So the PM has agreed to the idea of online crime maps to keep the public informed of goings on in their area. It sounds great, doesn’t it: just log on, type in your post code and see a breakdown of all the crimes committed near you this month, compared to neighbouring areas.
It isn’t totally new - Londoners can check their borough already at the Met Police website. And a quick look at the figures shows that - despite the media giving the impression we’re entering a new Wild West of guns and knives - crime in London has been on the decline for several years now.
At the time of writing, gun-enabled crime is down 11.5% on last year; violence against the person has dropped 4.8%; murders fell by 1.9% in the last 12 months and robberies are down a massive 19%.
But according to the papers it’s crime “hot-spots” that are the problem, so a plan like these online crime maps is the ideal way to highlight it, right? Wrong, and to illustrate why, I give you an example of an existing online crime mapping scheme:
