Police.uk and Data.police.uk: Developing Open Crime and Justice Data for the UK.

Amanda M Smith

doi:10.29379/jedem.v6i1.326

Abstract

In this paper we describe the evolution and development of the police.uk and data.police.uk sites, which publish open data about crime and justice in the UK, and make it accessible and comprehensible to the public. Police.uk has received over 64 million visits (754 million hits) since launching in January 2011. Open crime and justice data represents a key sector in the UK open data landscape, and citizens are keen to engage with the criminal justice system to become more informed about local levels of crime and other policing information. This paper sets out the policing context in the UK, discusses the journey in providing such open data, the processes involved and challenges encountered, and explores possible future developments.

Highlights

In this paper we describe the evolution and development of the police.uk3 and data.police.uk 4sites, which publish open data about crime and justice for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and make it accessible and comprehensible to the public
Government officials were keen to build on the success of the first iteration of crime and policing data, and were keen to replicate the crimespotting.org17 mapping service launched by the San Francisco police department, but nationally across England and Wales
With the evidence base provided by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) randomised control trial (RCT), the ambition was set to build upon the success of maps.police.uk to launch police.uk and provide more granular, ‘street-level’ crime mapping and data

Summary

Policing Data in the United Kingdom

Throughout 2008-9, individual police forces started to make crime information and maps available to the public, aimed at raising awareness of and access to NPTs / SNTs, and informing citizens about local levels of crime. Sensitive contractual data was never released, a freedom of information request to the Metropolitan Police Service revealed costs of £208,000 for their individual force crime map. The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) were commissioned to develop a standardised crime map, which would provide the data in a more consistent approach on a timely basis, and allow for comparisons across forces. This led to the launch of the national early ‘crimemapper’ website in 2009

CrimeMapper

The Case for Further Investment

Change in Government and the Open Data ‘Agenda’

Data Management and Publication Workflow

Managing the Challenges