Thoughts on crime mapping and human nature

I haven't seen the new Crime Mapping service on www.police.uk yet; it's overloaded with traffic.  Not entirely surprising given the very entertaining interview with police minister Nick Herbert 20 minutes ago on the Today programme.

But in my experience (20+ years in IT, 10 years in police IT) this is the problem with websites like this; they're very much a reactive information resource.  It sounds like the chaps at Rock Kitchen Harris and NPIA have done a good at designing and building a site that gives people access to local crime information, police contacts and crime reduction advice, but seriously how many people are going to look at it sufficiently frequently for it to make a difference to their lives?

Unfortunately it's a consequence of both human nature and our very busy lives, that unless this type of informmtion resource is kept front of mind, it is likely to simply get forgotten until either it is re-advertised in the media or something happens to an individual (eg a crime) that motivates them to go back to the site, kick themselves for not looking sooner, and go lock their shed or whatever.

It's also not very useful in the "digital divide" challenge; those most at risk of becoming victims of crime don't necessarily have easy access to the Internet. I'll try it on my iPhone and see what happens, but I'm lucky enough to have a phone and data tariff that are paid by my company.  Until we get more transparent pricing and widespread 3G/4G bandwidth I doubt this site will see many mobile visitors.

Unless people can access (or be alerted to) local crime information BEFORE it affects them in their daily lives, I don't think we'll see a big change in people's behaviours.   The infoamtion will be relevant (because it's about their street or local neighbourhood)but won't be timely enough to make it really engaging or actionable.

The great thing is that this is a step in absolutely the right direction, using 'Open Data' (re-purposing of government information) to provide a very transparent and *potentially* useful service to the public.

So let's look at how we can take this tool and couple it with some kind of proactive notification service that advises people of local crimes - perhaps using email on the whole but with options for SMS texting, Tweeting and other comms that might better suit the elderly and other groups.

In the police-public interface projects I've worked on at HTK over the past 10 years or so (the original www.police.uk website and services like Police Direct with Suffolk and Norfolk police), I've seen that timely delivery of relevant infomation really can change people's behaviours and perceptions of the police.

Good work so far, but now let's build on it to make sure it doesn't become a victim of human nature!