The fun of monitoring crime
Aren’t these icons cute? They bring to mind a computer game, if not for one significant difference: it’s the real world. How does one feel knowing about the number, place and time of shootings, assaults, thefts and robberies? Is this information going to make people stay away of, say, Manhattan?
We are more informed, but what do we do with this virtual information? The crimes are not going away thanks to a click, and there are no bonus points to score. Shall we then choose not to leave the house, or will we walk around with our noses stuck in our smartphones getting the latest data on the street corners to avoid (or, on the contrary, run to the crime scene as Weegee would do)? Or, perhaps, we will use this information when bargaining for lower rent, because “can’t you see, this is a dangerous neighborhood,” as if the crime rate in Bed-Stuy had not been known before.
What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over, and in theory it should be no different with such ostensibly informative images as crime maps. But do we care? Do we translate these computer graphics into real life? Or is it just another piece of information overload we check once the crime has been done, to confirm we never should have gone to place x in the first place?
Or, still differently, we can score. A crime, once validated in the system, becomes an icon on the map. Is this the prize for committing a crime or being a victim of one? Our experience may be transformed into categorized graphics on a virtual map. We are back in the game. But we may have just been shot.
See: SpotCrime ; CrimeMapping
