Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
Source: data.gov.uk (2013-08-12)

Examines five ‘Trailblazer’ initiatives which aimed to provide the public with further information on policing and criminal justice.

Research Report 67	
Key implications
Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
Kathryn Ray, Rosemary Davidson, Fatima Husain, Sandra Vegeris and Kim Vowden 
(Policy Studies Institute) with Jacqui Karn (The Police Foundation)
Key implications
The aim of the research was to examine public perceptions 
of ‘Trailblazer’ initiatives across seven areas. These initiatives 
aim to increase transparency in policing and criminal justice, 
through enhancing or building on the national www.police.uk
website. Qualitative research collected data from telephone 
interviews with policymakers and practitioners involved 
in the development and implementation of the initiatives, 
and from focus groups with members of the public. This 
enabled a detailed exploration of views, to provide feedback 
to the Home Office and local sites, and to inform future 
developments on transparency.
The findings suggest a number of implications for future 
policy in this area.
●
●There is a need to think carefully about future 
enhancements to www.police.uk and related 
initiatives. The findings suggest that more 
information is not always desirable and can be 
counter-productive. Information needs to be high 
quality, relevant, usable and intelligible.
●
●The type of enhancements that should be made to 
www.police.uk depend upon the purposes for which 
the site is to be used:
–– to aid in crime prevention, enhancements could 
include more frequent updates and more details 
about individual crimes;
–– for the public to use the site for holding the 
police to account, more aggregated data are 
required, namely trend data and comparisons of 
crime rates across areas.
●
●The findings suggest that information provision
alone is unlikely to stimulate greater public 
engagement in police accountability, without
wider activity to educate members of the public on 
how they might use the information to do
this effectively.
●
●The initiatives need a ‘hook’ to keep people 
returning to them. Encouraging users to create 
an account and sign up for alerts, tailored to 
individual location and interest, would be useful for 
maintaining engagement. 
Contents
Key implications	
Summary	
1.	 Introduction	
2.	 Research design and methods	
3. 	National crime mapping website – www.police.uk	
4. 	Justice outcomes	
5.	 Alternative methods of sharing crime data
with public	
6. 	Further methods for informing the public about 
police activity	
7. 	Discussion and conclusions	
References	
Annex A: Research methods	
Annex B: Awareness and use of online crime maps	
Annex C: Public suggestions for improvements	
Keywords
Police 
Transparency
Justice outcomes
Public engagement
www.police.uk
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect Government policy).
You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. 
To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ 
or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, 
or e-mail: xxx@xxx.xx
© Crown copyright 2012
ISSN 1756-3666
ISBN 978-1-78246-001-5
October 2012

Research Report 67	
Summary
Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
Kathryn Ray, Rosemary Davidson, Fatima Husain, Sandra Vegeris and Kim Vowden 
(Policy Studies Institute) with Jacqui Karn (The Police Foundation)
The aim of the research was to examine public 
perceptions of ‘Trailblazer’ initiatives across seven
police force areas. These initiatives aim to increase 
transparency in policing and criminal justice through 
enhancing or building on the national www.police.uk 
website. The initiatives comprised:
●
●Surrey Police Beat app – a smartphone
application for local police communications
(available to download from www.police.uk);
●
●Crime Reports – a more detailed crime
mapping website developed by Community Safety 
Partners in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight
(www.crimereports.co.uk);
●
●Track My Crime – a case-tracking system for victims 
of crime developed by Avon and Somerset Police 
(www.trackmycrime.police.uk);
●
●‘Neighbourhood News’ – a newsletter issued by 
Dyfed Powys Police;
●
●incorporating criminal justice outcomes on
www.police.uk, tested in Leicestershire,
Lincolnshire and West Yorkshire Police Forces
prior to the national rollout in May 2012.
Methodology
The research was qualitative in approach, collecting 
data from 22 semi-structured telephone interviews 
with policymakers and practitioners involved in the 
development and implementation of the initiatives,
and 14 focus groups (two in each area) with members of 
the public. This enabled a detailed exploration of public 
views, to provide feedback to the Home Office and local 
sites, and to inform future developments on transparency. 
The research does not quantify the overall level of public 
support for the initiatives.
Main findings
The research has highlighted considerable public curiosity 
and, to an extent, an appetite for crime and criminal justice 
outcome information. However, a key message from the 
research was that providing more information should not 
be an end in itself. The aim of transparency and openness 
must be balanced by the need for the information to be 
high quality, relevant, usable and intelligible.
Conveying complexity
The findings suggest that the public can respond negatively 
when too much information is conveyed, if it is perceived 
as having limited practical benefit. For some, particularly 
those who had not previously used www.police.uk, 
the availability of crime information was welcomed in 
principle, but the amount of information provided and 
level of disaggregation was felt to be too great. The 
traditional paper newsletter format of Neighbourhood 
News was viewed positively in this respect, since the 
information was succinct, easy to understand and available 
without too much effort on the part of the user. Too 
much information can also result in unintentional negative 
consequences, such as the map showing the location of 
neighbourhood police officers on the Surrey Police Beat 
app. Participants were confused as to its purpose, and 
felt it created a counter-productive impression of police 
inactivity, since the icons showing ‘bobbies on the beat’ 
were at a lower volume than was expected.
Balancing accessibility and complexity is a particular 
challenge when providing information on crime
outcomes. While participants generally welcomed
the inclusion of police and justice outcomes on
www.police.uk, the summary page of outcomes hampered 
public understanding. This was because it was organised 
by type of outcome rather than by type of crime, and so 
did not easily allow participants to interpret the outcomes 
in the light of the types of offences committed. For some 
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect Government policy).
You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. 
To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ 
or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, 
or e-mail: xxx@xxx.xx
© Crown copyright 2012
ISSN 1756-3666
ISBN 978-1-78246-001-5
October 2012

Research Report 67	
October 2012
iii
people, this presentation of the data simply confirmed 
their pre-existing suspicions about the ‘leniency’ of the 
criminal justice system.
Tailoring to purpose
The type of changes to the Trailblazer initiatives
sought by the public depended on how they wanted 
to use the information. Hence future enhancements 
to www.police.uk need to be informed by the purpose 
intended. The main purpose identified by participants 
was for crime prevention. For the site to be used in this 
way, users required more frequent data (as with Crime 
Reports, which provided daily updates) and more detail 
on individual incidents, including the circumstances
and ways in which an offence had been committed, to 
enable them to take preventative steps. None of the 
initiatives provided such information. For the purpose of 
holding the police to account, users required, instead, 
more aggregate data on crime trends and crime rates 
relative to other places, as well as information on police 
and court outcomes.
Promoting usage
The www.police.uk website and many of the other 
Trailblazer initiatives were felt to require a better ‘hook’ 
to keep people returning to them. Hence encouraging 
users to create an account and sign up for email alerts, 
as with Crime Reports, could be useful for maintaining 
engagement. Individually tailored alerts could inform 
about local crimes and their outcomes. A suggestion 
for the Surrey Police Beat app was to make better use 
of the technology to send out crime alerts tailored to 
an individual’s GPS location. Making the tools more 
interactive, for example, inviting the public to submit 
information about crimes shown on the map, could also 
enhance ongoing engagement and potentially aid in crime 
prevention through generating collective intelligence.
The key use intended for the Trailblazers, to enable the 
public to use the information to hold the police and safety 
partners to account locally, was not well understood 
by the participants. They had limited awareness of ways 
to hold the police to account and expressed scepticism 
about the extent of their influence. The findings suggest 
that the provision of crime information alone is unlikely 
to stimulate public engagement in police accountability 
without wider activity to educate members of the 
public on how they might use the information to do this 
effectively. The forthcoming introduction of directly 
elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in 
November 2012 will introduce a new element into the 
local dialogue between the public and community safety 
partners, and may provide additional opportunities for 
public engagement.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
Research Report 67	
The report
Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
Kathryn Ray, Rosemary Davidson, Fatima Husain, Sandra Vegeris and Kim Vowden 
(Policy Studies Institute) with Jacqui Karn (The Police Foundation)
1	 Introduction
1.1	
Background to the Trailblazer 
initiatives
1.1.1	
Policy context
The use of computer-generated crime maps showing the 
location of crimes was first developed as an operational 
policing tool to guide the effective deployment of police 
resources. However, in recent years a commitment to 
make locally mapped crime data publicly available has been 
embraced by the UK Government. Several reviews have 
promoted the greater availability of local crime statistics.
●
●An independent review of crime statistics (Smith, 
2006) suggested that publishing local crime statistics 
in an intelligible and usable form was vital to 
help communities to engage with and hold their 
neighbourhood policing teams to account. Providing 
mapped crime data was thought to be the best 
means of achieving this.
●
●A review of crime, justice and community 
involvement (Casey, 2008) recommended the 
publication of monthly local crime information, 
including crimes committed, sentences received and 
action being taken to tackle crime.
●
●A review of policing (Flanagan, 2008) called for the 
provision of accessible and relevant local information 
on crime trends, how local priorities are established 
and actions taken to address local crime.
The subsequent policing Green Paper (Home Office, 
2008) required all police forces to provide crime 
information to the public through the provision of crime 
maps by December 2008.
The crime maps were initially published on police
force websites. In order to bring these together and
allow a national overview, the National Policing 
Improvement Agency (NPIA) developed one website for 
these data, www.police.uk, launched in October 2009. 
This allowed the public to view monthly crime data for 
local areas by doing a postcode or area-based search 
(Home Office, 2009).
As part of their commitment to transparency, the 
Coalition Government gave a renewed emphasis to 
making crime and anti-social behaviour data available for 
communities to use to engage with the police and to
make government and public services more accountable 
to the public (O’Hara, 2011). In January 2011 the 
Government enhanced www.police.uk by publishing local 
maps showing crime data at street level. The provision of 
‘accessible, street-level crime data’ is intended to facilitate 
meaningful public engagement with local police and other 
services engaged in crime reduction and community safety 
(Home Office, 2010).
Progress has also been made in increasing public access
to local criminal justice data, one element of which has 
been publishing data on justice outcomes (Ministry of 
Justice, 2011). Since November 2011 the Open Justice 
website (open.justice.gov.uk) has provided information
on average reoffending rates for individual prisons, and 
the number and type of sentences given for different 
offences in courts within each police force area. In July 
2011 the Prime Minister also committed to provide 
information on ‘police action and justice outcomes’ on 
the www.police.uk website (Cameron, 2011), which was 
subsequently introduced in May 2012.
1.1.2	
Current evidence on public use of crime maps
There is little evidence available on the public’s use 
of crime maps and the effect on perceptions and 
behaviour. Evidence on the provision of crime and 
policing information more generally has shown that 
providing information can improve people’s knowledge 
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect Government policy).
You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. 
To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ 
or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, 
or e-mail: xxx@xxx.xx
October 2012
© Crown copyright 2012
ISSN 1756-3666
ISBN 978-1-78246-001-5

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
and confidence in the police and criminal justice system. 
For example, experimental studies (Chapman et al., 2002; 
Salisbury, 2004; Singer and Cooper, 2008) have shown 
that the distribution of information booklets about crime 
and criminal justice improved people’s knowledge of 
sentencing and positively affected attitudes towards and 
confidence in the criminal justice system. Wünsch and 
Hohl (2009) also showed that the distribution of a policing
newsletter to residents had a significant positive effect on 
people’s confidence in the police.
Quinton (2011) conducted a similar experimental study, 
looking at the effects of providing crime information 
through online crime maps on public perceptions and 
confidence in the police.1 The study showed that people 
generally found crime maps trustworthy and informative, 
particularly when presented alongside information about 
local policing. It also showed that the crime maps had a 
small positive effect on public perceptions of the local 
police and on perceptions of crime rates. While being 
exposed to the crime data made people more aware of 
the possibility of being a victim, this exposure did not 
make them more worried about being a victim of crime. 
The study concluded that the publication of crime maps 
should be supplemented with information about the work 
of neighbourhood police teams and locally tailored crime 
prevention advice.
This Quinton study was conducted prior to the launch 
of street-level crime mapping in 2011 and focused only 
on the short-term effects of receiving crime information 
in the context of a research interview. There is little 
evidence available about how people use crime maps in 
their everyday lives and how this might impact upon their 
perceptions of crime and policing. Focus group research 
conducted alongside the crime maps study found that 
people thought that members of the public had a right to 
information on local crime but were unlikely to use crime 
maps themselves (ibid., 2011). Recent data from the Crime 
Survey for England and Wales (CSEW, formerly known as 
the British Crime Survey) show that the extent of use of 
online crime maps among the public has risen substantially 
since the introduction of street-level mapping on www.
police.uk in January 2011; 13 per cent of the population 
stated that they had looked at or used a local interactive 
crime map in the 12 months to October–December 2011, 
compared with 3 per cent in the previous year. However, 
 
