ABSTRACT
This chapter considers crime data within a context that increasingly relies upon data and data analytics for planning, decision-making and for informing public understanding of problems and their solutions. It defines crime data, and explores social and economic factors that limit them. The chapter examines how crime data are communicated to the public, including as accessible, available and open data and through data visualization. It also considers ways in which crime data can be used to increase both the transparency of the systems that produce them and our understanding of crime in the urban context. While more and different data may enhance insight into urban crime and policing that can be derived from crime data, these data remain significantly limited by their subjectivity and by the legal, institutional and cultural constraints that shape and control them. Crime data are a good example of 'capta' – data that have been selectively harvested from a broad pool of available data.
