Institutional Anchoring and the Operational Geography of Digital Harm: Public-Data Evidence for Local Security Monitoring in Charlotte

This archive provides the data-processing, analytic, mapping, and figure-table replication files for a study of digital and cyber-enabled crime geography in Charlotte, North Carolina. The package supports a Charlotte-only analysis of public CMPD incident records and FTC Do Not Call complaint indicators for the period 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2025.

The core purpose of the archive is to make the manuscript’s empirical workflow transparent and reproducible. It includes cleaned analytic files, spatially joined CMPD incident outputs, patrol-division and response-area panels, hotspot and concentration diagnostics, cross-system CMPD–FTC comparison files, figure/table outputs, and a plug-and-play script for rebuilding or reproducing the manuscript figures and tables.

The CMPD component focuses on incidents recorded within Charlotte and operationalizes digital crime through offense-definition and place-coding logic, including Wire Fraud / 26E, Hacking or Computer Invasion / 26G, and incidents coded to Cyberspace, while retaining shoplifting as a place-anchored benchmark offense. The archive also includes response-area spatial joins and quality-control summaries to support analysis at multiple operational scales.

The FTC component provides derived Charlotte-level Do Not Call complaint panels and virtual-geography summaries for comparison with police-recorded digital crime outcomes. The raw FTC complaint extract is not redistributed in the figure/table package; the included script allows regeneration where a local FTC CSV or API access is supplied.

The archive is intended for research transparency, methodological replication, and review purposes. It should not be used for individual-level inference, offender-location attribution, or identification of persons. The files are designed to support aggregate spatial, temporal, and cross-system interpretation of digital-crime recording and complaint geographies.

Main contents

• CMPD_Incidents(3).zip — public CMPD incident shapefile used as the incident-level spatial source.
• charlotte_digital_crime_analytic_files_.zip — cleaned analytic files, monthly panels, patrol-division and response-area outputs, cross-system CMPD–FTC panels, QC summaries, and mapping-ready GeoJSON/GPKG files.
• charlotte_fig_tables_plugplay.zip — manuscript-aligned figures, tables, README, manifest, requirements file, and rebuild script.
• charlotte_digital_arrest_case_list.xlsx — supporting case-list spreadsheet for digital-crime-related records.