How to analyse crime trends over time?

[Omi C.]

Hi all,

What are the tools you recommend for analysing the criminal activity in an area?

To me it seems that it would be useful to see crime trends for an area over time - not just the amount of crime in the last month or quarter. I haven't found anything online that will help me easily see how this month/quarter compares to the last one. Is this a good way to think about this? If not, how do you generally analyse the safety of an area?

Free or paid tools are ok, as long as you think the data/analysis is worth the expense.

Thanks,

Omi