UK open source crime data: accuracy and possibilities for research

Abstract

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.

Crime concentrations and similarities in spatial crime patterns in a Brazilian context

“…This test has been applied in many contexts. This spatial point pattern test was developed and used in a criminological context (Andresen, 2009), but has been used to investigate: changing patterns of international trade (Andresen, 2010), the stability of crime patterns (Andresen & Malleson, 2011), the spatial impact of the aggregation of crime types (Andresen & Linning, 2012), the spatial dimension of the seasonality of crime (Andresen & Malleson, 2013b), the role of local analysis in the investigation of crime displacement (Andresen & Malleson, 2014), and the comparison of open source crime data and actual police data (Tompson, Johnson, Ashby, Perkins, & Edwards, 2015). This spatial point pattern test is well-suited for our research because we are investigating the similarity of spatial patterns across different crime types using a variety of areal units.…”

“…This spatial point pattern test is well-suited for our research because we are investigating the similarity of spatial patterns across different crime types using a variety of areal units. A free graphical user interface is also available for this spatial point pattern test (<http://code.google.com/p/spatialtest/>), though it has also been programmed in the R programming language (http://www.R-project.org) (Tompson et al, 2015). The spatial point pattern test is outlined in Fig.…”

Crime at Places and Spatial Concentrations: Exploring the Spatial Stability of Property Crime in Vancouver BC, 2003–2013

“…To date, this test has been used in a variety of contexts. The initial application of the test was an investigation of the similarity of spatial patterns across crime types (Andresen, 2009), but the test has also been used to investigate: changing patterns of international trade (Andresen, 2010), the stability of crime patterns (Andresen and Malleson, 2011), the spatial impact of the aggregation of crime types (Andresen and Linning, 2012), the spatial dimension of the seasonality of crime (Andresen and Malleson, 2013a;Linning, 2015), the impact of modifiable areal units on spatial patterns (Andresen and Malleson, 2013b ), the role of local analysis in the investigation of crime displacement (Andresen and Malleson, 2014), and the comparison of open source crime data and actual police data (Tompson et al, 2015).…”

A mathematical model of serious and minor criminal activity

“…Apart from this categorisation, the month each crime is committed as well as an approximate location is available. Despite the uncertainty present in the dataset (monthly basis instead of daily, imprecise locations), we may safely use it for an initial macroscopic analysis of crime patterns, as evidenced in [24].…”