2
1 The study was undertaken before the national website, 
www.police.uk, had been developed. Participants were 
presented with screenshots of maps showing the rate of 
recorded crime and anti-social behaviour (ASB) incidents for 
their local area from the previous month.
there are no studies currently (August 2012) available that 
have sought the experiences and views of existing users of 
online crime maps.
1.2 
The Trailblazer initiatives
In order to provide the public with access to a wider 
range of data on crime, policing and criminal justice, the 
Home Office and NPIA are undertaking work with a 
number of local ‘Trailblazer’ sites. These sites – most 
of which equate to police force areas – are exploring 
different approaches to enhancing the www.police.uk 
website. Collectively, the Trailblazer initiatives aim:
●●to provide the public with access to more frequent 
crime data and more information on justice 
outcomes;
●●to encourage more interaction between the police 
and the public; and
●●to provide crime victims with better access to 
information about their case.
The initiatives comprise:
●●the inclusion of criminal justice outcomes data on 
www.police.uk, which was tested in Lincolnshire, 
Leicestershire and West Yorkshire2 Police Forces, 
prior to the national launch in May 2012;
●●the Crime Reports website, developed by 
Community Safety Partners in Hampshire and 
the Isle of Wight, which provides an alternative 
crime mapping site to www.police.uk with daily 
updates, more accurate mapping and a greater 
amount of detail about the crimes mapped 
(www.crimereports.co.uk);
,3
●●‘Neighbourhood News’  a paper newsletter 
with summary local crime information for the 
neighbourhood drawn from www.police.uk, 
issued by Dyfed Powys Police;
●●the Surrey Police Beat phone application (app), 
developed by Surrey Police, which allows the local 
community to see what neighbourhood police 
teams are working on and to vote on local priorities 
(available to download from www.police.uk); and
2 West Yorkshire Police have also developed a website called 
‘In The Dock’ (www.westyorkshire.police.yk/ITD/), which 
publishes detailed justice outcomes for key cases of public interest 
locally. In The Dock was not covered as part of this research.
3 This was not one of the original Trailblazer initiatives, but 
was included in the research as a point of comparison, since it 
comprises an information initiative that does not rely on new 
digital technology.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
3
●
●Track My Crime, a case-tracking system for 
crime victims, developed by Avon and Somerset 
Constabulary (www.trackmycrime.police.uk).
1.3	
Aims and objectives of the research
The Home Office commissioned research to
explore public views of the Trailblazer initiatives.
The research explores:
●
●public use of www.police.uk and the Trailblazer 
initiatives;
●
●public perceptions of the usefulness of the 
Trailblazer initiatives and their suggestions for 
enhancements;
●
●how the public can use www.police.uk and the 
Trailblazer initiatives to challenge and hold the 
police to account locally.
In order to set the public views in context, the research 
also examined the development, aims and implementation 
of the Trailblazer initiatives.
Given that the Trailblazer initiatives were at an early stage 
of development in most cases, the research was intended 
to provide early feedback to the Home Office and local 
sites, and to inform future national developments. It did 
not seek to determine whether the initiatives have had 
an impact in terms of greater public confidence in or 
engagement with the police.
1.4	
Report structure
Chapter 2 of the report briefly outlines the research 
design and methods used for the study, and the remaining 
chapters then present the research findings. This begins 
with findings about the national crime mapping website, 
www.police.uk, in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 goes on to cover 
justice outcomes on www.police.uk, which are now 
available nationally. Chapter 5 discusses the findings from 
initiatives that use alternative methods for providing the 
public with crime data (the Crime Reports website and 
the neighbourhood newsletter). Chapter 6 covers the 
findings for Trailblazer initiatives that aim to inform the 
public about other police activity (the Surrey Police Beat 
app and Track My Crime). Chapter 7 then concludes by 
summarising the overarching themes from across the 
initiatives, and drawing out implications for future policy in 
this area.
2	 Research design and methods
A qualitative research design was adopted to explore and 
probe in-depth views on the Trailblazer initiatives.
2.1	
Staff interviews
The first stage of the research comprised a series of
semi-structured telephone interviews with:
●
●six national representatives from the Home Office, 
the Ministry of Justice and the National Policing 
Improvement Agency (NPIA) who were involved in 
the development of the Trailblazers initiative; and
●
●between 2 and 4 practitioners in each Trailblazer 
area who were involved in the implementation of 
the initiatives locally (16 interviews in total). These 
respondents were primarily from the police, but 
other partner organisations (Crown Prosecution 
Service, local authorities) were also represented 
where they had been involved in the local initiative.
Interviews were undertaken between November 2011
and January 2012. The interview topics included:
●
●the context, aims and local development of each 
Trailblazer initiative;
●
●implementation challenges;
●
●practitioner views on public take-up and usage of 
the Trailblazer developments; and
●
●practitioner views on the effects of the initiatives, 
particularly in terms of police-community 
engagement and accountability.
2.2	
Public focus groups
The second stage of the research comprised a series of 
focus groups with members of the public in each of the 
seven Trailblazer areas. In total 14 focus groups (2 in each 
area) were held between December 2011 and February 
2012. These included 102 members of the public; 33 of 
whom had previously used www.police.uk. Participants 
were given a demonstration of the relevant Trailblazer 
initiative in the group. Key themes discussed in the focus 
groups included:
●
●feelings about crime and community safety;
●
●sources of information about local crime;
●
●previous use of www.police.uk (and the Trailblazer 
initiative where relevant);
●
●views on the content, usability and usefulness of 

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
4
www.police.uk and the relevant Trailblazer initiative;
●
●views on the potential of the initiatives for 
engagement with the police and holding the police 
to account; and
●
●suggestions for improvement.
Further information on how the focus groups’ participants 
were recruited and their composition can be found in 
Annex A.
2.3	
Data analysis
Data from the interviews and focus groups were summarised 
according to a set of themes, developed iteratively from 
the research questions and the data. These data were 
then compared, examining patterns, relationships and (in)
consistencies across the dataset. Interpretative analysis then 
drew out the meanings of the findings in relation to the aims 
of the Trailblazer initiatives and the policy area. Fuller details 
of the analytical process are provided in Annex A.
2.4	
Limitations
Although qualitative methods allow a detailed exploration 
of views, the findings can only highlight the range of views 
about the Trailblazer initiatives held among the public; 
they cannot show how widespread these views are in the 
population as a whole.
Sampling for the focus groups was not designed to be 
representative of the population, but to achieve a balance 
of users and non-users of the Trailblazer initiatives, in order 
to elicit informed views about the initiatives’ effectiveness 
(see Annex A for more detail). However, results were 
affected by the fact that fewer than anticipated pre-existing 
users were recruited to the groups. In some cases, this was 
because initiatives were not yet live or were in their early 
days, and in other cases it proved difficult to recruit pre-
existing users within the timeframe of the research. This 
should be borne in mind when interpreting the findings.
It should also be noted that the views of those who have 
no interest in receiving information about crime and 
policing may not be represented here, since members of 
the public who are willing to participate in a focus group 
on this topic are likely to be more interested in crime 
data than those who choose not to take part. 
The findings relate to versions of the initiatives available at 
the time of the research.  Key findings from the research 
have been fed back to the forces and have been used as part 
of the continual development of the Trailblazer initiatives.
4	 Annex B provides further details about the development of the 
www.police.uk website.
5	 See Annex B for further detail about these usage figures.
3	 National crime mapping 
website – www.police.uk
3.1	
Background
Street-level information about crime and anti-social 
behaviour (ASB) has been available through the
www.police.uk website since January 2011. The site aims 
to make crime and ASB data more accessible, in order to 
help people to engage with their local police service and 
hold it to account, for example, by raising issues at local 
police beat meetings.
The website invites users to enter their postcode,
town, village or street in a search box. They are then 
shown details of their neighbourhood policing team, 
information about the next beat meeting and messages 
from their local police service. The key feature of the 
website is a street-level map, which shows the location 
of incidents of crime and ASB. From May 2012 the map 
also showed police actions taken in response to crimes 
committed and justice outcomes where available. The 
website is updated at the end of each month, showing 
incidents and the related outcomes recorded by the 
police in the preceding month.4
Recent data from the Crime Survey for England and 
Wales (CSEW) show increasing use of online crime 
maps following the launch of www.police.uk in January 
2011. During January to March 2011 the proportion of 
respondents who were aware of, or had looked at or 
used, online crime maps more than doubled from the 
previous quarter. The most recent CSEW results (from 
interviews in the 12 months to December 2011) show that 
one-third (33%) of people were aware of crime maps and 
11 per cent had used them.5
3.2	
Public experiences and perceptions 
of www.police.uk
3.2.1	
Website usage
Focus groups participants fell into four groups in terms of 
their previous use of www.police.uk.
●
●Non-users: Those who had no knowledge of 
www.police.uk prior to being recruited for the 
discussions.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
5
●
●Single visitors: Those who had heard of the website 
and used it just once. These were mostly people 
who had accessed the website out of “curiosity”, 
after having heard about it through the media at the 
time of the launch, or subsequently through work, 
friends, neighbours, at local meetings or directly 
from the police.
●
●Occasional users: People who had either used the 
site to research areas when moving house or visited 
the site occasionally to “keep up to date” with local 
issues. Sometimes participants were prompted to 
look at the site after hearing about a local crime 
through other means (for example, in the local press 
or a community newsletter).
●
●Regular users: These comprised a small group of 
people who used the website through their work. 
This group included: 
–– teachers and youth workers using it to engage 
with young people about crime; 
–– an architect to assist in the planning of new 
developments; 
–– local business owners to be aware of security 
issues; and 
–– staff in large organisations with a safety remit for 
other staff.
3.2.2	
Public views on the usefulness of the website
In general, participants in the focus groups showed an 
interest in the data provided on the website, particularly 
the ability to pinpoint crimes on specific streets in their 
neighbourhood. Participants who were not previously 
aware of the website often said that they intended to 
check the data for their street or neighbourhood when 
they got home out of curiosity. However, participants 
were more divided in their views about the usefulness of 
the site. Here, it was those participants who had already 
used the website who tended to be more positive about 
having the information available and could see uses for it, 
while non-users and single visitors were less likely to see 
the site as useful, and often struggled to see its purpose.
Perceived purposes of the website
Two main uses for the website were identified:
●
●to help protect themselves (and their families) 
against crime by taking more effective crime 
prevention measures; and
●
●to help with researching areas when moving house.
It was more common for participants to have used 
the website to look at crime rates in different 
neighbourhoods when moving house, than for crime 
prevention. While some participants wanted to use the 
website for crime prevention (for example, by using it 
to monitor local crimes and putting in place additional 
security measures where necessary), it was not felt to be 
particularly well suited to this purpose at present due to 
the lack of detail given about crime incidents (see section 
3.2.3 for further detail).
There was also a widespread view that the website 
was more useful for specialist users, such as journalists, 
researchers, teachers and local business owners, rather 
than for the general public. It was also seen as useful for 
Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators (and equivalent 
groups, such as Pub/Farm/Shop/Car Watch, Street Safe) 
who could use it to inform their members to take crime 
prevention steps.
Holding the police to account
While participants were rarely aware of the 
Government’s transparency agenda, some expressed 
the view that it was important to have detailed crime 
information in the public domain. Some people also 
commented that it was important to have the information 
to know if the police were “doing their job”. However, 
when asked if they might use the information to ‘hold 
the police to account’ or to engage with the police about 
crime and safety issues in the neighbourhood, there were 
mixed views about whether this was something the public 
should do. Many were sceptical about their ability to 
influence the police and were not aware of how this might 
be done. This was particularly the case in the focus group 
of younger people (aged 18–25):
“They’re not going to respond to one person saying: 
‘I don’t like the way you do this’, […] they’re not going 
to listen to one small person […] it would have to be 
a government thing that changed it, not two or three 
people getting together and saying: ‘We’re not happy 
with this’. They’re not going to change, they’ll just look at 
you, laugh, and carry on doing as they please anyway.”
(Focus group area 3)
When it was suggested by the moderator in focus groups 
that the crime information could be used in local police 
meetings, participants occasionally agreed that it might 
be helpful to take the information to meetings in order 
to challenge the police over what they were doing about 
crime. However, they gave little sign that they intended 

