How We Map PSNI Crime Data
Where the data comes from
Every figure in our crime tool and area reports comes from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), published through the UK Police open-data API at data.police.uk. We do not estimate, model or adjust the numbers, we count exactly what PSNI publishes. The data is public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
What a lookup actually measures
A search, and every town report on this site, counts recorded crimes within a fixed 1-mile radius of a point (your postcode, or a town centre). It is not a count for the whole town or council area, and we never present it as one. Because every town report uses the same 1-mile centre measure, comparisons between the towns we track are like-for-like and fair.
Why we don't publish "crime rates per 1,000 people"
Some websites divide a radius count by a town’s population to make a headline rate. We deliberately don’t: a 1-mile circle is not the same shape as a town boundary, so that arithmetic quietly mixes two different areas and produces a number that looks precise but isn’t. Where we compare places, we compare the same measure, never a ratio built from mismatched boundaries.
Known limitations we disclose
- Anonymised locations: to protect victims, PSNI publishes crimes against anonymised map points (“on or near …”), not exact addresses. In Northern Ireland some points carry no street name at all. Counts are unaffected; pins are approximate.
- A small number of crimes have no usable location and can’t appear in any map or radius search (about 1% of PSNI’s monthly records, for example, 96 crimes across all of Northern Ireland in June 2026). Our totals therefore very slightly undercount.
- Publication lag: data is published roughly six weeks in arrears. Every report shows the month it covers.
- Categories are the national groupings used by the Home Office API. “Violence and sexual offences” is one combined category; we label it in full.
- “Security-related” subtotal: our reports group the categories a physical security system can realistically influence (burglary, vehicle crime, robbery, theft from the person, other theft, criminal damage & arson, possession of weapons, violence & sexual offences). This grouping is ours and is labelled wherever it appears.
How often it updates
PSNI publishes monthly. Our systems check daily and refresh automatically when a new month appears; cached data is never older than 24 hours.
Questions or corrections
If you believe any figure on this site misrepresents the source data, contact us on 028 7087 8077 and we will check it against the PSNI source and correct it promptly.