The Important Role of Geography to Make Crime Prevention Map for Children

Abstract

These days in Japan, the number of children who become victims on brutal crimes is increasing. For decreasing the victims on such crimes, the activity of making crime prevention map is gradually spreading all over Japan. Many kinds of maps are being made in such activities. The aim of the map making activities is to foster children to understand the environment and landscape that some crimes are about to occur. Children learn such environment and landscape through the fieldwork and making crime prevention maps. Geography can play important role for making crime prevention map activities because geography and geographers accumulate the way of education of doing fieldwork, reading landscape and using Web-GIS as a tool for sharing neighborhood information. The more Geography and geographers should take part in making crime prevention map activities, the more useful and effective crime prevention activities and maps there will be.