Crime Spy allows you to get data from local police stations so you can find out the number of police recorded crimes, split into difference categories, in your local area. The app, only available for iphones etc. I think, also tells you the crime rate (per thousand) and whether your local crime rate is above or below average, although I think it might tend towards the  side of moral panic as zero robberies per thousand comes out as ‘average’ and an overall crime rate of 4/1000 as ‘below average’ rather than ‘low’ – which I guess means that people in low crime areas are just being really friendly rather than anti-social and leaving presents on the bonnets of random cars rather than breaking into them.

Or perhaps what this shows you just how low the crime rate is in modern Britain? Whatever you make of it,  this app the perfect way of introducing students to the hyperreal world of crime statistics.
You can also use the ‘find location’ function to find out how crime varies as you travel., and the hub site for the app – the site with the police crime data and info is here – it’s part of the ‘opening up government’ agenda.

Keeping on the topic of apps, you can also try this quiz on Facebook to see how much you know about the crime rate for six categories of crime – non Facebook version here
Of course all of this is using Police Recorded Crime, so the stats are only telling you about 40% of all crime if you believe the British Crime Survey – and that 40% varies massively by type of crime – so this is really only of interest in relation to how such info might affect public perceptions of crime rather than being useful in the sense of this app giving you any insight into how likely you are to be a victim of crime – which of course depends on your age/ sex/ relationship to those who are actually violent themselves/ when and where you go out – now that would be a much more useful app….