The General Approach

The worst position in which a partnership is likely to find itself at the start of a crime audit is having to rely on police crime data which are not geo-coded, and where the location of the crime and complainant is found (in varying formats and levels of completeness) in free text fields within the crime report. In this worst case, quick analysis of crime distributions will rely on the police beat as the measure of location, and recorded crime data as the measure of the problem. We’ll address the problem as though the worst case scenario existed. Areas in this position should be minded to get out of it before the third audit-strategy cycle, since the capacity to demonstrate spatial patterning is often helpful, and demonstration of crime concentration, either spatially or in other terms, is the obvious basis on which to carry out proactive policing.

Areas with geo-coded crime data should be congratulated, but not complacent. Not all crime is spatially patterned. Even where there is spatial patterning, it may be a by-product of other factors. For example, there is good data in the BCS to show that the youngest householders (aged 16-24) are most prone to burglary. Such households may show up as spatial concentrations within social housing because such housing is all that young people can afford. In this case, the key variable is household age, not area of residence. This is not evident from a map of crime. There is also evidence that it is the better houses in the most deprived areas which get burgled most. That makes intuitive sense. There’s more to take from such homes. It’s also important in prioritising crime prevention help and advice. In spatial terms, this fact would be invisible. All you see would be dots in deprived areas. The danger of coming at a crime problem from a spatial perspective is to suppose that locale is the answer. Locale is never the final answer. Sometimes it looks like it, and can be seductive in its appearance.

There is something for those with geo-coded data, and those who aspire to such data, on the US National Institute of Justice (NIJ) website. The Crime Mapping Research Centre of the NIJ http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc has done excellent work, publishing and organising conferences about crime mapping http://www.listproc@aspensys.com. Its an excellent textbook about crime mapping contains both techniques and necessary warnings.

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