Mapping Local Crime August 3, 2008
Posted by Drew in : Cool, Miscellany , trackbackRecently there was a news story that the UK government was considering the introduction of monthly crime maps showing the nature of crimes in a local area in an attempt to close the gap between the actual recorded crime figures and the general perceptions of the level of crime. It was mentioned that there were already examples of this in other areas of the world.
Totally unrelated to this I came across this site that does exactly what has been proposed for dozens of cities in the US. It categorises crimes and allows all or a selection of these categories to be mapped over a 3, 7, 14 or 30 day period. It makes interesting reading. Different cities provide differing amounts of information but the level of detail is still quite interesting. As an example of a real case I chose Palo Alto, CA. From this example it is clear that the placement of the crimes is down to a fairly precise level on the map.
One thing that I did find interesting was that in some of the smaller cities there appears at first glance to be a fairly large amount of crime and it is only when you start to read through the categories and details that you realise that the large number of crime icons on the map may be due to an aggressive targeting of a particular offence, for example youngsters with alcohol. This shows that as with all information designed for the “public” there needs to be a clear explanation as to what the data shows. It isn’t too big a leap to imagine a situation where an area gets a bad reputation simply because there are a large number of icons on the crime map whereas a closer inspection shows that in fact the opposite is true and there is relatively little actual serious crime due to a “zero tolerance” approach by local police.
The Crime Reports site relies on local police departments volunteering the information and obviously any UK service needs to be a nation wide operation if it is to be meaningful but I think it could be a useful addition to the debate on crime.
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