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
6
to do this, mostly because most participants tended 
not to attend such meetings. Generally, participants 
were more comfortable with the idea of their role as 
one of submitting information to the police about crime 
incidents, rather than influencing the work of the police
in a wider sense. This fitted with their understanding
of the website as being primarily for the purpose of
crime prevention.
Views of non-users
The majority of non-users and single visitors to the 
website did not think that their use of the site was likely 
to change in the future. These people often expressed 
confusion about the purpose of the website and struggled 
to think how they might use it:
“I’m just confused about what really it does tell us. 
Obviously it tells us numbers, figures, but is it helpful?” 
(Focus group area 1)
“It’s interesting […] I don’t think it’s useful.”
(Focus group area 2)
“What do they want this website to do?”
(Focus group area 6)
Those people who were less positive about the utility of 
the website often said it provided too much information. 
For some people, this was because they would “rather 
not know” about local crimes because it would make 
them more worried. For others, it was because they 
preferred to receive crime information through other 
channels, such as local newspapers, newsletters from 
the police, information from Neighbourhood Watch 
co-ordinators or by attending police meetings. These 
channels were preferred because they provided summary 
information that had been interpreted and assessed as 
being relevant, rather than detailed statistics that the user 
was required to interpret.
Given doubts about the usefulness of the site and the
lack of understanding of its purpose, participants in 
several focus groups questioned whether the website 
was a good use of public resources, especially in the 
current financial climate. It was suggested that additional 
“police on the streets” or putting money into prevention/
diversionary activities (such as youth facilities) could be a 
better use of resources.
3.2.3	
Public views on the content of the website
Street-level mapping and privacy issues
Participants were generally positive about the ability to 
see crimes mapped to the street level, and the balance 
on the website between privacy and accuracy, achieved 
through the use of snap points,6 was seen to be about 
right for participants:
“Generally a road is good enough; I wouldn’t want it
to actually be like ‘this house got burgled’, if it was
my house.”
(Focus group area 6)
While concerns about individual privacy were rarely 
raised, some participants were concerned that the 
mapping might have unintended consequences, such as 
stigmatising certain areas and reducing house prices, or 
contributing in some way to higher insurance premiums. 
There were also concerns that the information could be 
used to plan crimes, such as burglaries (by targeting areas 
with low levels of crime).
Level of detail about crimes mapped
Although participants were content with the level of 
geographical detail provided, they were less happy about 
the level of information on the nature of offences mapped. 
Generally, it was felt that that there was not enough 
detail about how the crimes reported on the map were 
committed to allow them to use this information to take 
crime prevention measures effectively:
“In terms of the detail of what’s happening […] as we 
look here, vehicle crime, robbery, who knows what they 
are? What is vehicle crime? Is it theft? Is it no insurance? 
Is it an untaxed car that they’ve found? It could be 
something to be careful about, make sure everything’s 
locked and away, or it could just be that somebody up 
the road has not paid their insurance.”
(Focus group area 7)
Crime data – which were updated monthly – were also 
seen by many participants to be “too old to be useful”. 
It was suggested that the website needed to be updated 
more often to enable it to be used for crime prevention.
6	 Crimes are mapped to an anonymous point (called a ‘snap point’) 
that is a dot on a street that is on or near the location of the actual 
crime. See Annex B for further detail.

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7
Participants in several groups also wanted to see 
additional information about measures taken by the police 
(or other partners) in response to crime, and about 
the eventual justice outcomes in relation to the crimes 
shown on the maps.7 In these discussions, requests for 
information about whether crimes had been ‘solved’ 
(i.e. arrests made) and whether the offender(s) had been 
brought to justice were commonly interlinked:
“It would be really good to see how many of those 
crimes were solved and how many of them actually went 
to court and people were convicted.”
(Focus group area 5)
Interpreting the mapped data
Concerns were raised in many of the focus groups 
about the potential for the public to misinterpret the 
mapped crime data. One concern was around the crime 
categories, which some people felt to be too wide. This 
was particularly the case with the ‘ASB category’, which 
was felt to include incidents that are “annoying rather 
than a crime”, thus potentially resulting in a misleading 
picture of the extent of crime. The other category 
questioned was ‘violent crime’, which participants felt 
could be broken down further.
Some participants also expressed the view that local 
knowledge was required to make sense of the data.
For example, it was noted that the presence of pubs and 
night clubs could lead to a high volume of incidents at 
certain times of the day. This could create a misleading 
view of the relative safety of the area for users without 
this local knowledge.
In all focus groups, participants expressed an interest in 
seeing information on comparisons of crime rates across 
neighbourhoods, and crime trends for the neighbourhood 
over time. Summary information on detection rates 
was also sought alongside crime rates. These types of 
data were felt to be more useful in providing a complete 
picture of crime levels in an area and assessing the 
performance of the local police, than individual incident 
volumes for one point in time.
7	 The focus groups were carried out before the justice outcomes 
data became available on the website in May 2012.
Local information
Participants in several of the groups were pleased that
the website showed the photographs and contact details 
of their local neighbourhood policing team. It was said 
that being able to “put a face to a name” might give
more confidence to members of the public in contacting 
the police if they had information. Publicising the 101 
(police non-emergency) number on the website was also 
thought to be helpful.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
8
4	 Justice outcomes
Criminal justice outcomes data were made available on 
the www.police.uk website in May 2012. Users are able to 
look up not only the number and types of crime mapped 
at the local level, but also the action the police took in 
response to those crimes and, where possible, details of 
the court outcome. The site also provides a summary 
of the number of different types of police and court 
outcomes recorded for the previous month. The aim of 
this is to put crime information in a broader context and 
provide a fuller picture of the work of the police, the 
Crown Prosecution Service and the courts. An additional 
aim is to make criminal justice system information more 
accessible and intelligible to the public, thus addressing 
low levels of awareness and understanding. Three police 
forces – Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and West Yorkshire 
– helped to test the development of this initiative before 
its national rollout.
One of the main challenges in providing this information 
to the public is enabling the user to make a meaningful 
link between a specific crime incident and its outcome. 
This link is complicated by constraints in IT services 
that support the police and the courts, and a limited 
understanding among the public of how the criminal 
justice system works, for example, the time lag before 
a case goes to court. Conveying complex sentencing 
outcomes in a format that is clear and intelligible to the 
public, while presenting sufficient contextual information 
to make sense of the outcome, is also another challenge.
4.1	
Public perceptions of the justice 
outcomes data
4.1.1	
Public views on the usefulness of the initiative
As noted in the previous chapter, across all the focus 
groups many participants spontaneously expressed 
an interest in seeing information on the follow-up to 
recorded crimes, both in terms of ‘solved’ crimes (arrests 
made) and criminals brought to justice. It was commonly 
felt to be important to have this information to provide a 
positive counterpoint to the crimes displayed on the map 
and to “complete the picture” in terms of the work of the 
police. When participants in the three justice outcomes 
Trailblazer sites were presented with the outcomes 
data on the site prototype,8 however, views were more 
mixed about the usefulness of the data presented. Those 
participants who were previous users of www.police.uk, 
and were more positive about the availability of mapped 
crime data, were more likely also to be positive about the 
justice outcomes data. However, participants overall felt 
that the outcomes data presented were less useful than 
the mapped crime data.
Perceived purposes of the outcomes data
While the crime data on www.police.uk were seen to 
have a use for participants in researching areas when 
moving house or for crime prevention, most focus group 
participants struggled to think of a use for the outcomes 
data. Despite showing an initial curiosity in the outcomes 
data, many were unconvinced that they would become 
regular users of it:
“It’s kind of good to know when you see things getting 
resolved, because they don’t get reported enough [...], 
but I don’t see in what situation in the future that I’d 
need to use it.”
(Focus group area 7)
In general, it was felt that the outcomes information 
would be useful for victims of crime or people who 
had some link to that crime (for example, if they were 
a witness, had reported the crime, or knew someone 
involved) and for specialist users (such as journalists, 
researchers, youth workers). Participants were less
clear about how the information could be used by the 
general public.
Holding the justice services to account
As with the crime data on www.police.uk, some 
participants expressed the view that it was important that 
the outcomes data was in the public domain since the public 
had a right to know how well the police were performing:
8	 Focus groups took place before the site was live, and participants 
were presented with screenshots of a mock-up of the web page 
that showed summary police and justice outcomes for the previous 
month. This mock-up was identical to the outcomes summary 
page, which is now available on the live site, save for some minor 
changes to the outcomes terminology. However, the key difference 
is that with the live site, users can also click on individual crimes 
on the map and find information about the follow-up police and 
court actions (and, conversely, for each individual outcome, users 
can click to receive information on the type of crime committed). 
This link between individual crimes and their outcomes was not 
available with the site mock-up. As described later in the chapter, 
this was one of the key ways that the public wanted to use the site.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
9
“I like it, see if your taxes are going to good use, to see 
if the police are actually doing something [...] so it is nice 
to see if burglaries are being resolved, people are being 
prosecuted for it, it is nice to know and it is comforting.” 
(Focus group area 3)
However, participants did not spontaneously suggest 
using the data to engage with the police or with criminal 
justice services. When prompted about the possibility of 
this, participants commonly expressed the view that the 
criminal justice system needed to be more accountable to 
the public:
“Bring in the justice side as well, it’s about time the justice 
side were made as equally accountable as the police.” 
(Focus group area 1)
However, they tended to be unaware of how this might
be achieved.
4.1.2	
Public views on the content of the website
Although there was a clear appetite for data on crime 
outcomes, participants were generally dissatisfied with 
the amount of information on the site prototype and the 
way in which it was displayed. This was related to how 
participants wanted to use the data, which was in one of 
two ways:
●
●to check whether local crimes in their area
were being resolved, in order to provide
general reassurance that offenders were no
longer “at large”;
●
●Tracking local cases to check that “justice had been 
done” in the case of local crimes that they knew 
about – either because they were involved in some 
way or because it was a high-profile crime.
Whether local crimes were resolved
For the first of these uses – to check if local crimes 
were being resolved – participants found the information 
on the site to be poorly organised, hampering their 
interpretation of it. Rather than a list of total police/court 
outcomes for a given month (as shown on the summary 
outcomes page on both the prototype and the live site), 
participants wanted to see the outcome information
listed by type of crime, so that they could make an 
assessment of whether the more serious crimes were 
being resolved. In general, there was most interest in 
seeing summary outcome data for more serious crimes 
and for persistent offenders:
“What the public really want to know is if the people 
who cause the most trouble are actually off the street.”
(Focus group area 2)
As this comment suggests, the type of outcome 
information that participants were most interested in 
seeing was linked to their desire for reassurance around 
knowing that offenders were “off the streets”. Hence 
participants generally said that they wanted summary 
information about arrests made or people charged for 
specific crime types, rather than convictions.9 It was 
suggested by some participants that a summary display of 
the proportion of crimes of each type that were ‘resolved’ 
or ‘unresolved’10 would be the right level of detail and 
clarity required for most users.
Tracking local cases
Those people interested in using the website to check 
that “justice had been done” in the case of local crimes, 
wanted to be able to identify a crime they knew about on 
the map and then follow it through to its conclusion. This 
was not possible with the prototype site mock-ups that 
were used in the focus groups although it is now possible 
to do this with the live site.
These individuals said they were interested not only in 
arrests made and charges brought, but also in the eventual 
court outcomes. While some participants felt that this 
sort of information on sentences received was already 
sufficiently available through local media, others thought 
that it was preferable to have the information on the 
website since they felt it would be more comprehensive 
and accurate:
“I think for me, the past few months, there’s been a lot 
of high-profile crime in my area, so something like this for 
me would be interesting, because the whole community 
has been affected by these crimes, but we’re not always 
kept up to date on the convictions and the court cases, 
the full proceedings.”
(Focus group area 3)
9	 This seems to suggest a lack of understanding of the criminal 
justice system, however, since someone could be arrested and 
charged and still out on bail.
10	Again, ‘resolved’ was generally used interchangeably with
‘arrests made’ or ‘people charged’, rather than with reference
to convictions.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
10
Outcome information about individual high-profile crimes 
is provided by a website called ‘In The Dock’, which has 
been developed in one of the justice outcomes Trailblazer 
sites. This site publishes information about
the offence and the offender (including a photograph),
the investigating officer, the prosecutor and the
sentence received for key crimes of public interest
locally. While ‘In The Dock’ was not tested in the focus 
groups, the type of information it provides is akin to
what focus group participants expressed most interest
in – detailed information about the outcomes for local
high-profile crimes.11
4.1.3	
Interpreting the data
Both the prototype and the live site present a summary 
page of police and justice outcomes (such as ‘Under 
investigation’, ‘Offender given caution’, ‘Offender sent 
to prison’) recorded within the previous month. Seeing 
the summary information12 presented in this way 
prompted some participants to comment that the data 
confirmed their perceptions that too many people were 
“getting away” with crime since “nobody gets locked 
up”. In particular, the number of people imprisoned 
as a proportion of the total number of outcomes was 
highlighted by participants:
“[…] this just makes it even more highlighted that they’re 
getting away with it […] This just tells you now, oh yeah, 
82 got imprisoned out of 1,395. Well, it’s a little bit [...] 
irritating!”
(Focus group area 2)
While these views were expressed to an extent across all 
the groups, they were most evident amongst participants 
in the rural focus groups (who were also most sceptical 
about the usefulness of the www.police.uk website in 
general). For these people, the outcomes data presented 
in the groups was interpreted as revealing how many 
crimes had not been effectively brought to justice, simply 
confirming their pre-existing suspicions about the leniency 
of the system:
11	The issue of publishing photographs of offenders, however, was 
contentious and raised very strong feelings on both sides in all of 
the focus groups where it was discussed. Some participants felt 
that the principle of ‘name and shame’ was a good one, particularly 
for repeat offenders, perpetrators of serious crimes and 
paedophiles, and could aid crime prevention. Others thought that 
the drawbacks outweighed the positives, such as the dangers of 
vigilantism, family members receiving abuse, and paedophiles being 
“driven underground”.
12	The actual data presented on the mock-ups were fictional.
“For me to look on the internet and go: ‘Oh look, they 
didn’t do anything’ – I already know that, there’s no point 
[...] the amount of crimes with no outcome that’s the big 
thing, or the outcome doesn’t fit the crime.”
(Focus group area 2)
These views about the criminal justice system also reflect 
previous evidence (Ministry of Justice, 2010), which shows 
that the prevailing public perception is that the criminal 
justice system is too lenient, partly because knowledge of 
crime and sentencing practice is limited.
The challenge, as practitioners pointed out, is for the 
justice outcomes information to be presented in such a 
way that it allows the public to engage with it in a more 
informed way, using contextual information to make sense 
of the sentences given. The presentation of summary 
outcomes, without any reference to the types of crime 
that the outcomes relate to, seemed to inhibit this more 
informed engagement with the figures.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
11
5	 Alternative methods of sharing 
crime data with the public
This chapter discusses two further methods of sharing 
crime data with the public. The first, Crime Reports, is 
an alternative crime mapping website to www.police.
uk, with a number of additional features. The second, 
‘Neighbourhood News’, presents crime data in a more 
traditional, newsletter format, targeted at residents who 
do not have access to digital technology.
5.1	
Crime Reports
The Community Safety Partnership in Hampshire and 
the Isle of Wight launched a website, www.crimereports.
co.uk, in October 2011, which provides an alternative 
crime mapping website to www.police.uk. The site was 
developed by a company in the United States and is 
already used by over 900 police forces there. The aims of 
Crime Reports, according to local practitioners, are:
●
●to inform members of the public so that they can 
better protect themselves against crime; 
●
●to provide reassurance through the provision
of accurate crime data and details of policing 
activity; and
●
●to facilitate public involvement in community safety 
through social media. 
Key features of the site are:
●
●automated daily crime updates (Monday to Friday);
●
●mapping of crimes to their exact location rather 
than using snap points;13
●
●detailed crime categories;14
●
●additional incident types, such as road traffic 
collisions and fires;
●
●details about each incident, including date and time, 
unique identifier, postcode15 and whether ‘solved’
or ‘unsolved’;
●
●automated narrative accounts of current 
neighbourhood problems, including actions taken;
●
●ability to sign up for email daily, weekly or monthly 
alerts about crimes occurring in an area specified by 
the user;
●
●an interactive facility allowing users to join
groups and share information via a community 
message board.
13	See footnote 6 for explanation of snap points
14	For example, anti-social behaviour (ASB) is broken down into nine 
types, and violent crime into five types.
15	Minus the last digit to protect privacy.
16	The police, local authorities, fire and rescue service and probation 
service.
In addition to the public-facing website, another part of 
the site, Command Central, is accessible to community 
safety partners16 to analyse and visualise crime data.
This is intended to enhance partnership working and 
resource deployment.
Local staff involved in the initiative reported that it was 
inexpensive to develop, since it was derived from a 
generic website that police forces upload their data to. It 
is also anticipated that it will save resources in the longer 
term, since Command Central improves the efficiency of 
analytical tasks for the community safety partners.
5.1.1	
Public perceptions of www.crimereports.co.uk
Perceived purposes of the website
Findings from the public focus groups for the Crime 
Reports website were similar to those for the www.
police.uk site. As with www.police.uk, participants saw 
the main purposes of Crime Reports as being for crime 
prevention and for researching areas when moving 
house. In addition, given that there were more people 
in the Crime Reports focus groups already engaged 
in local community safety networks (see Annex A for 
details), engaging with and influencing the police was 
also identified as a key purpose of the website. Some 
of these engaged participants gave examples of how 
they might use the information in this way, for example, 
in parish council meetings to monitor the work of the 
police, or in neighbourhood panel meetings to help to 
inform the process of setting local police priorities. Other 
participants suggested that the information could be 
used to lobby the police for additional patrols in certain 
neighbourhoods, for example, if there was a high level of 
anti-social behaviour (ASB). However, some participants 
questioned the usefulness of the website beyond a small 
circle of ‘engaged citizens’ or beyond some very specific 
(and occasional) purposes, such as moving house. It was 
suggested that most people wanted their information on 
crime to be summarised and interpreted for them (for 
example, in a local newsletter) rather than presented in a 
highly disaggregated form.
Public views on the content of the website
Participants, in general, welcomed the greater amount 
of information about local crimes captured on Crime 
Reports, as compared with www.police.uk. In particular, 

