3.2 crime statistics

Question 1

What are the different sources of crime statistics?

Answer 1

• Police recorded crime
• victim surveys
• self-report studies
• court and prison records and police records of cautions

Question 2

What do victim surveys provide?

Answer 2

• better insight into victims’ perspectives

Question 3

What does Garland say about victim surveys?

Answer 3

victims are now more aware that the govt are not ‘on top of crime’

Question 4

What is Police recorded crime(PRC)?

Answer 4

• published every 6 months
• only measures what is recorded by the police so not all crimes are covered

Question 5

What are some strengths of PRC?

Answer 5

• positivists favour statistics
• it’s good for identifying patterns and trends over long periods of time
• shows the public the ‘clear up rate’ of crime
• can show the public what to be vigilant of and emerging crimes

Question 6

What are the weaknesses of PRC?

Answer 6

• high proportions of crime aren’t reported
• only some crimes are actually recorded by the police, only about 57% of crimes reported to the police are recorded

Question 7

What factors can influence crime statistics?

Answer 7

• definitions of crimes change over time; reclassification can alter crime rates to make them seem better or worse
• govt influence the focus on particular crimes and resources are channelled towards some crimes more than others
• the media also influences the focus on certain crimes and fuels moral panic i.e. knife crime

Question 8

What do court stats show us?

Answer 8

• 75% of people going through the court system plead guilty under direction of solicitors as they will get a less harsh punishment
• guilty charges by juries can be based on assumptions to do with gender, class, ethnicity, etc

Question 9

What are some strengths of self report studies?

Answer 9

• they provide information about crimes which have gone undetected
• can find out about victimless crimes such as fraud
• links between upbringing can be linked to crimes and delinquent behaviour

Question 10

What are some weaknesses of self-report studies?

Answer 10

• people may exaggerate, lie, or cover up
• respondents may have different definitions of crimes
• they may not remember
• studies can be unrepresentative, with certain people being targeted in the studies

Question 11

What are some weaknesses of self-report studies?

Answer 11

• people may exaggerate, lie, or cover up
• respondents may have different definitions of crimes
• they may not remember
• studies can be unrepresentative, with certain people being targeted in the studies

Question 12

What is an example of a longitudinal self report study?

Answer 12

• Farrington study = a longitudinal study exploring the criminal behaviour of 411 boys from 397 families over the course of their lives
• the study was able to uncover the extent of criminal activities of these individuals, much of which were never recorded in official stats
• it was also able to show the peak offending ages of the participants (17/18)