Crime map statistics

[readytosell]

Can anyone tell me how these are compiled at all? When looking at new areas I used the crime maps on the police website to see what crime has been reported. I know it's not the be all and end all but does at least help give some idea of how 'safe' an area might be.

I'm moving to a bigger town so expected more crime generally. However, the labels are extremely vague. I checked on my own address and my lovely quite, safe estate seems to be a veritable hotbed of crime according to that!

Are these just volumes of reported crime? So if I rang up and said someone is shouting their mouth off in the street would that be reported as anti-social behaviour?

There should be notes on the site but if they are labelled as crime (usually eg. Assault, robbery, burglary, criminal damage) they will be recorded crime, coded by postcode. Anti social behaviour figures are taken from calls from the public but are not counted as crimes.

They are often figures for a postcode area and that could be quite large. So things happening in another street may not affect the street you want to move to.

If you want to look it up there are actually strict guidelines around what's recorded as a crime: www.gov.uk/government/publications/counting-rules-for-recorded-crime

It's interesting from a nerdy statistics point of view, but possibly not so helpful when trying to weigh up moving to a particular area!!

If you're particularly worried you could google your street name and "court report" and you might find local paper reporting on people who live on your street who have committed crimes, but that doesn't mean you live in a high crime area.

I think the fact you're perception of your area is that it is nice, yet it has relatively high recorded crime is important to remember - lots of crime happens behind closed doors and has very little impact on people outside of a small group.

Thanks, and @Andthenanothercupoftea that's really interesting!

Your last point is very true. Also I imagine time of day / day of week will have an impact as to what's going on outside. I was genuinely really surprised but it looks like it's not quite so easy to find out all the details.