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
12
the more frequent updates (daily) were felt to be 
helpful for crime prevention purposes. Participants also 
welcomed the more narrowly defined crime categories, 
particularly the way that violent crime and ASB were 
broken down into different types. They also welcomed 
the information on whether crimes had been resolved.
However, the site shared some disadvantages with
www.police.uk. These included the lack of detail about 
specific crime incidents (such as how a burglary occurred) 
to enable crime prevention measures and insufficient 
summary charts and tables showing trends over time and 
comparisons across areas:
“A lot of what we get at the moment is short-term stuff, 
and you can’t see it in perspective; again it’s this seeing – 
is it going down? Is it going up? Or whatever, you know. 
So that’s the other thing that we need is just some ability 
to measure it and track trends, we’re not getting enough 
of that.”
(Focus group area 4)
Some current users also felt that the site should work 
towards the provision of live information about crime 
incidents as they occurred in real time, in order to warn 
people of immediate dangers and areas to avoid.
Public views on the website’s usability
Participants were less positive about the design and 
usability of the Crime Reports website than they were 
about the content. They felt that the map looked too
busy and overcrowded with icons and, in general, 
better ways of summarising the data were desired. For 
example, participants wanted to be able to see at a glance, 
(through, for example, colour coding or filtering) the 
seriousness of the crimes on the map and whether they 
were resolved or unresolved. The site was not felt to be 
very user-friendly and it was suggested that it may need a 
user guide.
Communicating with the police
The ability to sign up to email alerts and receive regular 
crime updates for a specific area was a feature not 
widely known about among participants. However, those 
Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators and engaged 
users who received alerts were positive about this 
feature, particularly the ability to tailor alerts to their 
“local patch”. It was also felt that alerts were useful for 
encouraging ongoing engagement with the site among the 
ordinary public:
“[…] not to have to visit the site, that’s the key thing, 
send me an alert to say something’s happened and then 
if I want to, I’ll go and have a look at the site, but don’t 
force me to remember to go and look at the site to see 
if anything’s going on, it’s the wrong way round, it doesn’t 
work. That’s from experience of running community and 
networking groups and things.”
(Focus Group area 4)
Some non-users in the focus groups agreed that email 
alerts received on a smartphone would be a more 
attractive way of receiving local crime information than 
having to log on to a website. Neighbourhood Watch 
co-ordinators also suggested that receiving alerts when 
crimes had been solved would be useful to cascade to 
their members for reassurance.
Among all participants – including those less engaged –
a feedback function on the main website, for reporting 
information to the police about crime incidents shown on 
the map, was felt to be the most useful addition to the 
site to make it more interactive:
“They miss a really big trick by not giving you the ability 
to say something about it, report something, to click, say: 
‘Hang on, I saw that happen’.”
(Focus group area 4)
If it were developed in this way, the website could become 
a vehicle for generating ‘collective intelligence’, through 
greater sharing of information about crimes between 
victims, witnesses and the police (see Muir 2012 for 
other examples of the use of social media for generating 
collective intelligence about crime).
Table 1 provides a summary of the main features of the 
website and the focus groups’ overall assessment of them.
5.2	
Neighbourhood newsletter
In October 2011 Dyfed Powys Police introduced a monthly 
policing newsletter, ‘Neighbourhood News’, available in 
print and online, in two rural areas. The neighbourhood 
newsletter aims to increase public awareness of local 
crime and what the police are doing to address it, thus 
placing crime statistics within the local context. The 
newsletter is intended to reach people in rural areas who 
cannot attend community meetings and/or do not have 
internet access. It is anticipated that the newsletter will 
serve as a prototype for other police forces across England 
and Wales, and the electronic version will eventually be 
made available on the www.police.uk website.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
13
The newsletter comprises a double-sided A4 sheet, 
following a standard template each month, which
consists of: 
●
●messages from the neighbourhood policing team and 
from the Chief Constable of the force; 
●
●a summary of local crime statistics taken from
www.police.uk;17
●
●details of public meetings; 
●
●contact details for the local neighbourhood
policing team; and 
●
●links to www.police.uk and the Dyfed Powys Police 
Force website. 
The newsletter is distributed by the neighbourhood 
policing team during public events and copies are available 
in key public contact points in the community, such as 
libraries and dental and doctor’s surgeries. At the time of 
the research there were no data available on the extent of 
public take-up of the newsletter.
5.2.1	
Public perceptions of ‘Neighbourhood News’
Focus group participants felt the newsletter to be a useful 
summary of local crime information and police activity. 
They were particularly interested in the summary crime 
statistics, and liked the message from the neighbourhood 
policing team, which gave some local context to the 
figures by providing an update on crime outcomes. There 
was interest in more information on the composition of 
the local policing team, such as names and photographs of 
all team members (as provided on www.police.uk).
The way in which the newsletter information could
be used to engage with the police via local meetings
was also clear to participants, and the cut-away section
at the bottom of page one, which invited readers to take 
the summary crime statistics to the next public meeting, 
was seen as a good idea. However, participants were 
mostly unaware of police public meetings taking place 
and they felt that, in itself, the newsletter would not 
encourage attendance.
Compared with the other Trailblazer initiatives using 
digital technologies and/or new social media, the 
neighbourhood newsletter appeared to be more positively 
received by participants, as its purpose was clear and 
the summary content welcomed. Participants in the 
focus groups reported that now they knew about the 
newsletter they intended to read it on a regular basis.
Suggestions were made for improvements to the content 
of the newsletter, including further tailoring messages 
Table 1: Public views on key features of the Crime Reports initiative
Feature
Views
Daily updates
Very helpful, especially for crime prevention. Some wanted more frequent updating, 
potentially real-time updates.
More accurate
location mapping
(without snap points)
Not something of concern to participants. Ability to zoom in further than 1,000 metres 
was desired.
More detailed crime 
categories
Helpful; filtering map by level of seriousness of crime also desired.
More incident details
Useful, but more narrative detail about crime incidents was requested, especially the 
methods used for the crime. Solved/unsolved information was useful and participants 
would like to see this information at a glance through filtering or colour coding.
Neighbourhood activity 
narrative accounts
Useful, particularly the information about what the police/partners are doing. 
Participants thought that this could be included for other types of incident too.
Email alerts about
new crime incidents for 
user-defined area
This was felt to be helpful so users didn’t have to remember to visit the website for 
updates. Alerts about crimes solved (as well as new incidents reported) were requested.
Interactive facility
Not live at time of research. Views mixed about usefulness; more specialist/engaged 
users (for example, Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators) were more positive than 
ordinary members.
17	A summary of the number of incidents of each crime type in the 
neighbourhood for the preceding month is provided.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
14
to the local community, such as reporting on police 
initiatives specific to the local area. Moreover, since most 
participants had not seen copies of the newsletter in the 
community, they suggested a range of additional outlets 
for distribution to improve its visibility (such as coffee 
shops, Post Offices, newsagents and local shops).
6	 Further methods for informing 
the public about police activity
This chapter discusses two of the Trailblazer initiatives 
that use digital technologies to inform the public about 
other aspects of police activity, albeit with different 
functions and audiences. The first is the Surrey Police 
Beat app, which aims to inform the public about local 
policing priorities and activities in order to encourage 
engagement, and the second is the Track My Crime 
website, specifically tailored to victims of crime, which 
allows them to track the progress of their case online.
6.1	
Surrey Police Beat app
Surrey Police has developed a smart phone application 
(app) for use by the public. The app aims to encourage a 
wide range of people to communicate and interact with 
the police by making it easier for members of the public 
to do this at their own convenience. The app also aims 
to increase transparency and police visibility by providing 
information on local police activity on a daily basis. The 
app includes:
●
●contact details for the neighbourhood policing 
team, a facility to send messages to the team, and 
information about local meetings;
●
●a local map showing the location of officers in the 
neighbourhood policing team and ‘tweets’18 from 
officers about their current activities;
●
●information about the current local policing 
priorities and an opportunity to comment on and 
rate priorities;
●
●crime data for the local area (from www.police.uk); 
and
●
●links to other social media used by Surrey Police, 
such as Facebook, You Tube and Flickr.
A separate version of the app is available to police 
officers, in developing this version of the app its usability 
for police officers was prioritised. For example, a pre-
written, drop-down menu of messages was developed for 
officers to use when tweeting. Training officers to use the 
app only takes a few minutes. Three civilian ‘tasking co-
ordinators’ are employed to respond to users’ messages.
Launched in August 2011, the app had been downloaded 
5,000 times by early 2012, and followers of the police 
18	The app gives users access to the local police Twitter account, 
without having to join Twitter.

