Statistics on crime and on justice are used a lot — inside and outside of government —but more could be done to look at crime and justice from the perspective of its effect on people and organisations. Increasing the extent of sharing and linking data enable these perspectives, uncovering new insight and increasing the value of statistics that tell us about crime and justice.This was the focus of the London round table. It brought together attendees from the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and the Office for National Statistics to explore how they might work together to share and link crime and justice data in England and Wales. All three of the producer organisations gave examples of where they had previously linked data and clearly see the benefit of doing more of this work in the future. The participants had a productive discussion to identify where they could use linkage of data — including linking to data beyond crime and justice — to improving value. The ideas generated will require further work and prioritisation and the three organisations agreed to put together ideas for data sharing and linking over the next few months.
Read the notes for the first roundtable here
At a second meeting in November 2017, the three organisations told us about the crime and justice working group, where they have come together to develop their work joining-up crime and justice statistics and data. They have committed to including representatives from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland in this work. We expect to hear about their progress and will publish an update in early summer 2018.