So the PM has agreed to the idea of online crime maps to keep the public informed of goings on in their area. It sounds great, doesn’t it: just log on, type in your post code and see a breakdown of all the crimes committed near you this month, compared to neighbouring areas.
It isn’t totally new – Londoners can check their borough already at the Met Police website. And a quick look at the figures shows that – despite the media giving the impression we’re entering a new Wild West of guns and knives – crime in London has been on the decline for several years now.
At the time of writing, gun-enabled crime is down 11.5% on last year; violence against the person has dropped 4.8%; murders fell by 1.9% in the last 12 months and robberies are down a massive 19%.
But according to the papers it’s crime “hot-spots” that are the problem, so a plan like these online crime maps is the ideal way to highlight it, right? Wrong, and to illustrate why, I give you an example of an existing online crime mapping scheme:
The LCPD crime “Blotter” (click to enlarge).
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Before you attack me with the blindingly obvious, I know it’s not real.
The LCPD Blotter details the daily crime stats for Liberty City, Grand Theft Auto IV’s fictional locale. And, as any idiot could confidently predict, its list of “no go areas” acts entirely as a magnet for wannabe digital criminals – whether as a challenge to single-handedly lift the crime level in a listed safe area, or simply be a part of it in a known hot-spot.
Now, I’m not suggesting the real-world maps will be so stupid as to list such glorifying top-twenty charts of “no go areas” (we hope), but is it so far-fetched to imagine the statistics on easily accessible online crime maps becoming status symbols?
Will we see gangs of youths navigating to “no go” streets on their 3G iPhones to take on the current occupants for the turf? Or challenging rivals to be the street with the most knife attacks, robberies, even murders, in a month?
Could we even see flashmob-style events? A whole borough’s gang members co-ordinate online and aim to hit a target number of crimes in a week. A day. An hour. Or even a daily ratcheting of the crime total over a week – every day more crimes than the last.
With a publicly viewable achievements sheet for gangs, it’s almost as though these crimes are legitimised by statistics; a terrible merger of computer game ‘objectives’ and real-life misery. The incentive for some to prove themselves may be too great to resist.
I know, I know, I’m sure the PM knows more about this than the rest of us; I’m sure none of all that will happen and crime will start declining quicker than Internet Explorer and the French national team.
But if it all goes wrong and crime starts rising, you know it won’t be the PM who shoulders the blame. It’ll be poor old Grand Theft Auto as usual.
