The relevance of social media as it applies in South Africa to crime prediction

Abstract

Being able to identify and predict crime trends or track criminal movement would help anyone interested in preventing criminal activity or being able to assess where crime enforcement is needed, particularly in crimes where constant policing is impossible, such as cable theft. Many neighbourhoods in South Africa have formed voluntary community policing groups, who keep in touch using SMS and two way radios. Some have adopted websites and even Twitter as a means of being more easily in touch quickly and transparently. The influential groups recognising the value and using Twitter include Crime Line (@CrimeLineZA) and the South African Police Service (@SAPoliceService). This paper argues that existing technologies can make communication more useful in terms of data gathering, prediction and spotting broader patterns. An assessment is done to determine if South African people are already using Twitter to report crime and to find out what information they are sharing, with the goal of estabishing whether it could be useful as a source of information for the prevention of crime.