My concern with a lot of the criticism of crime mapping is that it’s letting perfect be the enemy of good. There is no perfect system of representing crime. I happen to think that spot mapping is the best, but recognise there are issues with it. Picking up on the few streets that have anomalies or errors diverts from the fact that for the vast majority of streets it is accurate, and for the vast majority of those people will find that crime is lower than they expected.

The problem now is what people do with it – it’s little use having a clear idea of the level of crime if you don’t then have the tools (or access to the tools) to do something to tackle it.

Plus, I expect that having checked the data for their street (with the odd well-reported exceptions of implausibly high crime rates reported for streets next to major shopping centres or hospitals, which will no doubt get ironed out once the system beds in a bit), many people will find that the actual rate of crimes is lower than they think. Fear of crime can have quite a negative effect, and no-one ever believes statistics art a national level on the grounds that they must be politicised (a bit like unemployment figures) – it’s far better to go on the real evidence. Maybe these more local figures will be trusted more.