Problems in defining crime

Question 1

Crime

Answer 1

Two types of crime;

1. An act that breaks the law
2. An act that causes offence to societal norms and values

Question 2

How we view crime?

Answer 2

It is a social construct - legal and normative stance

Question 3

What sources of data are crime statistics based on?

Answer 3

• British crime survey/ Crime survey for England and wales

- Official statistics recorded by the police and home office

Question 4

Official statistics examples

Answer 4

• Police statistics on reported/ recorded crimes
• Court statistics
• Prison statistics

Question 5

Police statistics on reported/ recorded crimes

Answer 5

• Provide a rich and up-to-date record of crime
• Affected by reporting biases, some victims don’t report and some do.
• No way of knowing police record events as crimes in a consistent way across authorities or time.
• Crimes recorded by the police aren’t the same as reported.

Question 6

Court statistics

Answer 6

• Indication of numbers and types of crimes processed by courts and the sentencing patterns.
• Bias - factors considered in prosecuting which vary across time and areas.

Question 7

Prison statistics

Answer 7

• Numbers in prison, offence categories and sentence duration
• No shortage of data = weekly updated
• Bias = sentencing polices vary over time

Question 8

Victim surveys

Answer 8

• Annual British Crime survey - 1982
• Random sample of households
• Asks questions about crime-related matters
• Helps inform Home Office policy = true reflection of the extent of crime
• Subgroup differences in perception
• Higher number of crimes reported by CSEW than home office as some crimes don’t fit into their categories so aren’t recorded.

Question 9

Issue with surveys?

Answer 9

• Questionnaire-based = methodological pitfalls
• Untrue reports as they are unsupervised
• As society changes so do its attitudes to certain crimes
• Good response rate - 75%

Question 10

Offender survey

Answer 10

• Gather information by focusing on the perpetrators rather than the victims.
• Done by known offenders or anonymous offenders
• The number of offences and the number of people committing the crime.
• Shows the true nature of crime + much is neither reported nor detected.

Question 11

Evaluation of ways of measuring crime

Answer 11

• Not easy to reconcile all types of sources
• Official statistics = simply based on recorded crimes, convictions and sentencing
• Don’t know whether crimes were done by the same person

Question 12

Issues with victim and offender surveys

Answer 12

• Lack of reliability - not truthful
• Biased sample - literacy level/ wealth and power
• Biased selection of crime - traditional crime focused not on new crime

Question 13

Why is it difficult to get a true picture of crime levels?

Answer 13

Issues relating to how crime is defined and the types of data available