IF DETECTIVES modelled crime patterns in the same way that biologists model the spread of disease, they would be able to work out with far greater accuracy where criminals are likely to strike.
Until now, efforts to predict crimes like burglaries have simply identified “hotspots” where crimes have occurred some time in the past. The assumption is that if an area has been targeted before, it will be again. But Kate Bowers, a criminologist at University College London, says predictive mapping can be greatly improved if the computer model includes a sense of time, and takes into account how recently…
