Crime statistics

Question 1

Purposes of crime statistics

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

The sources of crime statistics

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

Police recorded crime (PRC) and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

The social construction of crime statistics

Answer 4

• 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’

Question 5

Maguire (2002)

Answer 5

estimates that 3% of all crime in England and Wales ends in a conviction

Question 6

Unreported crime

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

Reported but unrecorded crime

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

Changes in reporting, and counting and recording of crime

Answer 8

• 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

Question 9

Maguire (2007) suggests that growing privatisation and the break-up of close knit communities

Answer 9

has led to people now reporting to the police incidents which they may have once dealt with by taking action themselves

Question 10

Attempt to overcome the limitations of official statistics - victim surveys

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Limitations of victim surveys

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

Attempt to overcome the limitations of official statistics - Self-report studies

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

Limitations of self-report studies

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

Functionalist, new right and right realist approaches to the use of crime statistics

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Interactionist/labelling theory approach to the use of official crime statistics

Answer 15

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’

Question 16

Marxist/neo-marxist approach to the use of official crime statistics

Answer 16

statistics provide a biased view of crime, as they under-represent the crimes of the powerful - white-collar crime and corporate crime - and give the impression that the main criminals are WC

Question 17

Feminist approaches to the use of official crime statistics

Answer 17

statistics under-represent the extent of female crime, and crimes by men against women, such as domestic violence and rape

Question 18

Left realist approaches to the use of official crime statistics

Answer 18

statistics are broadly correct, though they under-represent white-collar and corporate crime, and exaggerate the extent of working-class crime, particularly by some minority ethnic groups

Question 19

Trends in crime

Answer 19

• from the 1930s to the early 1950s there was a gradual rise
• from the 1950s to the early 1980s, there was a steeper rise
• from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, there was a rapid increase
• from the mid-1990s to 2015, there was a gradual annual decline

Question 20

In 2023, the UK police recorded 6.7 million offences of crime

Answer 20

but the CSEW estimated that there was 8.5 million offences against those aged 16+

Question 21

Violence makes up about 20% of crimes

Answer 21

and theft makes up around 50% (including vehicle-related thefts), with criminal damage amount 20% and domestic burglary about 10% (CSEW 2015)

Question 22

Pattern of offending - most crime is committed

Answer 22

• by WC males
• in urban areas
• by young people (1/3 of convictions are aged 10-21, with the peak age for crime being 18 for males and 14% of females)
• against property rather than people