Introduction

Albuquerque is the largest city in New Mexico and houses more than a quarter of the state's population. It is notorious for having an extremely high crime rate and an abysmal police response time, which averaged 48 minutes in 2019.[3,4,5] Out of all the population centers in New Mexico, Albuquerque was ranked the fourth highest in crime rate in 2018 [6]. In recent years, the city reported a slight decrease in crime but their crime rate continues to remain extremely high. While Albuquerque may be seeing small declines in crime rate, New Mexico continues to have a rising crime rate which is seriously impacting the state. Crime makes New Mexico an undesirable state to invest money into and thus stunts economic growth which contributes to other issues such as declining highschool graduation rates, poverty, and ultimately more crime [7]. By addressing these issues, New Mexico could see public health improve by a significant amount [8,9].

Crime rates in Albuquerque, New Mexico, remain astoundingly high, despite a decreasing national crime rate (Figure 1). As a state, New Mexico has seen a surge of crime in recent years as well. Poverty rates in New Mexico remain high but have seen slight decline overall (Figure 2). New Mexico's economic situation does not help either- New Mexico was ranked 38th in the nation for GDP in 2015 with around $86,000,000,000 and that position hasn’t changed since then [10].

A high crime rate has made Albuquerque a worse place to live. It has hurt the city’s economy and has tarnished its reputation as a whole. Crime is a complicated issue, and there is no simple solution to Albuquerque's high crime rate. The city does not have the resources or budget to hire enough police officers [11], which is a costly endeavor and thus needs a better solution for its high crime rate [12]. Our solution to this problem is crime mapping [13].

Crime mapping is the act of recording the location of crimes and displaying them visually on a map to detect patterns from them. This helps the police force do a better job at stationing police officers [14].

This solution is based on the "broken window theory" which explains why crime is concentrated in localized areas. The broken window theory is the idea that if crime occurs in an area, and is not addressed, it will spiral out of control. This theory was supported by an experiment run by Philip Zimbardo in 1969, where he abandoned two cars on the side of the road in two cities. In one, the car was destroyed very quickly, and stripped for its parts. On the other, though, the car sat there until Zimbardo eventually damaged it. After the car was damaged, it was then destroyed very quickly afterward. This chain of effects supported the broken window theory. [15] Even if the broken window theory was not entirely correct, it supports the idea that crime springs from other crimes, which is what our model is based on.