We don’t hang around on UKCrimeStats – police.uk finally released the data on the 2nd May and we have updated our website now. There were 27,000 new locations – of which more later.
The main point is the clear seasonal impact of good weather for March 2012 – lots of sunshine, less rain and hotter temperatures – as is made clear in this brief BBC report. Usually, this leads to a rise in opportunities for crime and higher crime rates. So there’s a sizeable increase on February 2011. However, measured to the previous March in 2011 (with a subscription you can see all the data from December 2011), you’ll see a significant drop at a national level.
For next month, we’re probably going to flip the other way. We have after all endured the wettest April for 100 years – so a substantial fall in crime from March to April 2012 is in the offing.
For all that, the relationship between weather and crime is sometimes overplayed and it is certainly not unicausal – as I wrote here some months ago – you can’t always blame crime on the weather.
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