Public is the best way to fight crime

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, believes that "the public are(sic) the best way to fight crime" and wishes to encourage them to to engage with local police to tackle crime in their area. To assist this the UK has been promised interactive crime maps for England and Wales by the end of the year.

A number of police forces already provide such maps, with the London Metropolitan police being the latest to provide such information, in addition to the West Midlands and West Yorkshire police forces

However, these generally aggregate crime statistics and provide guidance as to what can be considered an 'average' level of crime for that region. Some police forces, such as Hampshire, will provide data at the street level. Given the effect of low level crime on house prices it is clearly in the public interest to have detailed crime data at street level.

Of course, in the absence of detailed data it is possible to build up maps which show which areas are most affected by crime. Here at Mind Your Street we have built a series of maps which show the national crime ranking for local neighbourhoods. This lets residents directly compare their areas with other parts of the country. We will extend this to include detailed reported crime shortly.

Read more about the government's plans for new interactive local crime maps in every area