# Case study: CrimeCheck: Neighbourhood Crime Risk for News24

> CrimeCheck answers one question for South Africans: how safe is my neighbourhood? It turns official police statistics for all 1,158 police precincts into risk gauges, maps, rankings, and comparisons, and reached about 100,000 users a week. We built it for News24 and kept it updated as each quarter's data was released.

- URL: https://www.happen.software/case-studies/crime-check
- Publisher: Happen Software (https://www.happen.software/)

## At a glance

- **Client**: News24
- **Category**: Media · Platforms & portals
- **Running**: 2022–2024
- **Recognition**: Bookmark Awards finalist · 2023
- **Reach**: About 100,000 users a week, with News24 articles and insights built on its data
- **Coverage**: 1,158 police precincts, every crime type the police report, from 2017 onward
- **Indices**: Seven risk indices, from serious crime and contact crime to murder, sexual offences, aggravated robbery, trio crimes, and burglary
- **Engagement**: Built in 2022, then updated with each quarterly release until 2024
- **Recognition**: Finalist, 2023 IAB Bookmark Awards, Specialist Publisher Sites
- **Platforms**: A public site and an admin portal for loading each release, with the API behind them

## Outcomes

- **100,000**: Users a week, finding out how safe their neighbourhood is
- **1,158**: Police precincts mapped, each with risk gauges and rankings on seven indices
- **50+**: Crime types per precinct, from 2017 onward, updated with every quarterly release
- **Finalist**: In the 2023 IAB Bookmark Awards, Specialist Publisher Sites, with News24's articles drawing on its data

## Context

The South African Police Service publishes crime statistics per police precinct, more than 50 crime types for each of 1,158 precincts, released quarterly. But raw counts don't say much about risk: a precinct with a hundred burglaries among a hundred people is very different from one with a hundred among a thousand. And precinct boundaries don't match suburbs, wards, or census areas, so there are no ready-made population figures to divide by.

Our data scientists worked with professors at Stellenbosch University to estimate the population and households in every precinct for every year from Stats SA's district figures, and to turn the crime rates into comparable risk indices. We also built the data management tools, API, and site that put it in front of News24's readers, launched in July 2022 and updated with each release after.

## The challenge

- **Counts aren't risk**: Crime has to be read as a rate per 1,000 people, or per 1,000 households for burglary, to compare a rural precinct with a city one.
- **Boundaries that match nothing**: People know their address or suburb, not their police precinct, and precincts cut across every other boundary.
- **A new release every quarter**: The year in progress grows with each release, so every chart, ranking, and comparison has to update without breaking.

## Before and after

| Area | Without it | With CrimeCheck |
|---|---|---|
| Finding your precinct | Working out which police station covers an address. | Search an address or area, and the precinct it falls in is found from its boundary. |
| Understanding risk | Raw crime counts in spreadsheets. | A risk gauge per index, based on the rate per 1,000 people or households, comparable across precincts and years. |
| Context | No sense of how a precinct compares. | National and provincial rankings, the change on last year, and how it compares with the national average. |
| What's behind it | Index totals with no breakdown. | Each crime's share of the index, and the actual numbers, rates, or year-on-year change for every crime type. |
| Comparing areas | Two spreadsheets side by side. | Up to three precincts compared on gauges, rankings, breakdowns, and trends, plus every neighbouring precinct. |
| This year so far | Hard to tell whether the year is better or worse. | Daily averages for every crime type, for each year and the year in progress. |

## Checking a neighbourhood, end to end

1. **Search**: The reader types an address or area. It's located on the map and matched to the police precinct whose boundary contains it.
2. **See the risk**: The precinct page shows a gauge for the chosen index, the precinct's national and provincial rank, and how it has moved since last year and against the national average.
3. **Understand it**: A chart shows which crimes drive the index, and a table gives every crime type's numbers, rates, or change, with the precinct's trend over the years.
4. **Look around**: Neighbouring precincts are listed with their gauges, and the map shows every precinct coloured by the chosen index and year.
5. **Compare**: The reader adds up to three precincts, perhaps where they live and where they might move, and sees them side by side.
6. **Share**: The page can be shared, and the station's phone number and directions are a tap away.

## What we built

- **Address to precinct**: Address and place search finds the correct police precinct quickly, helping readers understand risk where they live.
- **Risk gauges**: A gauge for each of seven indices, from serious crime to murder and burglary, built on the rate per 1,000 people or households and comparable between precincts and years.
- **Rankings**: Every precinct ranked nationally and within its province on each index, with the change on last year and the difference from the national average.
- **Precinct maps**: A map of every precinct, coloured by the chosen index, year, and map type, with each precinct's rank and crime totals on hover.
- **Crime breakdowns**: What drives each index, and every crime type's reported numbers, rates per 1,000, or change on last year, for the nation and for each precinct.
- **Compare & neighbours**: Up to three precincts side by side on gauges, ranks, breakdowns, and trends, and every precinct's neighbours from their shared boundaries.
- **Daily statistics**: The average number of each crime per day, for every year and the year in progress, so readers can tell whether this year is better or worse.
- **Quarterly imports**: News24's team loads each release in the portal: crime rates, index values, rankings, and percentages, plus precinct boundaries and police station details.

## What each team gets

### Readers

- The risk where they live, from an address
- Rankings and trends in plain language
- Areas compared before a move

### News24 journalists

- Insights for articles, precinct by precinct
- National and provincial pictures of each crime
- A tool to link readers to from crime coverage

### News24 data team

- Each quarter's release loaded through the portal
- Imports checked before they go live
- The year in progress kept current

## How it was delivered

- **May–Jul 2022, Build & launch**: Started in May with the precinct boundaries, imports, and API, built the site's maps, gauges, rankings, and comparisons through June, and launched with News24 in July.
- **Late 2022, Quarterly releases**: Each new quarter of police data loaded as it was released, with caching, performance, and dependency updates along the way.
- **2023–2024, Updates & support**: Delivered quarterly data updates and supported News24's readers. The site was a finalist in the 2023 Bookmark Awards.

## Built to last

- An address leads to the correct police precinct, so readers can assess the area they actually live in.
- Neighbouring areas are easy to find and compare alongside national and provincial rankings.
- The site stays responsive when a news story brings a surge of readers.
- Quarterly data updates keep gauges, maps, rankings, and comparisons aligned.
- Partial-year figures are clearly labelled so readers can interpret comparisons correctly.

Technology: .NET, ASP.NET Core, SQL Server, Angular, Leaflet, Google Maps

## Get in touch

Turning public data into something people use? We'll talk through how to take a large public dataset, make it searchable by the place people know, and present it so readers can understand it. Book a free 30-minute call with one of our engineers.

Contact: https://www.happen.software/contact or sales@happen.software