The Thin Blue Line

Car Crime UK is a recent creation of the crime analyst team at Nice 1 Ltd in the UK.

The site aims to strip away the mystery that surrounds crime reporting in the UK, by looking more closely at Government and Home Office published statistics on crime and then presenting it in a user friendly format for both the consumer and interested commercial enterprises.

Whilst the site will focus on car crime in particular, the very nature of crime analysis involves a degree of cross over between incidents, therefore most, if not all criminal offences will be analysed at varying levels.

ANALYSIS OF CRIME

Whilst statistics do not always make the most interesting reading matter, the trends that they reflect, particularly crime statistics, have a direct bearing on our well being and sense of security in the community.Crime statistics are collated daily by the 43 police forces of England & Wales.

You can see the forces listed in the police news links lower down this page. Under the freedom of information act, forces are obliged to disclose information about crime so that the public have access.

However, the police only gather information about recorded crime. There are 164 recordable offences, from murder downwards.The problem lies in the reporting of crime.

The Home Office gather the police force recorded crime data each year and present it in an extremely detailed document, together with the results of an annual survey that canvasses 50,000 UK citizens.

If every crime were reported, and categorised accurately, crime statistics and the overview of crime would be clear as crystal. It is the non reporting of crime, reflected by the Home Office survey that reflects the disparity between crimes experienced and those actually reported.

For some offences, only 30% are reported, with the Home Office survey suggesting that the actual crime is probably 40% higher that the recorded cases.

The Home Office state that the survey figures are closer to the actual crime experienced, as they are drawn from victims of crime who have often not reported the occurrence. Reasons for non reporting will be analysed and presented through these pages.

Through careful analysis of Home Office datasets, combined with similar in depth information from other government and professional trade sources, the team at Nice 1 are able to produce analytical reports that provide a clearer picture of the true extent of crime in England & Wales.

A GUIDED TOUR

A short video sequence from the recent Car Crime UK program currently being serialised on ITV1 appears lower down the page. Trevor McDonald presents the program every Tuesday night at 9pm.

To the right you will find direct links to the crime report analysis documents produced by Nice 1 since the release of the crime figures by the Home Office in July. As this is an ongoing, all year round exercise, documents will be added as they are completed, so bookmark this site or click the RSS feeds for regular updates.

In addition to exploring historic data and identifying the trends around the country, we identify the criminal "modus operandi" (M.O.) or method of operations being favoured by UK criminals.

Furthermore, we trawl all the police sites, crime newsfeeds and reliable information sources for criminal activity and relevant statistical data for all regions of the UK. This enables us to provide up-to-date information about all aspects of crime in every geographic district. The uniqueness of this site is that it acts as a central collator of information that would otherwise be a laborious and painstaking process.

Further updates to the site are in progress that will provide current information from these pages to keep you accurately informed.Also to the right are a series of links to useful articles and documents about keeping your vehicle secure and checking the security rating of any vehicle you might be planning to purchase. The Nice 1 team only source this quality of information from reliable sources such as "Thatcham" the insurance industry funded research unit, and professional, reliable industry sources.

To the lower right, are the news feed links to all 43 police forces in England & Wales, so that you can see the news being reported in your area today!

LET'S GET STARTED!

The crime anlysis reports are a great place to start.

Here are a brief few sentences to provide an overview of the reports you can view either from the links opposite or the links below.

• Recorded car crime for the 2008/09 period, reflecting the incident rates and frequency for all 376 geographical districts, sorted in decreasing order of requency click here to view
• Same report as above, sorted alphabetically click here to view
• Report illustrating how "Car Key Theft" being reported as burglary or robbery artificially suppresses the recorded car crime figures. click here to view
• Press release to co-incide with the Car Crime UK program launch and advising of the Nice 1 crime analytics. click here to view
• See how your car rates for security in the most recent Theft Index click here to view
• See how your bike rates for the most recent Bike Theft Index click here to view
• Analysis of the Top 20 areas where the crime trend is increasing click here to view
• Total recorded crime -vs- car crime viewed side by side click here to view
• Comparison of Home Office offence rates (per 1000 pupulation) and the Licensed vehicles in England & Wales in 2008, and its effect on frequency of crime. click here to view
• A full trend analysis of all major crime groups for each of the 376 local districts, measuring the % increase or decrease by district. In short, check your area to see if crime is increasing or decreasing click here to view

Having read an analysis, we would welcome any questions, enquiries or suggestions that might assist others. If we can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to e mail us from any of the links on these pages.

If you would like to see more articles about car crime around the UK, visit our consumer site by clicking here.

Kind Regards

The Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited