Thursday 14 October 2010

Online crime maps - a Murder Map of London

As a maker of crime maps myself, I have a strong interest in online and publicly available crime maps. I am always keen to look at new examples of how people are using publicly available data on crime in map form.

At their best online crime maps can provide an innovative and interesting way of representing crime data; at their worst they have the potential to be misleading, confusing, may come close to breaching individual privacy and have potential to cause distress to victims. The BBC ran interesting article discussing this, back in 2008, when official online crime maps were proposed for England and Wales.

One of the earliest examples of online crime maps was the Chicago crime map project which took data publicly reported by the Chicago police and made it available in map form. This has subsequently been developed into the everyblock website.
http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/by-primary-type/homicide/

In recent years there has been a growth of online crime mapping, as more people have become proficient in using google maps to represent data, with some interesting recent examples.
http://spotcrime.com/uk/london

In the UK pressure / encouragement from both the Mayor of London, and subsequently the UK Home Office, the Metropolitan Police to produce an online crime mapping service in September 2008:-
http://maps.met.police.uk/

Online crime maps for all England and Wales police forces have been available since January 2009 and can be accessed through here:-
http://maps.police.uk/


Now the BBC have highlighted a recent new site showing location of murders in London, the sites founders are using court reports and believe they are providing a useful service, but the BBC also note Victim Support have said the site is "grossly insensitive" to victims families.

The site is:
http://www.murdermap.co.uk/

I'd encourage you to take a look and consider what you think.

No comments:

Post a Comment