Research Report 67	
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15
Twitter feed had increased from 300 to 450 between 
August and November 2011. The app was originally 
piloted in one local authority area and a countywide 
rollout is now underway.
6.1.1	
Public perceptions of the Surrey Police Beat app
Public views on the usefulness of the app
Overall, participants gave a cautious welcome to the 
development of the Surrey Police Beat app and thought 
that it was important that the police were using social 
media. However, they were uncertain about using the 
app in the future themselves and felt that the content 
needed to be improved in order to increase take-up and 
usage. They also thought that much of the information 
was better provided through other mechanisms (websites, 
newsletters) and felt that more thought needed to be 
given to the types of information that are best conveyed 
through a mobile app.
Perceived purposes of the app
Members of the public understood the purpose of the app 
to be providing new means of communication between 
the police and the public and making the work of the 
police more visible. In general, participants thought that 
improving communication was worthwhile, but there 
was less interest in having greater transparency about 
the work of the police. As with www.police.uk and 
Crime Reports, participants primarily wanted the app 
to inform them about local crime in order for them to 
take preventative measures, for example, avoiding certain 
areas where crimes had taken place, being more vigilant, 
investing in more security devices.
6.1.2	
Public views on the content of the app
Information about police activity
For the purposes of crime prevention, focus group 
participants felt that the content of the app was 
inappropriate. There was felt to be too much focus in 
the social media tools (Twitter, You Tube, Flickr) on 
showcasing police-community events, instead of relaying 
information about crime and how to prevent it. Alerts 
about local crimes, tailored to postcode or current 
location (using GPS tracking on smartphones) were 
suggested instead.
Information designed to increase police visibility, such 
as the neighbourhood map showing ‘bobbies on the 
beat’ was criticised because it was not seen to have a 
clear crime prevention focus. Indeed, participants were 
confused as to what the purpose was. It was also thought 
to present a misleading impression of police activity:
“The police are trying to be open and tell you what 
they’re doing, but when you actually look at them, what 
they’re doing, they don’t seem to be doing a great deal.” 
(Focus group area 5)
The tweets from neighbourhood officers on the beat 
were also felt to be too generic to tell them anything 
very useful about police activity (for example, “tackling 
neighbourhood priorities in the local area”). The dislike 
of these generic messages appears to conflict with the 
police’s aim of ensuring usability and take-up by police 
officers by providing generic, ‘drop-down’ messages for 
them to send.
Communicating and engaging with the police
Participants considered the information about police 
contact details useful. There was little enthusiasm, 
though, for using the email facility to contact the police, 
mainly because participants wanted to be certain that 
someone had received their message and to receive a 
more immediate response. Nonetheless, participants 
thought that improving communications with the police 
was a positive use for the app, and felt that more thought 
could be given to how the features of a mobile app could 
best be utilised for this. One suggestion was using the app 
to generate intelligence about crime by having a facility for 
users to submit information about crimes or suspicious 
activity that they see when on the move.
Participants were, again, unaware of the transparency 
agenda and showed little interest in using the information 
on the app to engage with the police in local meetings. 
The feature of the app that provided a direct means of 
engaging with and influencing the police – rating and 
commenting on local police priorities – was interesting 
to participants, but there was little appetite expressed 
for using it. This was partly because there was confusion 
about how local priorities were set and how their votes 
and comments would feed in to the process,
and partly because participants did not feel sufficiently 
well-informed to suggest local policing priorities. 
Moreover, the information provided about police actions 
on the priorities was not felt to be detailed enough to get 
a real sense of what the neighbourhood team were doing, 
and to enable them to engage with the police about it.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
16
It was suggested, however, that the information about 
crime incidents (from www.police.uk) could be used 
to inform and prompt the public to suggest policing 
priorities. It was felt that more information about
how priorities were reached, and more explicit links 
between the local crime information and the interactive 
features of the app (rating and commenting), might 
prompt greater participation.
Table 2 provides a summary of the main features of the 
app and the focus groups’ overall assessment of them.
6.2	
Track My Crime
Track My Crime (TMC) was developed by Avon and 
Somerset Constabulary and launched in March 2011.
It is an online service, offered to individual victims of 
crime as an alternative to receiving updates by telephone. 
It allows victims of crime to log on to a website to 
see updates on how the investigation of their crime is 
progressing. Its principal aim is to improve crime victims’ 
experience of contact with the police, by keeping them 
informed about their case in a way that suits them and
at their convenience. The emphasis of TMC is victim 
choice, it is about what will work for them.  It does not 
completely replace face-to-face contact or telephone 
calls. It is also anticipated that the service will save police 
resources, since it is quicker for officers to put messages 
on TMC than to try to reach victims by telephone.
After logging on to the TMC website, the user can 
read updates on their case, check and amend details of 
their stolen or damaged property, see contact details of 
organisations offering support, and send a message to the 
local police.
Local staff reported the main challenge to be raising 
the level of take-up of the service. At 6 months after 
launch, around 11 per cent of victims were taking up 
the opportunity to use TMC, which was lower than 
anticipated. They suspected that take-up was low because 
TMC was not being consistently offered to crime victims 
by call handlers and police officers. Take-up was highest 
among victims of ‘high-volume, low-value’ property 
crimes, such as theft from motor vehicles and burglaries 
from sheds and garages.
An internal evaluation, based on a user satisfaction survey 
of victims, indicated that TMC users’ level of satisfaction 
with the police was similar to that of other crime victims, 
while a survey of police officers found that most of those 
who had used TMC were positive about it. The impact on 
police resources was perceived to be relatively limited so 
far because of low take-up.
6.2.1	
Public perceptions of Track My Crime
Public views on the usefulness of Track My Crime
In focus groups, participants expressed divergent views on 
whether they felt that the TMC service would be useful 
to them. Those who thought that it was useful felt that 
its main purpose would be to avoid “the back and forth 
of the phone calls” when trying to reach an officer who is 
Table 2: Public views on key features of the Surrey Police Beat app
Feature
Views
Twitter feed
Tweeting considered to be useful means of communication by the police in principle, but a 
high volume of tweets was considered unnecessary and content was described as being ’dull’. 
Tweets about crimes and outcomes would be more useful than community information.
Photographs and videos
Little interest in photographs of community events. Photographs of wanted criminals 
and safety videos were suggested as useful alternatives.
Neighbourhood priorities
Useful to have; needs regular updating. More information on police/partner actions 
in relation to priorities would be useful. Lack of understanding about how priorities 
arrived at; more information about how votes feed in is necessary.
Events/meetings 
information
Useful information but on its own would not encourage meeting attendance.
Map of activity
Considered to be of limited use. Smartphone screen too small and too few icons 
implied little police activity. Tweets describing activities considered too generic.
Crime statistics
Generated most interest; some saw a use for crime prevention. The addition of trends 
over time and outcomes data would increase relevance. A link to www.police.uk from 
the app is needed.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
17
not on shift. They liked the fact that they could log on to 
the service at their own convenience:
“[...] I think that’s quite a nice idea because […] I’m not 
being hassled then. It’s on my terms.”
(Focus group area 6)
Some participants felt that its usefulness depended upon 
the seriousness of the crime concerned. It was commonly 
said by participants that if they experienced a serious 
crime they would want to receive updates from an officer 
by phone or face to face rather than online. However,
one participant who had experienced a more serious 
crime thought that TMC was a useful service, as an 
additional means of gaining information about the 
progress of a case, as long as it did not replace other 
more direct forms of contact. Generally, people wanted 
a range of means of communicating with the police to 
be open to them. Some of those who had experienced 
minor crimes said it would be helpful to be able to track 
their crime online, whereas others felt that if the crime 
was minor they would not want to bother tracking it at 
all. This was related to their generally low expectation of 
anything happening as a result of police investigations.
Whether participants felt they would use TMC was 
also related to the way that they used the internet. For 
example, one said that TMC would be useful to him 
because he did “absolutely everything” on his phone. 
In contrast, others would prefer to receive messages 
directly by email or text instead of having to log on
to a website.
Public views on the content of the Track My Crime website
Some aspects of the content of TMC were felt to be 
particularly useful, namely the name and contact details of 
the investigating team, and the inclusion of a non-urgent 
direct telephone number in case they wanted to call for 
an update. Participants’ response to the email messaging 
facility was muted, since they were concerned about how 
long it would take to receive a response.
Substantive updates about progress in the case via TMC 
were welcomed, but automated procedural updates, 
especially those that relayed the status of the case as it 
moved through the system, were heavily criticised and 
gave a negative impression about police bureaucracy:
“You might get your message and go ‘Oh, they might 
have found something’, log on [and think] ‘Oh no, it’s just 
on somebody else’s desk’.”
(Focus group area 6)
Table 3 provides a summary of the main features of TMC 
and the focus groups’ overall assessment of them.
Table 3: Public views on key features of the Track My Crime initiative
Feature
Views
‘Status’ tab (updates about 
the case from the police)
Some thought that receiving updates electronically was convenient and would save time 
for them and the police. Most were not interested in receiving automated procedural 
updates, only those with specific information about the investigation and the name of 
the investigating officer/team.
‘Stolen/damaged’ tab
(list of victim’s stolen/
damaged property)
Mixed views; a few participants thought that it could be useful, but would like to receive 
notification that the information had been received.
‘Support and advice’ tab
(contact details of 
organisations offering 
support and advice)
Mixed views; some thought that this was already available elsewhere, others thought 
that it was useful to have the information in one place.
‘Contact us’ tab
(allows the user to send a 
message to the police)
Useful as long as there is an indication of how long it will take to receive a reply. Helpful 
to see the name of the investigating officer and a contact number.
‘Notification preferences’ 
tab (allows the user to
set preferences for
email/text alerts)
Useful, but it should be possible to opt-out of alerts for routine procedural messages.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
18
7	 Discussion and conclusions
The aim of this research was to examine public 
experiences and views of the Trailblazer initiatives, in 
order to provide feedback to local sites and to inform 
future national policy developments. This chapter draws 
together the overarching themes from across the focus 
groups, which pertain to the Trailblazer initiatives 
as a whole, identifying implications for the further 
development of the www.police.uk website and other 
similar initiatives.
7.1	
Overarching themes
7.1.1	
Public response to the availability of mapped 
crime information
Focus group participants expressed a range of views 
about the importance of providing crime information 
and crime maps to the public. Some thought it important 
that the information was in the public domain and saw 
the information as a sign of greater police openness, 
which they welcomed. Many participants also expressed 
an interest in what the mapped crime data showed for 
their area. However, there were also concerns that 
spending money on initiatives such as the Trailblazers was 
not the best use of public money in a time of financial 
constraint. It was widely felt that the ‘value for money’ of 
the initiatives should be assessed, in particular in terms of 
their contribution to crime prevention/reduction.
7.1.2	
Providing the right information for different 
purposes
There are some complex findings to unravel about 
the type of changes or enhancements to the initiatives 
that the public viewed as desirable. On the one hand, a 
commonly repeated request was for more aggregated 
data, which allowed areas to be compared and trends in 
crime to be put in context. Yet there were also requests 
for more detailed information, in particular around the 
specific nature of the mapped offences, in order to aid 
crime prevention, and around the outcomes for particular 
high-profile crimes.
These, seemingly contradictory, messages relate to 
different ways in which the public was interested in
using the available information. A range of potential 
uses of the crime data were identified, including crime 
prevention, researching and comparing neighbourhoods 
for residence, and monitoring the activities of the local 
police. The findings from the study suggest that the 
information provided could be better tailored to each of 
these purposes.
Crime prevention
One potential benefit of the public’s access to crime 
information highlighted in the research was the provision 
of more targeted and timely crime prevention messages. 
However, for the information to be used for crime 
prevention, users required more frequent data and more 
detail on individual incidents, including the circumstances 
and ways in which an offence had been committed, which 
would enable them to take steps to prevent such incidents 
from happening to them in the future. Of the Trailblazer 
initiatives, Crime Reports addressed this purpose most 
directly, by providing more frequent crime updates (daily) 
and more detailed information about incidents. However, 
even with this greater level of detail, participants still felt 
that the right sort of information (especially the methods 
used by offenders) was not being provided to enable them 
to take effective crime prevention steps.
Current users of Crime Reports also desired greater 
frequency of crime updates and potentially for the site 
to move towards providing real-time crime information. 
The provision of ‘real-time’ crime maps was also a 
recommendation from other recent research on the 
potential for new digital technologies to improve the 
operation of the criminal justice system for crime victims 
(Muir, 2012). 
Researching an area
If using sites such as www.police.uk to research an area 
for residence, participants wanted more contextual 
information than was available on the site. Data on crime 
trends over time and relative to other areas were seen as 
especially useful for making a more informed judgement 
about a neighbourhood. Participants expressed concern 
that without the contextual information, the figures on 
the crime maps could be misleading.
Monitoring police performance
For using the crime maps to monitor the work of the 
police, and potentially to hold the police to account, 
participants echoed the need for information on crime 
trends and crime rates relative to other places. Few of 
the Trailblazer initiatives presented the information in 
this way. The absence of both comparative information 
(comparing crimes across areas) and trend information 

