Tuesday, Aug 26, 2008
Or will they slash house prices in high crime areas?
bbc: Will crime maps work?
Last month the Home Office announced that everyone in England and Wales will have access to crime maps of their local area by the end of this year. But will they help cut crime, or could they have unforeseen consequences?
Posted by mark @ 03:26 PM (709 views) Add Comment
10 Comments
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1. drewster said...
Clearly it will have a devastating effect on house prices. People will be shocked to discover that crime is high in Moss Side (popular with gun-toting thugs) and low in Alderley Edge (popular with premiership footballers and their wives). Somehow I think the crime levels have already been priced in....
2. mark said...
wonder if it will record white collar crime, then alderley will be stuffed...lol
3. mark wadsworth said...
This is just another argument for Land Value Tax (part 748):
Assuming low crime = good = high house prices = high land values, then if The State wants to take our money off us, the best way of doing it is to get more bobbies on the beat and to get crime down.
They'll keep putting more bobbies on the beat as long as the marginal value is greater than the cost of doing so. Sooner or later there is a break even point, at which stage they stop putting more bobbies on the beat.
4. Joshua said...
I think it will affect them and is already. Looking at the house price changes in London this last year the crime ridden ghetto that is Kensington has fallen ten percent while the quiet, idyllic village of Hackney is ten percent (figures are not exact as I can't be bothered to look for the webpage) up.
5. montesquieu said...
mark
you assume 'bobbies on the beat' will make a blind bit of difference to crime. Perception of crime - yes possibly - but crime itselt, well there's essentially no evidence for that.
Personally I'd rather rooms full of people keeping electronic tabs on the real bad guys than a few more feet padding the street to no sensible purpose.
6. Sfletch said...
This also incentivises people to not report crime. If someone steals a £50 car stereo from the car on the drive why risk a hit on property in the area when you know the police will not catch the culprit anyway.
7. drewster said...
Mark,
Thanks for that insight, you make a strong case. However under a pure LVT situation the Alderley Edge Councils of the world would be rolling in loot, while Moss Side Council would be flat broke. At that point central government steps in and develops a Barnett Formula to redistribute the wealth, and before we know it they've removed the incentive to improve.
Montesquieu,
I think Mark was being metaphorical, i.e. he just meant more money and resources for policing in general.
8. brian t said...
This is how slums are created: those with money move out (or don't move in), leaving the poor behind. Zones of no opportunity, no enterprise, no way out. In urban areas, there's the possibility of later gentrification, but when that happens in the suburbs... no thanks. What happens to somewhere like Cowley, just outside Oxford, or East Kilbride?
9. d'oh said...
This sounds like a tool to discourage the reporting of crime...wouldn't want to destroy the valueof my house...
10. drewster said...
@d'oh,
Good point. Conversely, a twitchy neighbour could make the area look really bad if they report a crime every time the cat flap blows open in the wind.