Making a difference with data

Written by Sarah Drummond and Lauren Currie
15.02.11

Crime is way too important to get lost in headline issues, and too big to leave to those who have the time and energy to write letters or sit on committees. The best communication happens when it’s accessible and relevant. I imagine this was one of the reasons behind the National Policing Improvement Agency and The Home Office joining forces to create a new crime map:  Police.uk

The public went wild; five million hits an hour - seventy five thousand hits a minute.  It would seem we are hooked on crime data! We want to know where, when, what, how and why. I am inclined to agree with a simple phrase coined by the BBC; "Crime mapping brings accountability to the armchair for everyone who wants to monitor crime on their street."

The question of meeting expectations seems unavoidable. Do the creators truly understand what this data means to us? I don't think we quite know the answer ourselves;

"This is an excellent tool to use when moving into a new area!! Spent 3 hours on it - can see areas where I don't want to live due to high number of anti social behaviour crime and areas where it appears nice to live, due to low level of all crime. Also found a few irregular hot spots so now know where drugs are sold. With these facts maybe the communities can help to address their crime rates! "

versus

"These are not statistics; they are raw data. A statistician would analyse the data and draw inferences from them & exclude the hotspots caused by crime reporting in particular streets close to shopping centres. The maps are valuable for people to understand what levels of crime really are in their areas. You have trivialised an important development because you don't employ intelligent journalists."

There is no getting away from the harsh realities surrounding the launch; frequent crashing renders the site entirely inaccessible. Not to mention the mammoth £300,000 budget behind it.

Is this the price to pay to know how safe your street is? Perhaps. Until the answer becomes clearer we will continue to witness locals from 'the worst streets in the UK' defend their neighbourhoods on national television.  In my mind this raises questions around the accuracy of the data. Is this what the future of police.uk looks like? Will we see everything ranging from house pricing to sex offenders dominating the site and our headlines?

I wonder who's role it is to interpret this data; the state or the public? The founder of Placr, Jonathan Raper, has certainly grabbed this role with both hands;

"This ought to be another great moment for the #opendata movement, and in one sense it is. The government has stuck to its promise to release this data, and it has forced the police to produce it on time. It is good that politicians now see that opening data will promote a debate and enable citizens to discuss the issues with the professionals. This is the real promise of #opendata: it helps empower people by promoting more active questioning of the issues."

Likewise, Doug McCune and the Guardian are contrasting the data on a split screen. Cautious steps are needed because we're still in the new and ugly stage of open data in policing.  A collaborative approach makes sense to me. Until we learn to love it or hate it, let's work out what to do with it.