Research Report 67	
October 2012
19
meant that it was difficult for users to see how the 
information could be used to engage with the police 
and hold them to account. Information about outcomes 
(arrests made and sentencing) and about police 
interventions to prevent and reduce crime were also felt 
to be important for the site to be used in this way.
7.1.3	
Conveying accessible information about crime and 
the criminal justice system
The police investigation and criminal justice systems are 
complex and the challenge for several of these initiatives 
has been to convey this information in a user-friendly way 
to an audience that may be unfamiliar with the processes 
and terminologies. A key challenge is to provide sufficient 
detail so that the information is useful and usable by the 
public, without contravening privacy obligations, making 
the provision of information too resource intensive for 
the provider, or overwhelming the public with information 
that does not seem to be of obvious practical use.
The amount of information conveyed
The findings suggest that there can be unintentional 
negative consequences when too much information 
is conveyed to the public if it is perceived as having 
limited practical benefit. One example of this was the 
map showing the location of the neighbourhood police 
team on the Surrey Police Beat app, which participants 
felt to have little use and created a counter-productive 
impression of police inactivity. Another example was the 
Track My Crime initiative, which makes more stages of 
the police investigation process visible to crime victims. 
Focus group participants were negative about receiving 
automated messages that simply relayed the status of the 
case as it moved through the system, since this gave a 
negative impression about police bureaucracy. Thus there 
is a balance to be struck between providing information 
in the interests of transparency, but without overloading 
users with too much information.
The quality of the information provided is also important, 
illustrated by the fact that members of the public were 
critical of anything perceived to be a ‘standard’ or 
‘generic’ electronic response (for example, in the form of 
emails or tweets) from the police. This reveals an example 
where the interests of the public, as recipients of the 
information, and those of the police, as providers of the 
information, may conflict. The use of automated, ‘drop 
down’ message options was promoted by the police in the 
development of the Surrey Police Beat app and Track My 
Crime for ease of use and to save time for police officers. 
Thus the discrepancy between police aims and public 
responses raises issues about the resource implications of 
expanding public engagement through social media.
The difficulty of finding the right balance, in terms of how 
much information to convey, was also illustrated with 
the Crime Reports website, which provides additional 
information about the crimes mapped, compared with 
www.police.uk. Participants in the Crime Reports focus 
groups welcomed some of this additional information, 
such as the enhanced crime categories and the information 
on outcomes. As a consequence of the greater amount 
of information, however, they found the map less user-
friendly and too cluttered. The ability to filter the map 
by type of crime was a useful development, enabling the 
map to be simplified according to the user’s interests. In 
general, participants across the groups wanted to be able 
to identify ‘serious’ crime incidents on the crime maps at a 
glance, and did not want maps ‘cluttered’ with less serious 
incidents (for example, anti-social behaviour). Thus there 
is a trade-off between the amount of information provided 
and its usability, and the provision of more information 
needs to be balanced by its relevance to the user.
This is reinforced by the finding that public reactions to 
the Dyfed Powys neighbourhood newsletter tended to
be more positive, in terms of its utility and relevance,
than responses to some of the other initiatives. It is likely 
that this was because the newsletter provides locally 
relevant crime information in a more succinct, summary 
form. Several participants across the groups said that
they preferred to receive summary crime information
that had been interpreted and assessed for relevance, 
rather than the more detailed information contained 
on www.police.uk (and similar sites), which the user is 
required to interpret and assess. This finding about the 
positive reactions to the paper newsletter is important 
for police forces to bear in mind, especially since not all
of the public is fully internet literate.
The neighbourhood newsletter may also have been 
better received by the public, relative to other initiatives, 
because it is relatively more accessible, being available 
to pick up in community locations, rather than requiring 
the user to make the effort to visit a website. This 
concern with the accessibility of the information was also 
reinforced in some of the other focus group discussions 
where participants suggested that usage might be higher 
if the police were to ‘push’ the information out to the 
public, for example, through email alerts about local crime 
incidents, rather than expecting the website to ‘pull’ in 
large numbers of users.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
20
Accessibility of information
Conveying complexity
Balancing accessibility and complexity is a particular 
challenge in the case of initiatives that provide information 
on crime outcomes.
In the case of the inclusion of justice outcomes on
www.police.uk, while participants broadly welcomed the 
outcome data, and liked the ability to track an individual 
crime to its conclusions, the organisation of the summary 
outcomes data (by type of outcome rather than by type 
of crime) did not aid public understanding. This was 
because it did not easily allow participants to interpret the 
summary outcomes in the light of the types of offences 
committed and their individual circumstances. Focus 
group discussions suggested that for some people, this 
presentation of the data simply confirmed their
pre-existing suspicions about the ‘leniency’ of the
criminal justice system, given that the headline figures 
showed a small proportion of custodial sentences.
The Crime Reports website takes a different
approach, incorporating police outcomes on the site 
by labelling mapped crime incidents as either ‘solved’ 
or ‘unsolved’. This was welcomed by participants, 
and the terminology of ‘solved/unsolved’ was widely 
used by respondents across the focus groups, often 
interchangeably with terms such as ‘arrests made’ and 
‘criminals caught’. However, the idea that a crime is 
‘solved’ if an arrest has been made is a simplification
of the legal process, where a crime is not fully solved
until a suspect is proven guilty. Developing more
accurate terminology for conveying police outcomes
(for example, ‘suspect charged’) may be an opportunity 
for sites such as this to give the public a better 
understanding of the system.
7.1.4	
Using the information to promote local 
accountability
One of the key aims of the www.police.uk website and 
the Trailblazer initiatives is to make the workings of the 
police and criminal justice systems more transparent 
to the public, in order that the public is in a position 
to engage with these services in a meaningful way and 
to hold them to account. The focus group discussions 
suggested, however, that this primary purpose of the 
initiatives was not well understood by the public. Focus 
group participants had limited awareness of ways to 
engage in holding the police and safety partners to 
account (such as local area beat meetings) and expressed 
scepticism about attending such meetings and the extent 
of their influence if they did.
Where users were invited to engage directly in
influencing policing priorities via digital technology
(as with the Surrey Police Beat app), participants felt
that there was insufficient information made available
both about how policing priorities were formed and
how they could contribute to this, and about the
activities that the police were undertaking in response
to neighbourhood priorities.
The limited enthusiasm expressed for using the 
information to engage with the police and/or safety 
partners should not necessarily be interpreted as a failure 
of the Trailblazer initiatives, however. It may simply reflect 
the nature of the way that the public engages in crime 
and disorder issues, and indeed in local services more 
generally (see Skidmore et al., 2006). There is likely to 
be a small number of people with the time and interest 
to engage with the police regularly on these issues, while 
others may engage for short periods in response to 
specific high-profile incidents in the local neighbourhood 
(see Innes, 2004).
However, if the policy intent is to encourage greater 
engagement with policing and community safety among 
the general public, then it should be recognised that 
the provision of crime data alone is unlikely to achieve 
this, without wider activity to educate members of the 
public on how they might use the information to do this 
effectively. The forthcoming introduction of directly 
elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in 
November 2012 will introduce a new element into the 
local dialogue between the public and community safety 
partners, and may provide additional opportunities for 
public engagement.
7.1.5	
Customer service improvements
While not a primary aim of the Trailblazer initiatives, 
their capacity to improve customer service quality 
was something highly valued by the participants. Of 
the initiatives, Track My Crime is the most obviously 
focused on service improvement, in this case for victims 
of crime. Participants assessed its usefulness in these 
terms; for example, they welcomed information about 
the investigator’s name, who to contact directly about 
their case, the ability to contact the team at their own 
convenience, and disliked the receipt of impersonal 
bureaucratic messages.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
21
The ability of the Trailblazer initiatives to improve 
communications with the police was also raised in several 
of the focus groups. One suggestion made in several 
groups was to make the initiatives more interactive by 
enabling members of the public to submit intelligence 
about local crime incidents to the police. Muir (2012) 
cites this as one of the key ways in which criminal justice 
services can use new digital technologies to enhance 
their services for victims of crime, since it can potentially 
facilitate the investigation of crimes.
It was notable, however, that respondents stopped short 
of suggesting that new digital technologies should take the 
place of other more traditional means of communication 
between the public and the police. An example was in 
discussions of Track My Crime, where respondents were 
very clear that they viewed the site as an additional means 
of receiving information about their case. They would not 
want the site to replace face to face or telephone contact, 
especially in the case of more serious crimes. Participants 
assessing the Surrey Police Beat app were also sceptical 
about their desire to use email as a principal means of 
contacting the local police rather than the telephone. 
Other desired additions to the www.police.uk site also 
suggested that participants were concerned to keep
open, and to improve, a range of means of communicating 
with the police. For example, participants, especially in 
the rural area, requested information such as opening 
hours of police stations and out of hours telephone 
contact details. The names and photographs of the 
neighbourhood police teams on www.police.uk were 
also valued for putting a face to a name and making 
communications less impersonal.
7.2	
Implications for future developments
The discussion below makes general suggestions for 
improvements to the www.police.uk website and the 
Trailblazer initiatives, and about the implications for future 
policy in this area, drawing on the research findings. 
Annex C provides a list of all the improvements suggested 
by focus group participants.
●
●There is a need to think carefully about future 
enhancements to www.police.uk and related 
initiatives. The findings suggest that more 
information is not always desirable and can be 
counter-productive. Enhancements should be 
tailored so that the public finds them useful and 
easy to use. There is a danger that initiatives will 
lose public support if their relevance is unclear, 
particularly given the current climate of austerity.
●
●While the Government’s transparency agenda 
has emphasised the role of www.police.uk and 
the Trailblazer initiatives in promoting local 
accountability, this was not commonly recognised by 
focus group participants. A range of other purposes 
for the initiatives were identified, however, the 
principal one being crime prevention. Developing the 
website to suit this purpose would fit most closely 
with the interests of the majority of participants in 
this research. Making the information on the site 
more tailored for crime prevention purposes would 
also mean that the site had more practical relevance, 
which should help to stimulate repeat use.
●
●The following improvements would help to tailor 
the site for crime prevention:
–– increasing the frequency of crime updates to 
at least weekly, and examining the feasibility of 
working towards the provision of real-time crime 
information in the future;
–– providing more contextual details about the 
crimes mapped, including the methods used;
–– making the sites more interactive so that users 
can submit intelligence about crime incidents;
–– presenting mapped crime data in different ways, 
for example, using a time dimension to show 
repeat patterns in crimes.
●
●Other uses for the site, such as researching areas 
to move house or using the site to monitor the 
work of the police, require different types of crime 
information, namely trend data to allow an assessment 
of change over time and comparisons of crime 
rates across areas. These purposes require more 
aggregated data rather than individual incident detail.
●
●More information alone is unlikely to stimulate 
greater public engagement in holding the police to 
account. This would require additional initiatives 
to encourage engagement. Lessons could be learnt 
from existing initiatives that encourage community 
engagement in neighbourhood policing.
●
●Findings suggested that the initiatives needed 
a ‘hook’ to keep people returning to them. 
Encouraging users to create an account and sign up 
for email alerts could be one way of achieving this. 
A suggestion for mobile apps was to send out crime 
alerts tailored to an individual’s GPS location. Given 
that news of a local crime often encouraged people 
to look at www.police.uk, alerts could be triggered 
by certain local crime incidents (for example, serious 
crimes or a crime ‘spate’). Alerts about outcomes 
(arrests/sentences) for high-profile local crimes 
could also be useful to promote understanding and 
confidence in the police and criminal justice system.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
22
●
●Care needs to be taken in the way that the
criminal justice outcome data are presented 
on www.police.uk, given the complexity of the 
information and the negative views about sentencing 
among some sectors of the public. Organising 
the summary outcomes by crime type, including 
information on other stages of crime ‘solving’, 
and restricting the outcome data to more serious 
crimes are possibilities that could be explored. More 
explanatory and contextual information about the 
sentences handed down could help to challenge
pre-existing assumptions.
●
●The findings suggest that there was a public 
appetite for information on local crime prevention 
initiatives and the steps taken by the police to 
solve and reduce crime and anti-social behaviour. 
Incorporating information from partner agencies 
into www.police.uk, similar to the Crime Reports 
website, would inform the public about the
wider involvement of other local agencies in
dealing with crime and disorder, and the need to 
hold these other agencies to account for dealing 
with the issues.
7.3	
Conclusion
This research has highlighted considerable public curiosity 
and, to an extent, an appetite for crime and criminal 
justice outcome information. However, a key message was 
that providing more information should not be an end in 
itself. The information provided must be the right kind of 
information for the purposes intended, namely for crime 
prevention and for monitoring and assessing the work of 
the police and safety partners. The aim of transparency 
and openness must also be balanced by the need for 
the information to be high quality, relevant, usable and 
intelligible. This is necessary in order to avoid initiatives 
losing public support. Future developments need to make 
clear how the information could be used to engage with 
and hold the police to account, and demonstrate that the 
initiatives are improving the service and directed towards 
crime reduction and prevention.
Given that many of the initiatives studied in this research 
were at an early stage of development, there may be value 
in conducting further research on public engagement and 
usage at a later date, when the services have seen further 
development and take-up has increased. To gain greater 
insight into the potential of the initiatives for holding the 
police to account, it would also be beneficial to examine 
their use more directly in situations where they have been 
incorporated into existing engagement initiatives.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
23
References
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using thematic 
analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 
vol. 3 (2), pp 77–101.
Cameron, D. (2011) Letter to Cabinet Ministers on 
transparency and open data, 7 July 2011. London: Office 
of the Prime Minister. http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/
letter-to-cabinet-ministers-on-transparency-and-open-
data/ (accessed 12 July, 2012).
Casey, L. (2008) Engaging Communities in Fighting 
Crime. London: Cabinet Office.
Chaplin, R., Flatley, J. and Smith, K. (2011) Crime 
in England and Wales 2010/11: Findings from the British 
Crime Survey and police recorded crime (2nd edition). 
London: Home Office.
Chapman, B., Mirrlees-Black, C. and Brawn, C. 
(2002) Improving public attitudes to the criminal justice 
system: the impact of information, Home Office Research 
Study 245. London: Home Office.
Flanagan, R. (2008) The Review of Policing: The Final 
Report. London: Home Office.
Home Office (2008) From the neighbourhood to the 
national: policing our communities together, Green Paper. 
London: Home Office.
Home Office (2009) Protecting the public: supporting 
the police to succeed. London: Home Office.
Home Office (2010) Policing in the 21st Century, White 
Paper. London: Home Office.
Innes, M. (2004) ‘Signal crimes and signal disorders: 
notes on deviance as communicative action’, British 
Journal of Sociology, vol. 55 (3), pp 335–355.
Ministry of Justice (2010) Breaking the Cycle:
Effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing 
of offenders, Green Paper Evidence Report. London: 
Ministry of Justice.
Ministry of Justice (2011) Increasing community
access to local criminal justice, Action Plan. London: 
Ministry of Justice.
Muir, R. (2012) Open Justice: Empowering Victims 
through Data and Technology. London: Institute for Public 
Policy Research.
O’Hara, K. (2011) Transparent government, 
not transparent citizens: A report on privacy and 
transparency for the Cabinet Office. London:
Cabinet Office.
Quinton, P. (2011) The impact of information about 
crime and policing on public perceptions: The results of a 
randomised control trial. London: Home Office, National 
Policing Improvement Agency.
Salisbury, H. (2004) Public attitudes to the criminal 
justice system: the impact of providing information to 
British Crime Survey respondents, Home Office online 
report 64/04. London: Home Office.
Scribbins, M. (ed.), Flatley, J., Parfrement-Hopkins, 
J. and Hall, P. (2010) Public perceptions of policing, 
engagement with police and victimisation: Findings from 
the 2009/10 British Crime Survey (Supplementary Volume 
1 to Crime in England and Wales 2009/10), Home Office 
Statistical Bulletin 19/10. London: Home Office.
Singer, L. and Cooper, S. (2008) Inform, persuade 
and remind: an evaluation of a project to improve public 
confidence in the criminal justice system. Ministry of 
Justice research series 15/08. London: Ministry of Justice.
Skidmore, P., Bound, K. and Lownsbrough, H. 
(2006) Community participation: Who benefits? Joseph 
Rowntree Foundation.
Smith, A. (2006) Crime Statistics: An Independent 
Review. London: Home Office.
Wünsch, D. and Hohl, K. (2009) ‘Evidencing a good 
practice model of police communication: the impact of 
policing newsletters on public confidence’, Policing: A 
journal of policy and practice, vol. 3 (4), pp 331–339.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
24
Annex A: Research methods
Focus group sampling and recruitment
Sampling for the focus groups was purposive. It was not 
intended to provide a representative cross-section of 
the population but to capture a range of experiences 
and perspectives. The intention was to achieve a mix of 
users and non-users of the www.police.uk website and 
the Trailblazer initiative in each area, plus a range of other 
variation such as demographic characteristics (gender, 
age, class, ethnic group), previous contact with the police, 
views about the police and fear of crime. As well as 
obtaining a broad spread of these characteristics overall, 
some less commonly heard groups were over-sampled to 
ensure that their views were heard. This included younger 
people (aged 18–25), older people (aged 65+), those 
without internet access and ethnic minorities. Other 
criteria for individual focus groups included:
●
●recent victims of crime for the Track My Crime 
focus groups, since this was the target population;
●
●smartphone users for the Surrey Police Beat app 
focus groups;
●
●Neighbourhood Watch members and co-ordinators 
for one of the Crime Reports groups, since the 
interactive features of the site are targeted at
these groups.
The recruitment was carried out by Cragg Ross
Dawson, who offer a specialist fieldwork recruitment 
service, working to Policy Studies Institute’s sample 
criteria. On-street public recruitment was supplemented 
by targeted recruitment by the police in some areas.
This was intended to facilitate the recruitment of
www.police.uk and, particularly, Trailblazer users. 
However, the latter technique was less successful than 
anticipated and it was not possible to recruit pre-existing 
Trailblazer users to the groups in most cases. In the case 
of the Surrey Police Beat app and the neighbourhood 
newsletter, participants were instead asked to use/
read the app/newsletter prior to the discussion. In 
Avon and Somerset, the Track My Crime application 
was demonstrated in the focus groups. In the justice 
outcomes trailblazer sites, the initiative was not yet live, 
so it was not possible for members of the public to have 
previously used the initiative; again it was demonstrated 
in the groups. Police recruitment was most successful 
for the Crime Reports focus groups (local police emailed 
Neighbourhood Watch participants and sent an alert 
via Crime Reports); hence these groups contain a higher 
proportion of participants who were already actively 
engaged with local community safety networks. Table A1 
describes the composition of each group.
Table A2 shows the characteristics of the achieved sample 
across the groups. This shows that around one-half of 
the participants were women and one-half men and that 
there was an even spread across the age spectrum. There 
was also a spread across socio-economic groups, with all 
groups well-represented except for Group E (the lowest 
status group). Participants were mainly White British, 
with just less than one-fifth from ethnic minority groups. 
Ethnic minorities were over-sampled in some of the 
locations where there were larger minority communities.
In terms of engagement with and views on the police, 
most people had some exposure to the police in the 
previous 12 months, most commonly to report a crime
or through looking at online crime maps (due to the 
nature of the sampling criteria). Other common types of 
contact were: 
●
●contacting the police for another (unspecified) 
reason; 
●
●communicating with police who door-knocked
for information; 
●
●participating in Neighbourhood Watch; 
●
●approaching officers on foot patrol; 
●
●attending a police public meeting. 
The vast majority of participants thought that their local 
police did a good job. Around three-quarters said they did 
a “good” or “excellent” job and only seven participants 
said they did a “poor” or “very poor” job. Fear of crime 
varied. Around two-fifths of participants said they were 
“not very worried” about becoming a victim of crime, 
while a similar number said they were “fairly worried”. 
Very few people though (only ten overall) were “very 
worried” about being a victim of crime.
Overall, 33 people (just less than one-third of the total) 
had previously used www.police.uk, and 10 participants 
were previous Trailblazer users. As described above,
most of these Trailblazer users were users of Crime 
Reports in Hampshire.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
25
Table A1: Focus groups – locations and composition
Site
No. of participants Rural/urban
Police.uk 
use
Trailblazer 
use
Contact with the police in previous 12 months
Less frequently heard 
groups
Group 1 Group 2
Criminal 
justice 
outcomes 
site I
8
8
Rural
3
NA
7 had contact – Group 1 very little contact, 
Group 2 more contact, mostly to report a 
crime; 1 attended a police public meeting and 
other meetings that the police attend.
Criminal 
justice 
outcomes 
site II
8
7
City centre
9
NA
13 had contact – mostly looking at crime 
maps, police door knocking for information or 
approaching officers on foot patrol; 1 was a 
member of Neighbourhood Watch.
Around one-half of 
participants were 
from ethnic minorities. 
Group 2: all younger 
people (aged 18–25)
Criminal 
justice 
outcomes
site III
8
8
City centre
8
NA
11 had contact – mostly in Group 1 – included 
looking at crime maps and participating in 
Neighbourhood Watch (4).
Around a one-third 
were from ethnic 
minorities
Crime 
Reports
6
6
City centre
2
8
11 had contact – mostly looking at crime maps, 
participating in Neighbourhood Watch (6) or 
attending groups that the police attend (4).
Neighbour­
hood News
7
7
Small town
5
1
(No data)
Around one-half of 
participants were older 
people (aged 65+); 
Group 2: around one-
half of participants had 
no IT access
Surrey Police 
Beat app
6
7
suburban
4
0
More contact in Group 2 – mostly attending 
police public meetings, police door knocking 
for information, looking at online crime maps, 
and approaching officers on foot patrol; 3 
Neighbourhood Watch members.
Track My 
Crime
8
8
City centre
3
3
All victims of crime in last 12 months.
Most contact to report a crime, also looking
at online crime maps; 2 Neighbourhood
Watch members.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
26
Table A2: Characteristics of the achieved sample
Characteristics
No. in sample
Total participants
102
Gender
Male
53
Female
49
Participant age
18–30
22
31–39
16
40–49
22
50–59
18
60+
18
Unknown
6
Socio-economic status (SES)
A
13
B
20
C1
28
C2
16
D
15
E
2
Unknown
8
Ethnic group
White British
72
Ethnic minority
20
Unknown
10
How good a job do the local police do?
Excellent
19
Good
53
Fair
16
Poor
6
Very poor
1
Unknown
7
How worried are you about being a 
victim of crime?
Very worried
10
Fairly worried
35
Not very worried
39
Not at all worried
14
Unknown
4
Previous usage of www.police.uk
Yes
33
No
69
Previous usage of Trailblazer initiative
Yes
10
No
92
Data analysis
A thematic analysis method was used to analyse
the data collected. This method identifies, analyses
and reports patterns or themes within the data, and 
provides an interpretation of these patterns in relation 
to the research questions. The analysis was undertaken 
within a realist theoretical framework, reporting on the 
explicit experiences and meanings of the participants as 
reported through their interview accounts (see Braun
and Clarke, 2006).
The first step of the process involved using charting 
methods (in Excel) to summarise the content of the 
staff interviews according to a set of broad topic areas 
deriving from the research questions. This results in a 
matrix output that enables the data to be summarised by 
case (individual members of staff) and topic. These topic 
summaries then informed the next stage of the analysis.
Stage two involved coding the focus group data according 
to a set of themes, which were developed iteratively 
from the research questions, the staff interview findings 
and from the focus group data. Coded data were then 
summarised across the dataset and the themes refined 
and developed. The penultimate stage of the analysis 
examined patterns, relationships and (in)consistencies 
within the data for each initiative and then across 
the Trailblazer initiatives as a whole. A final stage of 
interpretative analysis drew out the meanings of the 
findings in relation to the aims of the individual Trailblazer 
initiatives and in relation to the Trailblazer programme as 
a whole and the broader policy aims.

