Oxford council to track crime hotspots

Oxford's database will help prevent anti-social behaviour

Oxford City Council’s Crime and Nuisance Action team is supporting its anti-social behaviour plan by implementing integrated software to track crime hotspots.

The council is using UNI-form software from CAPS Solutions to allow the team to keep a central electronic record of anti-social behaviour.

This will enable staff to identify links between the behaviour, frequency, location and identity of known and suspected perpetrators. The software can then display this information on a map to highlight incident hotspots and help the team predict and prevent future anti-social behaviour.

'Because we can tap into information from other departments, we will be able to carry out much more detailed analysis of whether an incident stems from a particular cause, such as a boundary dispute or complaint about noisy neighbours,' said Cathy Coelho, property systems database administrator at Oxford City Council.

'The database also has an access control function to ensure that confidential information can only be viewed by the Crime and Nuisance Action team,' said Coelho.

The team currently stores images and legal documents on paper, which means staff have to spend time sifting through information. The UNI-form software will hold all anti-social behaviour information on a central database, giving users the ability to locate records easily. This in turn will improve the time taken to prioritise actions, allocate resources, handle complaints and hit local reporting targets.

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