WikiCrimes.com - Where Hearts are Feeling Criminal

Take a bite out of crime with WikiCrimes, the latest in crime-fighting technology, or at least crime-finding tech. In Brazil. WikiCrimes was founded by Professor Vasco Furtado of the University of Fortaleza. Professor Vasco took a look around him and realized, Brazil has a lot of crimes and little accountability. The police are generally feared or distrusted, and crime reporting is sparse, so access to data is hard to come by. Vasco designed the site with this unfortunate fact in mind, But he also relied on the realization that reports of crime are best spread by word of mouth. Using WikiCrimes is easy. It’s essentially a wiki map. You can zoom in and put a marker on the Brazilian street you were robbed or you can simply take a look at where not to go the next time you’re in Brazil. If you do the former, WikiCrimes will ask you to fill out a series of questions like if th e criminal was armed or not. So the next time you’re robbed in Brazil, you know what to do.

“Mapping crime collaboratively"

WikiCrimes has a catchy name and a great hook. It’s a useful tool that’ll hopefully spur on a change in the Brazilian police system, or at very least, keep someone out of danger.

Will WikiCrimes actually help prevent crimes? Or will it just drive criminals further from their homes? It’d be interesting to see something like this for other parts of the world as well.