Social Work and Technology: Using Geographic Information Systems to Leverage Community Development Responses to Hate Crimes

Abstract

This study highlights technology use in community development showing how social workers, police, and neighborhood residents promote safer neighborhoods. The approach used was geographic information systems (GIS) to target specific neighborhoods characterized as needing timely interventions. GIS is a technological sub-specialty and form of spatial cartography allowing data to be stored, manipulated, and visually displayed. This article focuses on how social workers can apply such approaches to enhance their communities and neighborhood residents. We offer a case study of a hate crimes project in Canada that brought together university researchers and a local police service into a research project, designed to identify specific neighborhood places where hate crimes were occurring. We propose that community social workers can form meaningful partnerships with technology experts and leverage this relationship into an expanded practice skill with tangible improvements to the communities they work with.

Keywords:

• Community development
• geographic information systems
• hate crimes
• social work
• technology

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the exceptional contributions of GIS expertise to this article made by Dr. Micha Pazner, Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Graduate Research Assistant Sandra Kulon, Department of Geography, Western University, London, Ontario Canada.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.