Continuation of Community Outreach: Criminal Justice
Michael Arter, Ph. D.
E-mail: MLA14@psu.edu
Dr. Arter is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Penn State Altoona. He joined the criminal justice faculty after receiving his doctorate from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2005. Dr. Arter had an 18-year career in law enforcement prior to his return to the academic setting. His teaching and research interests focus on law enforcement, drugs and drugs policies, police stress, ethics, police mentoring, and criminological theory. He has been involved with HUD COPC for the past three years.
CRIMJ-495, Internship
Dr. Arter will continue to utilize students at the Fairview Hills development of the Altoona Housing Authority to complete service projects that assist with youth development. Student interns will work directly with Altoona Housing Authority support staff as well as with Joe Campbell, the Fairview Hills after school Program Director. Students will be developing programs on Internet Safety, Facebook and MySpace.
“This approach is kind of off track from what most people would consider a Criminal Justice focus, but it’s really not. Delinquency prevention is on of our main concentrations.”
-Mike Arter, Ph.D.
CRIMJ-210, Law Enforcement Function
Students will continue to collect data used to create a geographical pattern, or map, of crime at the Fairview Hills development. The information will then be analyzed to determine if a pattern exists for future prediction purposes. A summary of the report will be sent to the Altoona Police Department.
Crime Mapping is a process used by law enforcement analysts to visualize crime incident patterns and calls for service, as well as any other pertinent information. This process allows for the identification of crime hot spots and other trends or patterns of crimes and calls for service.
Crime maps can be produced to visualize various information. Specific crimes can be highlighted, locations can be analyzed as to all crime which occurs, and calls for service can be isolated in order for police management to better allocate resources.
The Altoona Police Department crime maps attached include maps from June 2007 indicating the crimes of criminal mischief, thefts, and burglaries (both commercial and residential). Altoona Police Department uses these maps to assign directed patrols to the areas which require attention. The maps not only indicate crime and location, but also the time of the offense in order for the police agency to assign personnel during times when more crime is taking place.
Maps of Altoona
