Police.UK – Mapping Crime in a UK Neighbourhood

I recently read on the Chaire en droit de la sécurité et des affaires électroniques blog that on February 1, 2011, the British police service has launched a website that allows their citizens to obtain statistics of crimes in their region and neighbourhood. It allows a person in the United Kingdom to track local crime levels.

The site was developed by the National Policing Improvement Agency on behalf of the Home Office and involved close collaboration among all 43 police forces in England and Wales.

Police.UK details all regions of the UK and gives up-to-date information on every incident of crime in each specific postcode and category, and publishes street-level crime including statistics for burglary, robbery, violence, vehicle crime, other crime and anti-social behaviour. The site also offers other local policing information such as which police officers are responsible for a street or neighbourhood.

All the user has to do is input the postal code or the name of the region (city, street, etc.) and a crime map and field incidents will show up.

According to Michael Frost of the City of London Police, “Publication of the new information forms a key part of the drive to make policing more accountable to the public.”

It seems the site is so popular that it has experienced technical difficulties. It received more than 18 million hits an hour on its first day

Similar sites already exist in the United States.

Apart from revealing disturbing patterns, what should a citizen do with such information?

Many might think that reading crime statistics reports and mapping crime and criminals in a community appears odd; however, the idiom is: preparation is the best defence. To buck the trend of crime in our home, on our streets and in our travels, we have to find ways to protect ourselves and our property as best as we can. Police.UK is one tool that can help people do that.

These types of sites are devoted to the safety and well-being of every citizen through the belief that the better informed and aware a society is about crime, the better they can safeguard themselves against it.

“We want people to be able to see what crime is happening on their street and to be able to tell their local police if they have concerns, and challenge them about how issues are being dealt with”, said Home Secretary Theresa May.

It’s surely too early to tell how effective the service will be, although it has been popular in its brief existence; thousands of eager visitors crashed the site in its first day online. But will it make police more accountable? Will it reduce crime? Will it lower home values in areas with high purported crime levels? Does it unfairly target poor neighbourhoods? Is it a waste of money or just another pointless layer of bureaucracy? Is it an unnecessary invasion of privacy? Is the information really useful? Will it encourage Britons to contact their local police station to discuss policing issues or get involved with community safety initiatives?

The Economist seems cynical, questioning the purpose of the initiative, and wondering whether providing this information is anything more than a distraction from real policing issues. Nonetheless, the magazine offers hope for the system, suggesting that:

The real goal, though, is broader than this: it is to change police culture. … you need an informed public to work with the police to reduce crime. You also need hot-under-the-collar residents to put pressure on the police to deliver. The crime map is part of a much broader attempt … to make policemen more responsive to local communities.

I guess if I were given the option of knowing in some detail (and with anonymity) the amount and types of crime that were taking place in my neighbourhood and on my street, I might jump at the opportunity. But I can also see how it might scare me away from certain areas of my city, either as a renter, home buyer, shopper or visitor. As with everything, context is key, and it should be up to the UK’s police to maintain communication with citizens and ensure that residents understand what’s happening in their neighbourhoods, rather than the other way around.