Research Report 67	
October 2012
27
Annex B: Awareness and use of 
online crime maps
Background
Since January 2009 every police force in England and 
Wales has been required to publish maps on their 
website, giving local crime statistics and details of 
neighbourhood policing teams in the local area. In order 
to bring these together and allow a national overview,
the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) 
developed one website for these data, (www.police.uk), 
launched in October 2009. In January 2011 the website 
was re-launched with more localised ‘street-level’ crime 
and anti-social behaviour data.
In October 2011 the website was updated with further 
information, including comparative force performance 
data on crime rates, quality of service and victim 
satisfaction, via a link to the Her Majesty’s Inspectorate 
of Constabulary (HMIC) website. New crime categories 
were also added to the crime maps, including public 
disorder, possession of weapons, shoplifting, criminal 
damage, arson, theft and drug offences.
In January 2012 more developments were made to the 
site to provide a greater level of detail. For example, 
the privacy threshold was reduced from 12 to 8 postal 
addresses so that crimes could be mapped more 
accurately, and crimes that occurred in non-residential 
locations (such as railway stations, nightclubs, car parks, 
hospitals and shopping centres) could be mapped directly 
onto these locations (rather than onto nearby streets).19 
Also, since the end of May 2012, the www.police.uk 
website has started to show information about what 
happens after a crime has occurred, in terms of police 
action or the justice outcome if the case went to court.
Awareness and use of crime maps
The www.police.uk website attracted huge public interest 
when it was initially launched and, between 31 January and 
31 December 2011, received 47 million visits. However, 
19	Crimes are mapped to an anonymous point, called a ‘snap point’, 
which is a dot on a street that is on or near the location of the 
actual crime. Streets with fewer than eight postal addresses are 
not shown on the map to protect the privacy and anonymity of 
victims and alleged perpetrators. If a crime occurs in a street with 
fewer than eight postal addresses it will be mapped to a larger 
neighbouring street.
it is not clear from these figures how many of these are 
unique visits or who the site users are. The website usage 
figures can be compared with the figures from the Crime 
Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), formerly known 
as the British Crime Survey, which has included questions 
in the last three sweeps of the survey (in 2009/10, 2010/11 
and 2011/12)20 about the public’s awareness and use of 
online crime maps (see Box B1 for further detail on the 
questions asked).
CSEW data from 2009/10 show that 10 per cent of the 
population said that they were aware of online crime 
maps and just 3 per cent said they had looked at or
used such maps. In the subsequent 2010/11 CSEW,
these figures had increased slightly: 15 per cent of 
respondents said that they were aware of crime maps 
and 4 per cent said they had looked at or used them. 
However, the most recent CSEW results show that there 
has been a marked increase in awareness and usage. 
Findings from interviews in the 12 months to December 
2011)21 show that one-third (33%) of people were aware 
of crime maps and 11 per cent had used them. The 11 per 
cent who reported having used online crime maps equates 
to 4.9 million individuals across England and Wales.
Analysis of the figures by quarters (see Figure B1) suggests 
that it was the availability, from January 2011, of the new 
street-level crime maps that was responsible for the 
large increase in public awareness and usage. During 
the last quarter of 2010/11 (January to March 2011), the 
proportion of respondents who were aware of, or had 
looked at or used, online crime maps more than doubled 
from the previous quarter. A further increase continued 
in the April to June quarter, but awareness and usage 
then stabilised in the final two quarters of the year. It 
is possible that the results for 2011/12 will show further 
increases because of the latest re-launch of the website 
with justice outcomes data.
More detailed analysis (of the 2009/10 CSEW), examining 
the relationship between awareness and use of crime 
maps and personal, household and area characteristics
can be found in earlier annual crime statistics publications 
(see Scribbins et al., 2010).
20	Figures for 2011/12 were published by the Office for National 
Statistics (ONS) on 19 July 2012.
21	This is the first full year of data since the launch of the street-level 
crime data on www.police.uk. These data include one quarter’s 
(January to March 2011) data from the previously published 2010/11 
figures, see Chaplin et al. (2011).

