Cost of living and crime in London: lessons from an empirical and collaborative study

We observe a significant increase in the interest for evidence-based policy-making across the public sector. The use and thorough analysis of large datasets from the police and other data sources is crucial to this. This chapter illustrates how evidence can play a more integral and broader role in crime prevention policy and how effective collaboration between academia and policymakers can facilitate this goal. To do this, it presents a case study in which the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime in London (MOPAC) commissioned analysis from the Policing and Crime Group at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science (CEP-LSE). This was driven by the need to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on crime (a key issue in London and the UK), coupled with the recognition that there was insufficient in-house capacity to undertake such research. The key outputs of the study were geographically detailed and interactive maps of which areas will be most affected by the cost-of-living crisis in 2023 and predictions of which areas will be most affected in 2024.