739363
Measuring Crime
- Official Statistics
- Based on crimes reported to police
and recorded in official figures
- Hollin (1992) suggested that the OCS
only accounts for 25% of actual crime
- 'Dark figure' of crime: offences that are
unreported or don't appear in the OCS
- Reasons why crimes
are not reported
- There is no victim
- Victim is too afraid
- Too trivial
- Can't be
bothered/inconvenient
- Mistrust the police
- Perpetrator is a friend or family member
- There is no victim
- Reasons why crimes
are not recorded
- Insufficient time
- Too trivial
- Not a priority
- Lack of evidence
- One of several similar offences
- Victim withdraws charge
- Police recording rules
- Insufficient time
- Officially recorded crime is affected by
what are known as police recording rules
- Determine whether
or not a crime is
deemed recordable
by authorities
- Can vary according
to priority of
government and
individual police force
- Determine whether
or not a crime is
deemed recordable
by authorities
- Based on crimes reported to police
and recorded in official figures
- Victim Surveys
- Asking people if they have been
victims over a specific time period
- CSEW carried out roughly every 2 years
- Interviews with a huge sample
- Participants are people aged over 16
from randomly selected households
- In 2006/7 it was based on a sample of over 47,000 people, plus a
booster sample of 4,000 people aged between 16 and 24
- Booster sample was necessary as many of original
randomly selected people from this age group had decline
- Participants were asked if they had been
a victim of crime in the last year
- Interviews were structured, pre-set
questions with optional responses
- Survey showed victim reports were greater than police statistics
- CSEW also collects information about
fear of crime and attitudes to crime
- Carried a recommendation that the survey should cover under
16s by conducting interviews with 10 to 15 year olds as well
- CSEW is the largest and most influential of victim surveys
- There are more specific surveys e.g
Commercial Victimisation Survey
- Asking people if they have been
victims over a specific time period
- Problems in defining crime
- Factors that need to be considered when
defining a crime
- Historical context
- What is defined
as a crime at
one point in time
might not be
considered to be
a crime at a
different point in
time
- What is defined
as a crime at
one point in time
might not be
considered to be
a crime at a
different point in
time
- Culture
- Differences in cultural acceptability
- Differences in cultural acceptability
- Age
- Important factor in determining whether or
not a person is a criminal
- Important factor in determining whether or
not a person is a criminal
- Specific circumstance
- E.g a woman stealing food to feed
her hungry child we wouldn't want
to say is a criminal
- Deviance approach: classifying
behaviour as a crime if it breaches
codes of socially acceptable behaviour
- E.g a woman stealing food to feed
her hungry child we wouldn't want
to say is a criminal
- Historical context
- Factors that need to be considered when
defining a crime
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