Information-seeking tactics to identify crime.
Publicity campaigns
There is evidence from the ‘Report it to stop it’ campaign in London (Solymosi and others, 2018), which used video messages circulated online, social media messages and leaflets, that media campaigns can increase the reporting of unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport without increasing fear of crime.
- Limited evidence
Dedicated reporting routes
Dedicated reporting routes, such as online tools and numbers for texting reports of incidents – for example, the use by British Transport Police of the 61016 number for reporting unwanted sexual behaviour.
- Untested
Apps for reporting crime, incidents and/or fear
Although there is no evidence of the impact of crime-reporting apps on crime reduction (Wood and others, 2021), there is potential for local use of a crime-reporting app to provide information on where and when crimes and incidents are occurring. This could help to understand the nature of the problems, provided there is widespread uptake (Ceccato, 2019).
The Streetsafe tool allows the public to report locations where they feel unsafe, thus allowing relevant authorities to make changes to police patrols and the built environment.
For a discussion of the different types of apps related to crime prevention, see the article Primary crime prevention apps: A typology and scoping review by Wood, Ross and Johns (2021).
- Untested
Data sharing
In the context of reducing alcohol-related violence, evidence suggests that data sharing was a valuable process in helping to identify hotspots (McGuire and others, 2020). Initiatives that combined health data with police data to inform the development of interventions resulted in reduced assaults, as well as reduced accident and emergency admissions.
For example, see the Cardiff TASC project.
- Strong evidence