Open Government and Citizen Participation in Law Enforcement via Crowd Mapping

Abstract

The authors describe WikiCrimes, a project founded on a website of the same name that aims to offer a common interaction space for the general public where they can note criminal activity and track the lo-cations where such crimes occur. The goal is to encourage collaborative participation that generates useful information for everyone. The authors describe their experience with WikiCrimes, emphasizing the services it provides to citizens and underlining some of the problems they've overcome to date. Their ultimate goal is to help establish a research agenda about the topic by inviting the academic community to embrace WikiCrimes as a platform that bridges citizen participation and open government.