Crime statistics Flashcards
Crime stats and recent patterns
Purposes of crime statistics
- for comparison with previous years to discover trends in crime
- to look at the police clear-up rate and measure police efficiency
- to show where the public should concentrate resources to reduce crime
- to provide the public with information on crime patters (often via the media)
- to provide a basis for sociologists to explain crime, including what is and what is not shown in the statistics
- to reveal police assumptions and stereotyping, as the statistics are in part generated by the activities of the police themselves and the offenders they choose to pursue and the offences they choose to record
The sources of crime statistics
- Police recorded crime (PRC)
- victim surveys eg Crime Survey of England and Wales
- Self-report studies (anonymous questionnaires where people own up to offences)
- court and prison records, and records on police cautions
Police recorded crime (PRC) and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)
- form the main basis for official crime statistics
- provide a more comprehensive picture of crime when combined
- PRC covers a wider range of offences that the CSEW - includes crimes against businesses and non-residents of the UK but it does not include crimes which are not reported to or recorded by the police
- CSEW covers unreported and unrecorded crimes
- in 2014/15 the CSEW recorded around 50% more crimes than were recorded by the police
The social construction of crime statistics
- can question the extent to which they are reliable - potential inconsistencies in how crimes are classified eg due to police discretion
- can question their validity - many offences are undiscovered, unreported or unrecorded
- in 2014 HM Inspectorate of Constabulary calculated that 19% of crimes reported to the police were not recorded - referred to as ‘hidden crimes’ or ‘the dark figure’ of unknown crime
- only 27% of recorded crimes in 2014 were detected or ‘cleared up’
Maguire (2002)
estimates that 3% of all crime in England and Wales ends in a conviction
Unreported crime
- in 2014 the CSEW suggested that around 60% of the crimes it covers are never reported
- found 3 main reasons for people not reporting crimes:
1 - it was too trivial, involved no loss or the police would not have been interested or could not do anything
2 - it was a private matter which they dealt with themselves
3 - it was too inconvenient to report it - other reasons could include it being the victim’s fault, fear of reprisals, dislike/fear of the police or previous bad experiences, or to protect reputations eg by not reporting white collar crime
Reported but unrecorded crime
- police may regard the matter as too trivial to waste their time on, such as anti-social behaviour or theft of something small
- may have already been satisfactorily resolved
- victim may not wish to proceed with their complaint
- may regard the person reporting as too unreliable to take them seriously eg homeless, drug addict, drunk etc
- may interpret the law in such a way that they do not regard what is reported as an offence
Changes in reporting, and counting and recording of crime
- the media - may sensitise people to certain crimes, may exaggerate events, moral panics etc
- changing police attitudes, priorities and policies - eg crack-downs on knife crime give an impression of increased knife crime
- people may be less tolerant of less serious incidents eg vandalism
- changing social norms and public attitudes eg towards domestic violence
- community policing and higher policing levels eg neighbourhood watch
- changing counting rules for the way the police count and record crimes
- more sophisticated training, communications and equipment eg DNA testing, CCTV
- easier communications of reporting - mobile phones, internet etc
- people have more to lose - more consumer goods etc
Maguire (2007) suggests that growing privatisation and the break-up of close knit communities
has led to people now reporting to the police incidents which they may have once dealt with by taking action themselves
Attempt to overcome the limitations of official statistics - victim surveys
ask the public if they’ve been victims of crime and whether they reported it
overcome the issues of unreported or unrecorded crime, and provide insights into victimisation
Limitations of victim surveys
- people may exaggerate
- people may forget trivial incidents or when they were victimised
- people may not realise they have been the victims of a crime eg of white-collar crime
- they often don’t include all crimes eg CSEW surveys households and excluded commercial premises
- issues with representativeness and generalising findings
- victims may feel embarrassment or guild in admitting to being a victim
- consensual or victimless crime like drug dealing, taking someone else’s penalty points for speeding etc
Attempt to overcome the limitations of official statistics - Self-report studies
- ask people to ‘own up’ to their offending and say whether they were caught
- useful as they provide information on offenders who are not caught
- help find out about victimless crimes
- may help discover factors in offending such as difficult childhoods
Limitations of self-report studies
- the validity of findings - people may lie, exaggerate etc or hide their actions if they’re ashamed, so surveys tend to over-emphasise minor or trivial offences
- may ignore respondents’ own definitions of crime - in some communities some crimes are common and normalised so they would not be reported as crime
- they rely on memory
- lack of representativeness
Functionalist, new right and right realist approaches to the use of crime statistics
broadly accept them as accurate and representative of most crime, and useful for establishing patterns and trends in crime, and as a base for forming hypotheses and building theories
Interactionist/labelling theory approach to the use of official crime statistics
statistics are social constructions, and useful only to reveal the stereotypes, labelling and assumptions of the public, and the institutional sexism and racism of the criminal justice system
the pattern shown in statistics further fuels these stereotypes, which generates a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they provide a guide for the police on the ‘typical offender’
