for anything location-wise. It can give you a sense how many _known_ sex offenders there are in the area, but the problem reallly isn't the known ones, it's the ones who haven't done anything yet you need to worry about -- a lot.

You may be different, but far too many people supporting these lists look at them as a panacea, a "if only we'd had a list this horrible crime wouldn't have happened". Sorry folks these crimes still get committed regularly even in the states with the lists. Maybe it makes it a bit easier to find suspects after the fact, but that's not going to prevent the crime or bring a child back from death now is it?