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Tuesday 1 February 2011

England and Wales Police Crime Website Crashes

Have you managed to successfully visit http://www.police.uk/ today? I’ve not. Apparently, traffic has been so heavy that the servers have been unable to cope. According to a BBC report, it has been receiving up to five million hits per hour, which, it must be said is pretty high. It certainly bears testimony to the public’s interest in crime in their immediate neighbourhood. The crime-mapping website covers England and Wales but does not, so far as I am aware, include a facility to look into bank boardrooms.

Is it a good thing? I’m not so sure. For example, if you were a burglar might you not choose to use the site to identify streets which had not already been plundered? It could therefore make for an excellent burglar’s resource, which does seem to have been something of an oversight on the part of its designers.

2 comments:

  1. Or on the other hand one could argue that there's a reason some areas are less plundered and that it would concentrate such crimes in particular areas.

    Remember the 'best' house to rob is the one you did two months ago because you a) know your way around it and b) it will have given the household time to replace all the stuff that was nicked before.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good point. Still, I'm sure that the more tech savvy burglars will be getting into GIS and making the most of its potential.

    ReplyDelete

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