1.5 STATISTICS AND PATTERNS OF CRIME

Question 1

What are the three methods of collecting information on crime patterns?

Answer 1

Police-recorded statistics, victim surveys and self-report studies

Question 2

How can information on crime patterns be collected using police-recorded statistics?

Answer 2

Police-recorded statistics are drawn from the records kept by the police and other official agencies and are published every six months by the Home Office.

Question 3

What are police-recorded statistics useful for?

Answer 3

These official statistics on crime are particularly useful in that they have been collected since 1857 and so provide an excellent historical overview of changing trends over time. They also give a very accurate view of the way that the criminal justice system processes offenders through arrests, trials, punishments and so on.

Question 4

How can information on crime patterns be collected using victim studies?

Answer 4

Victim studies are based on surveys asking a sample of people whether they have been victims of crime and, if so, whether it has been reported to the police.

Question 5

What are victim studies useful for?

Answer 5

They are useful for estimating unrecorded crime and for looking at trends

Question 6

Why are victim studies also not useful?

Answer 6

They do not cover crimes without victims

Question 7

How can information on crime patterns be collected using self-report studies?

Answer 7

Self-report studies involve conducting surveys to ask people if they have committed crimes and they are sometimes conducted by government departments and sometimes by sociological researchers. They rely on the truthfulness of respondents.

Question 8

What are self-report studies useful for?

Answer 8

Useful for revealing the sorts of people who commit different types of crime

Question 9

Explain why police-recorded statistics can be seen as a social construction?

Answer 9

They only show crimes that are reported to and recorded by the police

Question 10

Evaluate the usefulness of police statistics as a source of data on the extent of crime.

Answer 10

Police-recorded statistics are based on the information that the criminal justice agencies collect. But crimes cannot be recorded by them if they are not reported in the first place.

Question 11

According to the CSEW (Home Office 2011/12), explain why individuals may be less likely to report a ‘crime’ to the police.

Answer 11

Individuals are less likely to report a ‘crime’ to the police if they regard it as:

• too trivial to bother the police with
• a private matter between friends and family
• too embarrassing.

Question 12

According to the CSEW (Home Office 2011/12), explain why people may be more likely to report a crime.

Answer 12

People are more likely to report a crime if:

• they see some benefit to themselves
• they have faith in the police’s ability to achieve a positive result.

Question 13

According to a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in 2014, how many crimes reported to the police, and that should have been recorded by them, were not included in the statistics?

Answer 13

Nearly one in five crimes (19 per cent)

Question 14

What is the total number of unrecorded crimes known as?

Answer 14

The ‘dark figure’

Question 15

What has happened to crime rates since the mid-1990s, according to the CSEW, or the early 2000s, according to police figures?

Answer 15

There have been significant falls in numbers of most types of crime

Question 16

What has happened to the numbers of violent crimes recorded by the police in recent years?

Answer 16

Numbers of violent crimes recorded by the police have increased in recent years but have declined according to the CSEW. Tim Newburn (2013) suggests this may be the result of changes in police counting rules, which have led to more incidents being counted as separate offences so that there is an apparent increase in offending.

Question 17

What factors are important to the police when they are filtering the information supplied to them by the public?

Answer 17

• Seriousness - They may regard the offence as too trivial or simply not a criminal matter.
• Classifying - When a person makes a complaint, police crimes officers must decide what category of offence it is. How they classify the offence will determine its seriousness.
• Social status - They may not view the social status of a person reporting the matter as high enough to regard the issue as worth pursuing. This may affect the chances of offenders from different social groups ending up with convictions or being imprisoned.
• Discretion - The chances of being arrested for an offence increase markedly depending upon the ‘demeanour’ of the person being challenged by a police officer.

Question 18

When was the Crime Survey for England and Wales (previously called the British Crime Survey or BCS) first introduced?

Answer 18

1982

Question 19

Why do supporters of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (previously called the British Crime Survey or BCS) suggest that it is more ‘valid’ than the police statistics?

Answer 19

Because it includes unreported crime

Question 20

What is the sampling technique used by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (previously called the British Crime Survey or BCS) based on?

Answer 20

The sampling technique is based on (a) all households in England and Wales and then (b) anyone over 16 living in these households.

Question 21

How does the CSEW try to maximise the representativeness of the survey?

Answer 21

The households are randomly selected, using the Postcode Address File, developed by the Post Office to recognise all households in Britain.

Question 22

Analyse whether any groups are still left out of the CSEW, or are under-represented in, the sample for the survey.

Answer 22

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Question 23

Analyse reasons why some crimes are excluded from the CSEW.

Answer 23

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Question 24

Explain why respondents in the smaller subsample of the CSEW are asked to input their answers directly into a laptop computer.

Answer 24

There is a smaller ‘sweep’ (a subsample), who asked to answer questions on selected (sometimes sensitive) issues directly into a laptop computer.

Question 25

Evaluate the main strengths and weaknesses of this source of statistics on crime.

Answer 25

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Question 26

According to British courts, about what percentage of those charged plead guilty?

Answer 26

About 75 per cent

Question 27

Explain why what is considered to be a crime changes over time?

Answer 27

Governments changing the law in response to cultural changes and the influence of powerful groups

Question 28

What are the strengths of using victim surveys?

Answer 28

This approach overcomes the fact that a significant proportion of offences are never recorded by the police. It also gives a good picture of the extent and patterns of victimisation - something completely missing from official accounts. The best-known victimisation study is the CSEW.

Question 29

What are the weaknesses of using victim surveys?

Answer 29

• The problem of basing statistics on victims’ memories is that recollections are often faulty or biased.
• The categorisation of the crimes that have been committed against them is left to the person filling in the questionnaire - this leads to considerable inaccuracy in the categories.
• Victim studies also omit a range of crimes and any crime that the victim is unaware of or unable to report as a crime.
• People appear to underreport sexual offences.

Question 30

Why have local victim surveys been used to estimate the extent and patterns of crime?

Answer 30

The CSEW does not provide detailed information about particular places. This has led to a number of detailed studies of crime, focussing on particular areas, which provide specific information about local problems.

The most famous of these surveys was the Islington Crime Surveys (Harper et al. 1986 and Jones et al. 1995). These showed that the BCS underreported the higher levels of victimisation of minority ethnic groups and domestic violence.

Question 31

What are self-report studies?

Answer 31

These are surveys in which a selected group or cross-section of the population are asked what offences they have committed.

Question 32

What are the strengths of self-report studies?

Answer 32

Self-report studies are extremely useful as they reveal much about the kind of offenders who are not caught or processed by the police. In particular, it is possible to find out about the ages, gender, ethnicity, social class and even the location of ‘hidden offenders’. It is also the most useful way to find out about victimless crimes, such as illegal drug use.

Question 33

What are the weaknesses of self-report studies?

Answer 33

• The problem of validity
• The problem of representativeness
• The problem of relevance

Question 34

What are the strengths of self-report studies?

Answer 34

The only information that is available of who offends, other than from the official statistics of people who have been arrested, comes from self-report studies.

Self-report studies are very useful for trying to determine if there is a systematic bias in the criminal justice system that might result in certain types of offenders being more likely to be processed by the criminal justice system and categorised as criminals than other groups, who are more likely to get away with their offending.