Citizens can now look up
online
crime maps to see crime trends in the areas covered by each of
the UK's 43 police forces, the Home Office announced today.
The maps should be available on each police force's website and
be maintained by the individual forces, a Home Office spokesman
said. He added there were no plans to aggregate or centralise the
data.
Each force can choose its own mapping software but use a
standard definition of crimes, he said. This provides consistency
and comparability across the forces, he said.
However, a look at three websites, the
Metropolitan Police,
Thames Valley and
Sussex,
showed widely differing ways of presenting the information. In
addition, some types of crime, such as assault and drug dealing,
are not spelled out.
