Crime hotspots revealed on new website
A website launched by the Home Office details the number of crimes committed on each street across the country
MORE than 100 crimes were committed in Newbury town centre in December, according to a new Government website.
The Home Office launched the new crime mapping website on Tuesday (February 1) with the aim of creating more transparency and to give people the information and power to hold their local police forces to account, by publishing the number of reported crimes at ‘street-level' across the country.
The monthly figures for December showed that about 110 crimes were recorded in Newbury town centre (including Northbrook Street, Bartholomew Street, Market Place and Cheap Street), including almost 30 violent crimes - 18 of which were recorded on or near the Market Place alone.
In total, 405 crimes were recorded in the search of Newbury as a whole (from Love Lane in the north to just past the Nightingales in the south and from Enborne Road in the west to near the end of Hambridge Road in the east), including 98 offences of anti-social behaviour, 61 violent crimes, 55 burglaries, two robberies, 45 vehicle crimes and 144 other crimes, such as shoplifting and criminal damage.
In comparison, when typed into the site, Greenham (which overlaps parts of Newbury) had 127 crimes, Thatcham had 109 crimes, Wash Common had 80 crimes, Theale had 35 crimes, Hungerford had 34 crimes, Pangbourne had 31 crimes and Kintbury had 12 crimes in the month of December.
Meanwhile, the most crime-ridden street in England was Glovers Court, Preston, where 150 offences reportedly took place in December.
The deputy local police area commander for West Berkshire, Ch Insp Judith Johnson, said that although the website was about making crime information more accessible to the public, which she said was healthy, the information was already known to the police.
She said: “This is an emerging picture [for the public], but we already know where the hotspots are.
“We monitor crime on a daily basis across the district and if there are increases in a certain crime, we will target those issues.”
Ch Insp Johnson added that there were currently significant reductions in crime across West Berkshire, with a 14.4 per cent decrease in overall crime between April and December 2010 in comparison with the same period in 2009 and reductions of around 25 per cent in both violent crime and serious acquisitive crime.
She said: “I think we are very lucky in that West Berkshire is a safe place to live.”
However, West Berkshire's shadow executive councillor for community safety, Roger Hunneman (Lib Dem, Victoria) said he would like to see more police resources in the town centre at night time to tackle problems with late-night drinking, which he said the local neighbourhood action group was “uncomfortably aware of.”
Meanwhile, the executive councillor for community safety, Anthony Stansfeld (Con, Kintbury), said he felt the criminal justice system was a major issue that needed improvement.
He said: “Crime is largely dependent on people being let out of jail and committing more crimes.
“The number of people committing crime in a place like Newbury is small and it is not so much down to the police.
“If we are very liberal in the way we treat people then we will have lots of criminals. I think the tougher we are, the fewer criminals we will have.”
To see the crime mapping website, click on the link below.
