Criminal mapping… relaunched

In January I commented on the launch on Wiltshire Constabulary’s website of maps showing crime levels. Now, less than ten months later, they’ve launched new maps’ nationally, showing exactly the same statistics. What do these maps tell us? Mainly, that the police are adept at wasting taxpayers money. These maps have, apparently taken months of work, yet are worse cartographically than those they replace. As shown in the screen shot below, the maps are very rough, with gaps and overlaps between reporting areas. And if you’re not using Internet Explorer then sorry, these maps aren’t for you. So that’s months of work to deliver a poorer product than they had ten months ago.

Wiltshire police should stick to what we pay the policing component of council tax for… catching criminals.