Do you understand crime?

I am sure that 99.999% of the UK population do not understand official crime statistics. In otherwords I am saying out of a population of about 60 million less that 600 people fully understand official crime statistics. In fact I am being generous, I would be surprised if it is more that 60. If someone were to tell me it was less than 6 I would not argue with them. Just to say I do but only because I spent 30 years in the police trying to undestand them and 4 years doing a PhD on the subject.

The graph above shows two different ways of recording burglaries in people's houses in London from May 2008 until September 2012. The blue line shows the number of police calls that were shown as 'burglary dwelling' the red line shows the number of officially recorded 'burglary dwelling' crimes. The green line shows the difference between the two figures. This is taken from and interesting new data source which can be found here

The graph here is the same data but collated by calender year with a table showing the counts. The difference between the two is almost as much as the recorded crime figure. Why are so many reported crimes not not recorded as such? What is more important the incident figure or the counted crime figure?

To answer the first one you will have to read my thesis. The second question can be answered in two ways. Counted or in other-words official police recorded crime statistics are important because that is what is used to make policy decisions by police, politicians and civil servant. But I argue that the incident figures are more important because that more closely reflect the public's perception of the nature and level of crime. The is important because peoples' perceptions affect their actions and their attitudes.

 

 

Kevin Hurley Crime Commissioner for Surrey

http://www.kevinhurley4pcc.co.uk/

 

Congratulations to Kevin Hurley, he is the new Police Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Surrey. Our paths have crossed a few times when we both were in the Metropolitan Police Service. He is a thoroughly decent chap from a family full with police officers. Even though he is an independent whose attraction is that he is not a politician he knew that "zero tolerance" is a term that Surrey residents like and put it as his title on the ballot sheet, a very savvy bit of electioneering.

 

I am a Surrey resident and I would have voted for him if I knew he was standing, but I do not agree with PCCs so a no vote was the best I could do to convey this. I am glad to note though that Kevin stood to keep politics out of policing, something which of course is impossible when politicians are judged on law and order as much as any other issue when national parlaimentary elections come round. At least in Surrey we can be confident that the police will not have to jump through hoops and dance to the tune of a political motivated PCC.

80/20 crime (again)

Usually when the 80/20 figure for crime is quoted it refers 80% of crime is committed by 20% of people (which incidently is wildly inaccurate for most types of crime - more like 99.9% of crime committed by 0.01% of people). But there is a new use.

The above is a quote from the newly published report by the HMIC entitled "Taking time for crime". It publication date of 27th September 2012 missed my thesis submission date by a couple of weeks so I could not include it. It would have been nice to do so because it supports one of the thesis' central arguments. That is that measuring police performance using crime data (where I assume the 20% comes from) gives only a partial view. The more complete view is obtained from the police incident data set where I know from the report that 80% comes from.

The report can be found here. The is a very important report because it is attempting get police forces to change focus yet again. I will comment further in future post.

Geo-policing of Neighbourhoods in Greater London

Oh yes, decided on a title in the last week. "Geo-policing of Neighbourhoods in Greater London". Here is the abstract.

Abstract

The subject of this thesis is policing at a local level with regard to how performance can be measured and compared between locations to make the police more accountable to the public with the aim of increasing the public’s confidence in the police. The research is carried out within the discipline of Geographic Information Science using multidimensional, multivariable clustering and classification techniques used to create geodemographic classifications to create geo-policing classifications. The scientific study of policing that these geo-policing classifications facilitate means that the research carried out in this thesis can also be regarded as falling within the realm of the science of policing.

The research explores the causes of the mismatch of public perception of the level of crime and the information in official crime statistics that was termed the Reassurance Gap. This led to a radical shift of resources into council ward based neighbourhood policing to reduce the fear of crime and increase the public’s confidence in the police. Subsequent research has shown that the reduction in the fear of crime and the increase of the public’s confidence in the police are not directly linked. The most effective method for police to increase public confidence in themselves appears to be demonstrating that they properly understand the policing problems in a neighbourhood and that they are efficiently, effectively and fairly tackling those problems.

The research examines the use of crime maps for the public to improve police accountability and public’s confidence in the police. The research concludes that official crime statistics are not fit for purpose for local police accountability and makes the case for the use of police incident data instead. The thesis shows the utility of police incident data and creates a framework that allows policing itself rather than just the outcomes of policing to be assessed.

