Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

For Police Forces and Authorities in England and Wales

Providing access to crime information for local residents is a key part of the government's crime strategy. That committment is part of a wider agenda to strengthen the connection between residents and police, and to enhance local accountability. This code sets out the minimum standards all forces will be expected to meet.

Title:  Code of Good Practice for Public Access to Local Crime Information for Police Forces and Authorities in England and Wales
Authors: Home Office, NPIA (National Policing Improvement Agency), ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) and APA (Association of Police Authorities)
Number of pages: 5
Date published: October 2008
Availability: Download full report PDF 266Kb

Introduction

The Government’s crime strategy ‘Cutting Crime: A New Partnership 2008-11 ’ contained a commitment to provide access to better local crime information for the public. More specifically, to make crime data available on a monthly and consistent basis to people throughout the country at a level that makes sense to them locally and as part of the availability of wider local data about neighbourhood issues.

The commitment forms a key part of the Government’s wider agenda to strengthen the engagement of local communities in policing and crime and to enhance local accountability. Local crime information must be meaningful to local people and presented in a local context including what practical steps are being taken to tackle local priorities. The recent Policing Green Paper ‘From the neighbourhood to the national: policing our communities together ’ contains a number of proposals on local accountability.

This Code of Good Practice sets out the core requirements and data holding sets and has been developed in consultation with a range of stakeholders including Association of Police Authorities (APA), Association of Chief Police Ofcers (ACPO), National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and a virtual network of practitioners. It contains a set of minimum standards which all forces will be expected to meet. Additional variables to meet local needs can also be included as part of local reporting systems.

Some forces already fulfil many of the requirements set out in the Code of Good Practice and we will encourage full implementation across all forces by the end of 2008.

We see this Code of Good Practice as the start to better communication with the public and further good practice will develop over time and with a better understanding of the information needs of local communities’.

In 2009, we will assess the implementation of the Code of Good Practice across forces in consultation with our stakeholders.

Presentation of Local Crime Information

In general terms, local crime information should be presented so that it is:

1. Precise enough to offer local detail meaningful to local people
2. Focussed on the needs of the end user of the information – the general public, with simple clear presentation of information
3. Contains information that is relevant and easy to interpret and that the force Data Protection Officer and Human Rights specialist have ensured that it takes account of the right to respect for privacy and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and of the Data Protection Act 1998
4. Timely enough to provide an update on the previous month’s trends and patterns
5. Simple to use, easily accessible, and delivered quickly
6. Covering not only crime but other community safety information

Information updated on a monthly basis comprising as a minimum, local data relating to the following:

• Burglary
• Robbery of personal property and theft from a person
• Vehicle crime including theft from a vehicle and theft of a vehicle
• Violence against the person
• Number of reports of anti-social behaviour that are made to the police, and where possible, to other partners. ASB in this context means all incidents of ASB as defined within the National Standard for Incident Recording (NSIR).
  
• All other Crimes (reported under a single category)

We have suggested these minimum categories to ensure that there is some consistency in reporting in a more standardised manner to the public across England and Wales. Implementation of this standard will mean that local crime information is available in a more coordinated and standardised way.

The data where possible should be geo-coded, preferably at point level, or if that resolution is not available, to a post code sector, local government ward level or other areas relevant to the public’s understanding of local crime problems (with maps giving boundaries of areas available to assist users in interpreting the data).

In cases where Neighbourhood Areas do not map onto ward boundaries, Neighbourhood Areas could be used instead. The nature of some crime is such that it would not be appropriate to locate at a point level – forces should make their own judgement. Forces ultimately retain responsibility for data protection.

Local information should be easy to access on the police force website, or via a prominent link to an external site (for example, a police authority, local authority, third sector or academic website hosting the local crime information).

A postcode and map search facility available on the home page to help members of the public to easily find their own neighbourhood.

Local information broken down on the designated website by ward or Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT) area, or by other relevant local area.

Percentage change of three month rolling averages with the equivalent period twelve months earlier should form the basis of percentage change calculations (to allow for seasonal factors and reduce the extent to which percentages are infuenced by monthly variations).

At a Force, Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership and Basic Command Unit level, a clear mechanism should be in place in order to develop appropriate commentary.

Providing local crime information should be seen as part of an ongoing and developing dialogue with citizens, so it is an important part of the process to allow citizens the opportunity to comment on the information provided, give feedback and to get involved in their neighbourhood.

Regular report back on progress to tackle local priorities is already expected as part of the Neighbourhood Policing Team approach. Local information should always include what local agencies are doing to tackle crime and increase community safety and the impact this is having.

Information published at a local level is not the same as that published as official statistics by the Home Office. Forces should make this distinction clear and that local information is not validated in the same way.

Although the local information will not have been subject to checking by Home Office statisticians, it should be produced in the normal way, under the supervision of the local Force Crime Registrar and Force Incident Registrar and be subject to the Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR) for Recorded Crime and the National Standard for Incident Recording (NSIR).

Data issues

• Data should be presented as plain text in an html table. Or a clearly signposted download as a comma separated values table or common spreadsheet format such as excel
• data tables should retain the same layout and formatting throughout the website
• data should be located in a standardised sub directory such as www.midfordshire.police.uk/localdata
• where data is updated monthly, it should be located at a URL consistent with the preceding data to enable automatic retrieval
•  where data definitions change (as they will do over time) the change should be clearly signposted and if possible back data series corrected to allow continued comparison or information presented on how to do this.

A Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed should be made available for the data or notifcations of new data being published- this feed updates automatically when a website changes.

Getting a copy

Download Code of good practice for public access to local crime information PDF 266Kb 

Last update: Tuesday, October 14, 2008