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?

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