With new crime-mapping Web sites, students and Philadelphia residents can keep track of area crimes, all without leaving their computers.
One such site - ucrime.com - was launched about a month and a half ago. Ucrime.com provides crime maps, data and alert for more than 100 colleges across the country.
Greg Kastner, the vice president of business development for the site, said he and ucrime.com's founder, Colin Drane, both went to the University of Virginia, "where crime was a huge topic and something that was always on people's minds."
He said the two see the site as a way to "keep these students better informed of what is going on around them."
Though ucrime.com is the newest resource, it isn't the only Web site Penn students can visit to find out about crimes around campus.
The Division of Public Safety began posting its crime log, which is updated daily, online last fall. The site contains crimes that were reported in the past week.
"DPS wanted to ensure that our Penn community was well-informed about what was occurring within the Penn Patrol Zone," DPS spokeswoman Stef Cella wrote in an e-mail. She added that the online log "increases the transparency of crime that occurs on campus."
And for citywide crime data, the Philadelphia Police launched a new crime-mapping feature on its Web site in May.
"We wanted to give people who wanted to see what's going on in their own neighborhood the opportunity to do so," said Lt. Frank Vanore, a Philadelphia Police spokesman.
Crime information is updated frequently and posted "pretty much in real time," Vanore said. "As we see it, you're seeing it on the Web site."
Vanore added that the Philadelphia Police's Web site is being redesigned, and a "completely new" site will be available sometime in the next few months.
Online crime-information Web sites aren't just for Philadelphia and universities.
Spotcrime.com, a new Web site launched in January by the creators of ucrime.com, offers regularly updated crime information for a number of cities across the country.
Web sites like spotcrime.com receive a great deal of public attention. Kastner said the site receives about 10,000 hits per day, depending on the day of the week.
Spotcrime.com's users can view information about crimes in their area online and sign up to receive e-mail and text message alerts when crimes occur near their address.
Campus safety experts say such sites could prove useful in making crime information more accessible.
"Online dissemination of information is the future - not just of [crime information], but of everything," said Daniel Carter, a senior vice president for Security on Campus. "I think there's tremendous potential there."
