Engagement, Empowerment and Transparency: Publishing Crime Statistics using Online Crime Mapping1

In the United Kingdom, since 2011 data regarding individual police recorded crimes have been made openly available to the public via the police.uk website. To protect the location privacy of victims these data are obfuscated using geomasking techniques to reduce their spatial accuracy. This paper examines the spatial accuracy of the police.uk data to determine at what level(s) of spatial resolution -if any -it is suitable for analysis in the context of theory testing and falsification, evaluation research, or crime analysis. Police.uk data are compared to police recorded data for one large metropolitan Police Force and spatial accuracy is quantified for four different levels of geography across five crime types. Hypotheses regarding systematic errors are tested using appropriate statistical approaches, including methods of maximum likelihood. Finally, a "best-fit" statistical model is presented to explain the error as well as to develop a model that can correct it. The implications of the findings for researchers using the police.uk data for spatial analysis are discussed.

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“…The aims of publishing such crime data via crime mapping stemmed from three policy objectives (Chainey and Tompson 2012):…”

Section: Policeuk Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

UK open source crime data: accuracy and possibilities for research

Tompson

Johnson

Ashby

et al. 2014

Cartography and Geographic Information Science

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“…It provides a formalised process through which access to information can be requested. There (Smith, 2006;Great Britain, Home Office, 2010;Chainey & Thompson, 2012). With almost routine journalistic reference to the FOIA its existence and ability to supply information from public bodies has become well known.…”

Section: Freedom Of Information Act 2000mentioning

confidence: 99%

Utilising the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 for crime record data

Johnson

Hampson²

2015

Records Management Journal

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Purpose – This research paper aims to consider the use of the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) as a resource providing access to otherwise unavailable data from the UK Police forces. Not seeking to be a critical examination of Police practice, it offers insight to many aspects of records management appertaining to the police service provision of recorded crime. Authors consider whether record management is sufficiently integrated into police practice, given the transparency called for by the FOIA, contemporary societal needs and the growing requirement to provide high value evidence led assessments of activity both within and external to the service. Design/methodology/approach – FOIA was utilised to collect data from all police forces in England and Wales through multiple requests. Carried out over a 15-month period, three requests were collated and responses compared, allowing for examination of compliance with the legislation and reflections on the manner in which records were sought and ultimately disseminated. Findings – Generally, responding to FOIA requests was well managed by English Police Forces. Methods of data management and collection practice were exposed which the authors suggest pose questions on the strength of records management consideration that may be worthy of further work. Configuration management of records is highlighted as an essential function given the disparity of data releases experienced. Research limitations/implications – This research highlights the FOIA as a valuable methodological tool for academic researchers, but it is limited in respect of seeking firm contextual explanation of the Police internal procedures to answer requests. By making common requests over a long time period to the same Police forces, it provides a clear study of FOIA processes and raises potentially significant questions for records management consideration. Practical implications – Findings provide advice on developing use of the FOIA as an academic methodological resource and reflect on the findings impact on internal police use of data and information records. Originality/value – This paper allows for reflection on the importance of high-value records management in the day-to-day business of the police service and questions whether such knowledge areas are suitably considered. Covering an area of little previous academic enquiry, the research informs criminal justice practitioners of areas for potential further discussion and academic researchers on the validity of using the FOIA as a valuable information source.

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“…Furthermore, policing initiatives, such as crime mapping, improve people's perceptions of their neighborhood and of the local police and are perceived as informative and trustworthy [11]. On the other hand, Chainey and Tompson [12] argue that the quality and cartographic visualization of the published information needs to be improved, and social media should get involved to enable a dialogue on crime issues. Regarding the risk of privacy violation from re-identification, the participants of a survey that was conducted in London, U.K., expressed a preference for a medium-risk protection method (from eight to 20 addresses) that indicates the need for street-level protected resolutions, such as geographical masks [13].…”

Section: Examples Of Obfuscated Point Maps For Privacy Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining a Threshold Value for Maximum Spatial Information Loss of Masked Geo-Data

Kounadi

Leitner

2015

IJGI

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Abstract:Geographical masks are a group of location protection methods for the dissemination and publication of confidential and sensitive information, such as health-and crime-related geo-referenced data. The use of such masks ensures that privacy is protected for the individuals involved in the datasets. Nevertheless, the protection process introduces spatial error to the masked dataset. This study quantifies the spatial error of masked datasets using two approaches. First, a perceptual survey was employed where participants ranked the similarity of a diverse sample of masked and original maps. Second, a spatial statistical analysis was performed that provided quantitative results for the same pairs of maps. Spatial statistical similarity is calculated with three divergence indices that employ different spatial clustering methods. All indices are significantly correlated with the perceptual similarity. Finally, the results of the spatial analysis are used as the explanatory variable to estimate the perceptual similarity. Three prediction models are created that indicate upper boundaries for the spatial statistical results upon which the masked data are perceived differently from the original data. The results of the study aim to help potential "maskers" to quantify and evaluate the error of confidential masked visualizations.

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Engagement, Empowerment and Transparency: Publishing Crime Statistics using Online Crime Mapping1

Cited by 34 publications

References 16 publications

UK open source crime data: accuracy and possibilities for research

UK open source crime data: accuracy and possibilities for research

Utilising the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 for crime record data

Defining a Threshold Value for Maximum Spatial Information Loss of Masked Geo-Data

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