Online crime maps are a criminal’s adventure playground

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

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:

(more…)