A research topic in the geographic analysis of
crime that has attracted much attention is the
identification of crime ‘‘hot spots,’’ namely the
places or small areas in which disproportionately
large number of criminal incidents cluster. Identifying
crime hot spots has an important practical
implication, because there are accumulating pieces
of evidence that the more law enforcement efforts
are focused on high-crime places or high-crime time,
the more effective and efficient they would be in
controlling crime (Braga, 2001; Sherman and Eck,
2002). A variety of approaches have been proposed
for the identification and representation of crime
hot spots, ranging from visual examination of pointpattern
maps to highly sophisticated procedures
such as spatial ellipses (Block, 1995).