Update and thanks

Just to update anyone interested in what I am doing. I have finished writing my thesis and submitted it for for examination. One of my examiners is busy until Christmas so it looks like I am going to have my viva in January. I am actually quite pleased with it.

In the mean time I have got myself a job as lecturer in GIS at Kingston (Surrey) University. I am just trying to get my head around what is required for that.

It is not always easy to show people who you have thanked in the Acknowledgements of a thesis so I thought I would publish it here.

Acknowledgements

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council Collaborative Award for Science and Engineering (ESRC CASE) with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), my former employer, acting as co-sponsor. The research was made possible by data from MPS information systems facilitated by Trevor Adams. Detective Superintendent Neil Wilson, a former colleague, assisted with obtaining London Borough of Camden crime and disorder data, which was integral to the research. I am grateful to both.

I have been supported and guided throughout my research by a team of academics within the University College London Geography Department and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. Typical of this was being provided with data regarding licensed premises and other commercial premises in London by Dr Duncan Smith.

I particularly want to thank Professor Paul Longley, my principal supervisor, who has stretched and challenged me to produce better throughout the research. His guidance and friendship have been unwavering.

I have also appreciated the support and help of fellow students, most notably Daniel Lewis and James Cheshire who eased me into the world of Geographical Information System software.

I am particularly grateful to the Semeion Research Institute in Rome Italy and its Director, Professor Massimo Buscema, who introduced me to multi-dimensional, multivariable clustering techniques when I managed a project whilst I was still in the MPS. We renewed our acquaintance with during this research. The Self Organising Map (SOM) software to perform the clustering processes in Chapter 7 was written by Dr Giulia Massini; I am grateful to her and for the loan of the software.

I have friends and family to thank as well. Firstly, Janet Smith and Monica McKinnie, who became Facebook friends through our joint connection of attending the same junior school in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia and who diligently proofread, pointing out my typos and more bazaar sentence constructions.  They are amazing. My father and mother (especially my father, a professor himself and supervisor of many PhD’s) for their gentle coaxing. Thanks to my youngest sister Megan, who carried out her PhD research in parallel with me but finished before me, for not gloating. And finally I am very grateful to my wife, Vivien, who has shown unreasonable confidence in my abilities from the start and given me plenty of space and time to do my research and kept me going.

Police Information systems

This diagram is one I have devised to represent police information systems. The little stories, that I have persauded are not suitable for my thesis, that are posted below are design to explain this diagram. I hope some will find the information useful. The number of hits continues to grow on this blog much to my amazement, so I am confident that there is some interest out there.

A working day in the life safer neighbourhood team PC Khan

 

At 9.45 am PC Khan arrives at the locker room at the police community office which is a unit on a small trading estate which is shared by two ward safer neighbourhood teams. He switches on his radio and listens to the radio traffic as he changes into his uniform. He is particularly interested in anything that is happening on his ward as he or one of the two PCSOs on that day may not be the first officer to any incident but it will be their responsibility to deal with any matters that cannot be dealt with immediately by the response team. He walks into the office, logs onto one of the computer terminals that are free, he does not have his own computer, he hot desks with the other PCs and PCSO’s, the two sergeants try to maintain a system of their own desks and computer terminals but these are also up for grabs when they are not on duty. His life is very much ruled by his emails from supervisors, colleagues and members of the public and his calendar of his appointments. He prides himself that he knows what has been going on his beat whilst he has been off duty and has a system of searching various databases such as CRIS, CAD and CRIMINT to see what is relevant. He books on duty over the radio so the CAD operator can add him to the list of resources available for deployment. He is told there is a scheduled appointment to report burglary on his ward at 1130hrs, he says he will deal with it and gets the address and silently curses to himself, he knows that the burglary is a repeat victimisation, this is something he really needs to get to the bottom of. Last time it was just cash and a few computer games so it is likely to be kids who have done it. He decides he will walk down to the burglary address and take one of the PCSOs with him. On the way he will try to see the local park keeper to make sure that he is going to cut back the undergrowth around the trees like last year so that it is easy to see into the park from the road and hopefully discourage it being used as a place where some local youths to smoke cannabis; hopefully this will make it a safer environment for mums to bring their toddlers to use the play ground. He also needs to find time to visit one of the Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators on his ward to discuss crime prevention leaflet that that neighbourhood watch wants to put through residents doors about the recent spate of burglaries. Who knows he may even be able to nab that disqualified driver who seems to be still driving his car. He has put an information report on the PNC and created a CRIMINT entry but no luck yet.