Crime and Policing
Boris delivers on crime mapping promise
Mayor of London Boris Johnson has used his regular press conference to launch a new crime mapping website which enables Londoners to access crime figures for their neighbourhood.
The site follows an election promise by the Mayor to ensure Londoners were better informed about crime rates, both in the capital and in their local area.
The site includes a set of interactive maps which detail crime rates and links to other sites including Safer Neighbourhoods Team web pages. The site also compares the crime levels in local neighbourhoods to the London average.
Johnson, who was joined by Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, said the service “means that Londoners will, at long last, be able to get information about crime levels in their neighbourhood at the click of a button.”
“Crime mapping puts information into the hands of every London citizen about the levels of crimes as well as contact details of their local police officers. This is a major step forward in enabling Londoners to really be able to assess the work of their local police in tackling the crimes that affect their neighbourhood.”
Deputy Commissioner Stephenson suggested the new site would help the force tackle local misunderstandings of crime rates, commenting: “we have found that in some cases Londoners’ perception of crime is higher than the reality and the crime maps may help to reassure communities about the general safety of their local area.”
Liberal Democrats on the London Assembly said the Mayor “must ensure resources aren’t diverted away from tackling the problems of crime to serving gimmicks like this.”
Dee Doocey AM, the Liberal Democrat group’s policing spokesperson at the London Assembly, said the maps “are a useful first step in reducing crime by spreading best practice but we need to also see local detection rates on the maps so the public can hold the police to account if crimes aren’t cleared up. If a criminal thinks they’ll be caught then they’re much more likely to think twice before committing the crime in the first place.”
The crime mapping website can accessed at www.met.police.uk
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Bit disappointed with the editorial here, this site was up on the web quite a long time ago (before Boris was Mayor I think), it appears the Met did this entirely of its own volition, Boris has just jumped on the bandwagon and pretended he’s done it.
First of all it will create a divide between those who cannot afford to move out of high crime areas, and those who can. This will add to the house price disparity accross London making the low crime areas unaffordable for all but the very rich and the less well off will be forced to move to high crime areas, which will in turn attract more criminals - exasperating the problem.
The statistics themselves are also mis-leading - making them effectively worthless. I live in a very nice part of South West London but strangely it has a high crime rate - although my ‘patch’ has a below average crime rate.
Seeing as the wealthy (who live nearby) are far more likely to report crimes (such as theft) for insurance purposes (which the poor are often unable to afford) this means most of the high crime areas are in fact the most affluent. This can be seen clearly in Mayfair which has a very high level of crime. This is much more to do with the increased likelihood of crime being reported and also these areas tend to ‘attract’ criminals. However if someone offered me a chance to live in Mayfair - I don’t think I would be thinking too long about it.
My real concern is if the police use these maps to target crime, then they will be targetting the wrong areas and it will be yet another waste of already slim resources.
As with all statistics you have to be extra careful about their meaning and not make knee jerk reactions based on inaccurate or skewed data.