How to analyse crime trends over time?

Question

Hi all,

What are the tools you recommend for analysing the criminal activity in an area?

To me it seems that it would be useful to see crime trends for an area over time - not just the amount of crime in the last month or quarter. I haven't found anything online that will help me easily see how this month/quarter compares to the last one. Is this a good way to think about this? If not, how do you generally analyse the safety of an area?

Free or paid tools are ok, as long as you think the data/analysis is worth the expense.

Thanks,

Omi

Omi C. · Answer

Zaid R. I'm looking in the central valley - not in Santa Cruz, so unfortunately the see and feel step happens once I'm in contract! I look at sites like crimemapping.com and trulia or local PD crime maps, and they show current crime data, but not the trends. Sometimes I want to see if a neighborhood is getting better or worse?

@Michael Lauther Where do you get these reports from?

Michael Lauther · Answer

@Omi C.

I went to spotcrime.com and sighed up for alerts in my zip code.It is free for this level of service. tells me within 2 miles of an address.

Michael Lauther · Answer

I get reports by zip code for spot crime. Is hard to quantify but it does give you daily and weekly reports on crime within a certain radius of your target property.

Zaid R. · Answer

I use two approaches (together): 1. See & Feel   2. Data

1. See & Feel - each neighborhod is going to be different - I like to drive and walk around the neighborhood to feel it out. It's not scientific but there's something to be said about neighborhoods with bars on the window/doors, houses not taken care of (especially lawns), shady ppl always hanging out....etc

2. Data. Check to see if police/county keeps records online. Down here in LA county the Los Angeles Times has a great crime map that is updated with descriptions and even ranks neighborhoods according to the type of crimes reported (assault, theft...etc). The LA Times crime maps can be found here if you're interested in checking it out (link)

I'm assuming that you're looking for something for Santa Cruz, a quick search online showed me this crime map that the Santa Cruz Sentinel has, you can check it out here