Recorded crime (plus ASBs) has rise 27% . . . over 5 months

How many months makes a trend?

All Recorded Crime in England and Wales

I was very wary at the start to draw hasty conclusions, but with 5 months of totalled data, we do seem to have something of a trend.

There is still much to learn though. What I don’t know for example;

Is there a seasonal/temperature variation, i.e. more crime in better weather and longer daylight hours?

But that’s just the point – the more data we feed in to the database, the more we can determine relationships and meaning from it.

We have reached these figures in the chart above – see breakdown on our National Picture page – by totalling the data stream for streets by Police Forces from www.police.uk/data and trust them not to go back and change it.

Initially, we were using neighbourhood crime totals but we had to stop because every so often – in several hundred cases – the police neighbourhood boundaries were redrawn, the neighbourhoods renamed and all the historical crimes were lost !

This way – using street – i.e. boundary free data – we can be sure that the historical data remains cast in stone.

Now back to the main point. My gut feeling is that 5 months isn’t quite enough but 12 months of data would really give us a very clear picture of what’s happening.

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