3.12 In June 2010, the Government announced that it would publish crime data at street level to allow the public to better hold the police to account.20 The police crime map website was launched on 31 January 2011 to fulfil this commitment.21
3.13 The crime map website provides the following information:
• Basic information about neighbourhood policing team and local police force. The crime map profiles members of local neighbourhood police teams and provides contact details and information about beat meetings, where residents can communicate directly with their neighbourhood team.
• Comparable information about crime levels. The crime map provides monthly data for 11 crime categories for each street with eight or more postal addresses, unless there are additional privacy concerns. Users can compare crime levels with other neighbourhoods, police force areas or national averages. The Government has pledged to develop the crime map further so that by May 2012, the public can see police actions taken and justice outcomes for each crime.
• Links to Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary police force profiles, which include victim satisfaction scores, and details of finances and spending, for each police force. However, this information is not broken down to ward level and the public is not able to compare spending information at the neighbourhood level to consider neighbourhood resourcing and deployment decisions, and to compare these with performance.
3.14 Although the crime map allows the public to view more detailed information on the location of criminal activity than ever before, there are two key concerns about the quality and accuracy of the data:
• To protect privacy, street-level crime maps aggregate crime data and map it to an anonymous point, typically the geographical centre of a street. For example, where there are fewer than eight postal addresses on a street, the crimes may be repositioned to a nearby street. This can be misleading if crimes are attributed to a different location from where they were reported, for example a nightclub. To mitigate this problem, the crime map has, since January 2012, included locations such as nightclubs to which crimes can be attributed.
• While the Home Office sets central standards governing how the police should record crime, several reports have highlighted concerns about lack of consistent recording of crime across police forces.22 As the data on the crime map is provided by each police force, any quality issues with the way the crimes are recorded are replicated within the crime map. The crime map website includes a disclaimer about these general data quality issues, but does not link to specific information that enables a user to judge the robustness of recorded crime data in their area.
3.15 Before the launch of the crime map, the National Policing Improvement Agency conducted research, which showed that people found local police information and crime maps informative, and that greater knowledge of recorded local crime would not increase fear of crime. However, while the Home Office is taking steps to monitor and support the development of the crime map, it is not undertaking a systematic evaluation to determine its impact. Given the nature of the crime map, it may potentially drive wide-ranging behavioural responses. Existing sources may permit some relevant analyses: the British Crime Survey, for example, provides the Home Office with an opportunity to analyse any differences in peoples' experiences or reporting of crime, depending on their reported awareness or use of crime maps.
3.16 The police crime map represents a significant step in providing information that can support better local accountability of police services. There has been a high level of demand from the public with an estimated 47 million visits between February and December 2011. Closer alignment between the crime maps and reporting of police activity and resource use would tighten accountability further. Evaluating the map's effects - intended and unintended - would help assess the benefits and manage risks.