Crime levels by ward in Tower Hamlets

Setting out the relative level of crime in the various wards of Tower Hamlets

In my last post I looked at some trends in crime in St Katharine's and Wapping ward, however I thought it sensible to set the last post into the context of crime levels across the borough.

[apologies if this disappeared - I realised an error in calculation and took it down my 'crime per week' figures were out by a factor of 10 - mea culpa!] Remember that some of the ward is north of the Highway (west from Cannon Street Road, upto the DLR/railway) For a crude map of the ward see here.

Total reported crime

If we plot the total crime rate (ie crimes per 1,000 residents), we can see that there is a broad convergence in all of the wards, with the exception of Spitalfields and Banglatown, which I imagine is heavily skewed by Brick Lane clubs, restaurants and markets and the various interactions therein. What I found absolutely astounding however is that Shadwell comes out as a consistently relatively low crime area (though this may be evidence of my ignorance/prejudice). However, as I reported in this post, Shadwell is particularly densely populated, so it may be that the nature of crimes isn't linked to the overall size of population, or that actually Shadwell isn't as bad as some south of the Highway would have you believe. St Katharine's and Wapping, sits somewhere in the middle.

 Violence against the person

Looking only at crimes of violence against the person, Spitalfields and Banglatown retains its top spot, whilst St Katharine's and Wapping is in my eyes noticeably lower than other wards, suggesting that with respect of violence, Wapping is on the whole a relatively low crime area compared to the rest of the borough. This is somewhere in the order of 160 incidents a year, but covers 'violent' crime such as knife attacks to 'less violent' crime such as verbal assaults and shoving someone (however I imagine such incidents are underreported to a greater extent) which makes understanding the nature of crime more difficult.

For information, one description in the crime statistics of violence against the person is:

Violence against the person offences contain the full spectrum of assaults, from pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm, to murder.

Robbery

Robbery is basically the use of force during a theft. Statistics for 'muggings' aren't included in the data set, as this isn't a legal term and such crimes will be a combination of some robbery and some elements of theft (eg someone running past and grabbing a bag isn't considered to be a threat of force, so isn't included in robbery, whereas some robbery includes bank jobs). We see again that St Katharine's and Wapping is a relatively low crime area and further, in the context of the scale of crime, it is only a small fraction of total crime in the area. Assuming a population of c.15k in the ward, this means in recent years there have been 20 or fewer violent thefts a year for the past four years.

Again for context:

Robbery: an incident in which force or threat of force is used in a theft or attempted
theft.

Burglary

Burglary is very noisy, suggesting more factors are at play in determining what leads to certain areas being targeted. Burglary comprises of theft from domestic property by non-residents (eg if your flat mate pinches the cheese, that is theft not burglary). We can see that Shadwell is a relatively low crime area compared to Wapping, but this needs to be taken into context- these figures are based on burglaries per 1,000 residents. If we assume an average of two people per dwelling, 2-3% of properties in St Katharine's and Wapping are burgled each year, but this is the equivalent of 3 a week.

Theft

Theft is basically every other type of taking without permission and includes car theft, shoplifting, bag snatching and theft from commercial premises. Because of this, it is difficult from these statistics to understand the actual nature of the crimes perpetrated. However, none of this is violent crime, which would be included under robbery. Theft is the single greatest source of crime in Wapping. As discussed in my previous post, we can see a significant decline in reported theft, but Wapping is a relatively high crime area in this regard, but to nowhere near as great an extent as Spitalfields and Banglatown. However, this still equates to roughly ten thefts a week in the ward.