Measuring Crime Flashcards
The number of crimes reported and recorded by the police can be influenced by a number of factors…
- variations in law enforcement activity across police commands
- variations in state laws as to what constitutes a crime
- counting rules as to what does and does not get counted into a particular category vary from one jurisdiction to the next
- inconsistencies in reporting crime by victims
Dark-figure of crime
Amount of crime that is undetected, not reported and not recorded
Administrative data
Crime statistics known as ‘administrative data’
- > drawn from the administrative records of the police
- includes information known (ie., detected and/or reported and recorded) crimes
16 ANZSOC
A list of offences ordered to reflect the seriousness of the offence
Because the definition of crime includes a broad range of behaviours, measuring crime also must taken a broad approach.
Measuring crime includes gathering information from…
- official agencies of social control
- offenders
- victims
- observations
Administrative data (crime statistics) can be influenced by…
1) reporting patterns
2) counting rules
3) policing activity
4) changes in legislation
Changes in counting rules
E.g. two seperate offences are counting as one
Changes is police activity/practices
E.g. New technologies to find disqualified drivers (better data bases)
Do crime statistics measuring the ‘true level’ of crime on the community?
NO
- does not capture the dark-figure of crime
- only reported or detected offences
How to measure crime?
Often measured through official data from criminal justice institutions
Police data: reflect reported offences, reported to police, or detected by police
Do not tell the true level of crime -> dark figure
Court data:
Corrections data:
Only shows a small subset of people sentenced
4 ways to address the issue of dark figure
Victim surveys
Convicted offender self-report surveys
Population surveys
Observational surveys
