3D Crime Rendering Map of San Francisco

One of my favorite visualization websites, FlowingData, had a really cool link to another blogger's work recently.  Doug McCune, in his blog post "If San Francisco Crime Were Elevation", began with an overhead view of SF and overlaid various categories of crime illustrated as elevation models, equating height of peak with number of crimes and locations of arrest.  Most of the crime maps, such as Vehicle Theft or Vandalism, show a concentration in the city center, with lesser numbers radiating out more or less evenly across the rest of the city.  

Various SF Crimes, Doug McCune
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The Prostitution map, however, is distinct among the crime maps in that crime "peaks" are sparsely distributed across the city, with a major concentration in the Mission Hill/ Tenderloin area.  

Prostitution Map, Doug McCune
Click to enlarge

The map began to bother me in a way, something I couldn't first describe, that the distribution was very skewed.  I am now beginning to wonder if the lack of prostitution arrests outside of the Tenderloin/ Mission Hill is not indicative of lack of prostitution crime, as it first appears, but rather due to a lack of active monitoring and policing.   I cannot bring myself to believe that prostitution is not occurring in more affluent parts of SF-- rather, that the mode of delivery (as it were!) is more geared towards "escorts" and less towards "streetwalkers".  I find the map interesting more in what is not said than what is being shown.  A map of vehicle thefts will of course peak at higher population centers, as there are more vehicles to steal.  But lesser populated or better patrolled portions of the city still have thefts.  The Prostitution map shows wide swaths of the city wherein no prostitution crimes are occurring, an unlikely scenario.  One would have to be terribly naive to believe that sex is only for sale in the Tenderloin or Mission Hill.