Crime mapping launched in the UK

January 7, 2009

Crime maps have been released by all police forces in England and Wales, as reported in the Guardian. The colour-coded maps display the number of reported offences such as burglary and car crime, and show whether crime rates are rising or falling.

As a part-time MA student in Information Design, and some experience of google maps, I’ll be interested to see how these are used over the coming months.

Although the newspaper article runs through the political arguments for and against crime mapping (which appears to have started in US cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles) there are only three links to examples provided:

1) A national view from the Home Office

2) West Yorkshire Police

3) Metropolitan Police (Greater London)

Without going into a detailed comparison, the London Met’s map seems the most impressive but what’s striking is that there are such different colour, navigation and mapping systems across only three examples.

So the article raises the worrying possibility that there are a further 40 types of map in use nationally and that there could be little consistency between them.