measuring crime Flashcards
What are ways to measure crime rates?
Official statistics
Victim surveys
Offender surveys
What are official statistics?
Government records of crime reported to police
Published annually - snapshot of specific regions
Allows development of crime prevention strategies
What are victim surveys?
Record experience of crime
Document crimes they’ve been a victim of in survey
Random selection of households
What are offender surveys?
Volunteer details of crimes they’ve committed
Targets groups of likely offenders based on risk factors
Self report
Looks at repeat offending and trends
Evaluation - official statistics
Unreliable - underestimate crime
Only includes 25% of crime
75% is the dark figure - unreported crime
Evaluation - victim surveys
Less likely to conceal dark figure
OS said 2% decrease in crime, victim survey said 3% increase
Rely on accurate recall - telescoping where people think something happened this year
Evaluation - offender surveys
Shows how many people commit crime
Unreliable - conceal or exaggerate
Middle class crime concealed
Evaluation - politics of measuring crime
Political parties will favour certain methods
Opposing party will want one to make government look bad
Party in power will show decrease
Evaluation - multidisciplinary approach
All crime figures should be scrutinised
Combo of all methods - best insight