Topic 9a: Measuring crime and deviance: official statistics Flashcards
Advantages of using official criminal statistics (OCS) 1
Police and court statistics do have their advantages to the sociologist.
• They are cheap and easy to access and they avoid all the ethical dilemmas involved in the generation of data through observational and interviewing methods.
• Also it is generally believed that all police forces categorise crimes in a standardised way and it is made clear when methods of categorisation are changed. This makes the data reliable, they also cover every area making them representative
Advantages of using official criminal statistics (OCS) 2
• In the past, theories of crime were often based on acceptance of the official statistics of crime. Theories were developed eg Merton, Cohen and other functionalists(use in intro), to explain why the patterns existed as they did. Therefore, functionalist sociologists and to a certain extent Right Realists trust the patterns shown in the crime rate – they do not see them as a social construct.
Disadvantages of using official criminal statistics (OCS) - dark figure
However, official statistics cannot be taken simply at their face value. They only show crimes which are reported to and recorded by the official agencies such as the police. When we dig a little deeper a lot of hidden issues are uncovered. Official statistics also provide information about those who have been convicted of offences.
Sociologists have long argued that there exists a ‘dark figure’ of unrecorded crime. It may be that the social characteristics of those who are not reported or caught may differ from those who are.
Pilkington - reporting crime
Pilkington argues that the OCS may not be useful because they only tell us about the increased reporting of particular crimes by the general public and victims of crime rather than actual increases in crime itself. For example:
• The official criminal statistics for some juvenile crimes may simply reflect public intolerance fuelled by journalists’ construction of moral panics in search of newsworthy stories, Moral panics increase the profile of the folk devil group so that the general public is more likely to recognise the problem and report it. The police are also put under pressure to crackdown on the problem which may result in more arrests and prosecutions. The government may pass new laws in order to control the so-called problem. The folk devil group may react by becoming more confrontational and criminal. In other words, the moral panic leads to deviancy amplification – an artificial rise in the criminal statistics.
Findings from the Crime Survey of England and Wales (victimisation survey) - reporting crime
show that individuals are less likely to report a ‘crime’ to the police if they regard it as:
• too trivial to bother the police with.
• a private matter between friends and family, and will seek redress directly (get revenge themselves), or they wish no harm to come to the offender.
• too embarrassing
On the other hand, people are more likely to report a crime if:
• they see some benefit to themselves (an insurance claim).
• they have faith in the police ability to achieve a positive result.
Recording of crimes - The role of the police
Clearly the police are filtering the information supplied to them by the public, according to factors which are important to them.
Seriousness - They may regard the offence as too trivial or simply not a criminal matter.
Social status - More worryingly, they may view the social status of the person reporting the matter as not high enough to regard the issue as worth pursuing.
Classifying crimes - When a person makes a complaint, police officers must decide what category the offence is in. So, the police officers’ opinion determines the category and seriousness of crime.
Discretion
Recording of crimes - The role of the courts
Official statistics of crimes committed also reflect the decisions and sentences of the courts. However, these statistics too are a reflection of social processes.
British courts work on the assumption that many people will plead guilty and about 75% of all those charged do plead guilty as the defence will try to get the charges with the lightest possible punishment put forward by the prosecution. The result is an overwhelming majority of pleas of guilty, yet these pleas are for less serious crimes than might ‘really’ have been committed. The statistics will reflect this downgrading of seriousness
Recording of crimes - The role of the government
What is considered a crime changes over time, as governments change the law in response to cultural changes. Any exploration of crime over a period is fraught with difficulty as any rise or fall in the levels of crime may reflect changes in the law just as much as actual changes in crime. A good example of this is the way that attitudes to cannabis use have shifted, with an increase in the numbers of people possessing and using cannabis (a crime) and a decline in the number of arrests for its possession, as the police respond to public opinion. The official statistics might make it look as if cannabis use is actually declining, when it is not.
The Marxist critique of the OCS
Marxists are very critical of the OCS. They suggest that the capitalist state collects and constructs criminal statistics in order to serve the interests of the ruling class. The statistics serve an ideological function – whoever has the power to collect and construct such statistics has the power to control and manipulate public opinion. Marxists therefore argue that the ideological function of the OCS is to criminalise groups such as the young, the working-class and black people. This divides and rules the working-class by diverting the white conformist working-class’ attention away from class inequalities.
Reporting crime eval
Victim surveys overcomes the fact that a significant proportion of offences are never recorded by the police by asking sample of the population either locally or nationally which offences have been committed against them over a certain period of time. This also uncovers the reasons why individuals do not report a crime. For example the Crime survey of England and wales found that throughout the 1990s, the CSEW showed that only a minority of crimes (1 in 4) were reported to the police – this suggested that police recorded crime statistics were the tip of a much larger crime iceberg. However, the latest CSEW statistics indicate that the gap between crime reported to the CSEW and crimes reported to and recorded by the police is at its most narrow since 1983. This confirms that crime is now falling.
Recording crime eval
Self report studies overcome the fact that OCS may reflect social institutions by using questionnaires or interviews to collect information about individuals, and ask them to admit to the number of crimes they have committed. Bowling and Phillips, “Young People and Crime” challenges the widespread view that the rate of offending of Black ethnic groups is higher than that of the White ethnic group. And it supports the suggestion that the rate of offending of Asian groups is somewhat lower. This overcomes the potential racism in social institutions
Interactionist critique of OCS
Social construct and reflect the influence of the media and labelling
Intro
Official crime statistics are drawn from the records kept by the police and other official agencies, and are published every six months.
