Rowley,

The proposals are indeed disturbing, but given their laudable aims we ought to see if they can be made more acceptable.  Perhaps the suspicion the proposal arouses amongst our clients will be related to the frequency of the aggregate returns, and the 'specificness' of the location data.

At the extremes, if information on the location and method of assaults were passed to the police on a daily basis, that would be understandably evoke concern.  On the other hand, annual returns of aggregate data would perhaps be much less threatening.

Equally, we don't have to agree with ALL of Shepherds proposals to agree with some of them - we might draw the line at the exact location of the episode, but be prepared to send annual data saying "we saw n stabbings, n shootings, n fisticuffs etc".  Or maybe raise the 'granularity' of the 'location' data away from specific places to general terms : "n assaults were in pubs, n were in clubs, n were on the streets, and n were domestic" etc.

Sadly, I suspect that by softening things like this to the point that the punters don't feel threatened, the resultant data will no longer be seen as 'useful' by the police.

Jon