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
28
Figure B1:	Awareness and use of online crime maps, 2010/11 and Crime Survey for England and 
Wales interviews in the 12 months to December 2011
F
i
gu
re
 B
1
Box B1: Online crime maps – changes to Crime Survey for England and Wales questions
All police forces in England and Wales were required, from January 2009, to publish online crime maps for the 
public on their websites. These provided access to police recorded crime statistics at a local neighbourhood level, 
typically wards.
In the 2009/10 and 2010/11 surveys, CSEW respondents were asked:
●
●‘Since January 2009, interactive crime maps which show crime levels in different local neighbourhoods have 
been available on all police force websites. Before this interview, did you know that these types of online 
maps were available?’
●
●‘And in the last 12 months have you looked at or used any interactive crime maps which show crime levels in 
your local neighbourhood?’
From January 2011 the Government required all forces to supply street-level crime data to a central portal 
(www.police.uk). Two new questions were added to the CSEW from April 2011 to gauge public use of and 
attitudes towards these new maps:
●
●‘Since January 2011, maps and information which show the level of crime and anti-social behaviour on each 
street have been publicly available on the internet. Before this interview, did you know that this type of online 
information was available at street level?’
●
●‘And in the last 12 months have you looked at or used any crime maps or information which shows the level 
of crime and anti-social behaviour on each street?

Research Report 67	
October 2012
29
Annex C: Public suggestions for 
improvements
www.police.uk
●
●More information about crime incidents, including 
the time or day of the week when a crime occurred, 
and more detail about the incident including how it 
was carried out.
●
●More frequent updating (weekly rather than 
monthly).
●
●Crime categories broken down further, particularly 
the anti-social behaviour category.
●
●Neighbourhood-level data on crime trends.
●
●Summary information about local police crime 
prevention strategies and ‘diversionary’ activities 
(such as youth initiatives) for the neighbourhood.
●
●Crime outcomes, in terms of arrests and sentencing 
outcomes.
●
●Links to crime prevention advice, including details 
of reputable local locksmiths and burglar-alarm 
companies.
●
●Requests for information from the police and 
‘wanted’ photographs.
●
●Feedback facilities, for example, submitting 
information about an incident, reporting crime 
online, reporting other (non-urgent) issues,
posting a question to the police, posting crime 
prevention tips.
●
●Email alerts giving detailed, up-to-date information 
about local crimes, along the lines of emails 
forwarded to residents by Neighbourhood Watch 
co-ordinators.
●
●Monthly ‘bulletin boards’ on the site providing some 
interpretation of the data, for example, summarising 
key issues and what the public should be aware of.
●
●More (or better links to) information about 
contacting the local police, for example, maps 
showing police stations and their opening hours.
●
●Better linkages between the national www.police.uk 
and local police force websites.
●
●More use of social media by the police, for example, 
live web chats, local police team blog.
Criminal justice outcomes
●
●Presenting the outcome data by type of crime rather 
than type of outcome.
●
●Ability to track outcomes for specific crimes that 
they are aware of.
●
●Providing more summary statistics about the 
proportion of crimes that are ‘resolved’, either by 
crime type or level of seriousness.
●
●Including illustrative examples of sentences, similar 
to West Yorkshire Police’s ‘In The Dock’ facility, to 
help to bring meaning to the phrases used to convey 
sentencing outcomes on the site.
Crime Reports
●
●More frequent updating of information, potentially 
moving to real-time crime information.
●
●Ability to zoom in further than 1,000 metres.
●
●More detail on the nature of crime incidents 
(specifically how it was carried out).
●
●Interactive feature to report intelligence about
a crime.
●
●Better summary and trend data.
●
●Ability to filter the map by solved/unsolved.
●
●A seriousness rating for crimes.
●
●More information about ongoing investigations.
Surrey Police Beat app
●
●Providing real-time alerts about traffic incidents and 
major road blockages to ‘hook’ people into the app 
and encourage regular use.
●
●Alerts about local crimes, tailored to postcode 
or current location, and using global positioning 
systems (GPS) tracking on smartphones.
●
●Information on local crime outcomes, including 
detection rates and justice outcomes.
●
●Regularly updated tips on crime prevention, linked 
to ‘case study’ incidents.
●
●Requests for information to help the police,
for example, photographs of ‘most wanted’ 
criminals, CCTV footage of incidents, photos
of stolen property.
●
●More interactive features such as discussion boards, 
question and answer sessions with experts on crime 
prevention.
●
●More specialist channels for communicating with
the police about different issues (for example, 
suspicious activity forum) to encourage greater 
feedback from the public.
●
●Information on how neighbourhood policing 
priorities are arrived at and how public
feedback is used.

Perceptions of the policing and crime mapping ‘Trailblazers’
30
Neighbourhood News
●
●Reports on what was discussed at police community 
meetings to encourage attendance.
●
●Feedback from readers about newsletter content.
●
●More detail on the composition of the 
neighbourhood police team, including photographs.
●
●Reports on initiatives that the neighbourhood 
policing team are working on.
●
●Inclusion of crime trends over time to help place 
incidents in perspective.
●
●Inclusion of follow-up information on crime solving 
and justice outcomes.
●
●For a more polished presentation, it was suggested 
that each issue be test-marketed before being 
distributed more widely.
Track My Crime
●
●The inclusion of information on how long it would 
take to receive a reply to email messages sent to
the police.
●
●Acknowledgements of any updates made to the list 
of stolen/damaged property.
●
●An ability to opt-out of alerts for routine procedural 
messages, but to keep receiving them for other 
messages.
●
●A version of Track My Crime could be available to 
witnesses, and possibly to other members of the 
public, to find out more detail about the progress of 
an investigation.