UK Crime Maps

Whenever anyone creates a crime map for an area, it always seems to raise the same questions about house values, safety, etc. According to the UK Daily Mail, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) believe a new interactive crime map could seriously hurt home values. The National Policing Improvement Agency provides information on crime and antisocial behaviour in England and Wales. The UK Home Office offers a crime mapping tool allows users to create maps showing counts and rates of crime at local authority level for England and Wales. What is especially interesting is that they ask users to provide feed-back of experience using the tools. The BBC has its own crime statistics map in its The Truth About Crime section. The U.S. National Institute of Justice has a good overview of crime mapping including reviews of a book titled, “Mapping Crime: Principle and Practice”