Measuring Crime

Question 1

What are the three methods to measuring crime

Answer 1

OFFICIAL STATISTICS

VICTIM SURVEYS

SELF REPORT

Question 2

What is official statistics?

Answer 2

The Official Crime Statistics (OCS) include statistics produced from police, court and prison records, as well as data collected in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

CSEW is a victim survey which asks people about their experiences of crime. All of these are collated by the Home Office and published by the Office for National Statistics.

Question 3

Advantages / strengths of police recorded crime statistics

Answer 3

They are easy to access and have already been compiled;
• They are up-to-date and standardised - the time lag between occurrence of crime and reporting results tends to be short, providing an indication of emerging trends;
• They cover the whole population and go back many years, so trends and patterns can be identified;
• The ethical problems of studying criminal behaviour in other ways are not an issue;
• They provides ‘whole counts’, rather than estimates that are subject to sampling variation - the whole country is included.

Question 4

Disadvantages/ limitations of police recorded crime statistics

Answer 4

They do not include undetected or unreported crimes - many victims may not report crimes to the police, or the crime may go undiscovered.
• They do not include unrecorded crime - the police
record a crime which has been reported, and how
consider this further below.
• They do not provide a complete picture about each crime - some information is not collected, for example the employment status or family background of the offender.
2.1 How are crime and deviance defined and measured?
have a certain amount of discretion over whether to
to record it. Collectively these unrecorded offences are known as ‘The Dark Figure of Crime’ - we will
• Accuracy may vary between areas, for example if one area has a particular focus or target to meet.
• Changes in public perception may influence them.
For example, a certain crime may be noticed and reported more if it has recently been publicised.
• Definitions, laws and police counting rules change - so they are not strictly comparable over time.
• Changes in police practice and government policy may influence them, as policies about dealing with certain offences may change.
• Pressure on the police to meet crime reduction targets may lead to some crimes ‘disappearing’ from the figures, or being downgraded. The impact of police discretion is considered below.

Question 5

The Dark Figure of Crime

Answer 5

This is the term used for all unrecorded crime.

It is hard to estimate how large this figure is, because it includes crimes which are not even known about. It is unlikely to be in proportion to the police recorded crime statistics, so we cannot just estimate, for example, 50 per cent more crime on top of the known figures. In addition, some types of crime are more likely to be in the dark figure than others.

Question 6

Mumsnet in 2012 survey

Answer 6

A survey on rape and sexual assault carried out by Mumsnet in 2012 found that 83 per cent of those who had been raped or sexually assaulted did not report it to the police.

About half said they would be too embarrassed or ashamed to report such an incident and two-thirds said they would hesitate because of low conviction rates.

Nearly three-quarters (70 per cent) of respondents feel the media is unsympathetic to women who report rape.

Source: Mumsnet, (2012) - 1609 respondents

Question 7

Lindsay Armstrong case

Answer 7

In 2002, rape victim Lindsay Armstrong, 17, was put through a second ordeal by the defence lawyer in the court case, which included being made to hold up the underwear she had been wearing at the time of the attack.

The accused, who was 14 at the time of the attack, was found guilty, but the following morning Lindsay took an overdose and was found dead by her mother.

Question 8

Police discretion

Answer 8

One problem with police recorded crime figures is that they will be affected by the discretion and descisions made by the police.

Some individual police officers may be corrupt or have their own reasons for misrecording individual crimes. However, recent evidence suggests that practices which compromise the accuracy of the statistics are widespread.

The police could also be influenced by the stereotype of the ‘typical criminal’, leading to more stop and searches and more arrests for some types of people, creating misleading figures. This issue can be linked to concerns about institutional racism and chivatry, which will be discussed later in this chapter.

Question 9

The manipulation of the police recorded crime statistics

MANIPULATION TECHNIQUES

Answer 9

Coughing: An offender might be encouraged to admit a number of offences in return for being charged for less serious offences which would result in a reduced sentence. This would greatly improve the ‘clear-up rate’ for the police force in question.

Cuffing: This refers to crimes, which have been reported and initially recorded, being removed from the statistics at a later date. The official term for this practice is ‘no-criming This may be for various reasons, such as officers deciding they did not believe

Chapter - Crime and deviance
complainant or reassessing the offence following further investigation. However, it has been alleged that, to improve figures, officers may inappropriately take crimes off the books, even trying to persuade a victim to withdraw their allegation.

Skewing: This involves forces putting resources into those areas measured by performance indicators, to the detriment of other areas, thus ‘skewing’ the figures.

Question 10

James Patrick - whistleblower

Answer 10

Allegations relating to the routine manipulation of police crime statistics were made in 2013 by a whistleblower called James Patrick, who gave evidence to a Parliamentary Committee about his concerns. He was disciplined by the police force and left his job as a result.
Patrick, a serving police officer at the time, spent 12 months analysing data from the Metropolitan Police and found that even serious sexual offences were routinely ‘no-crimed’, and that burglary was commonly downgraded to a lower type of offence.
Patrick’s allegations were supported by other senior police officers. In their report, ‘Caught red-handed: why we can’t count on police recorded crime statistics’, the Public Administration Committee
(2014) said ‘the attitudes and behaviour which led to the misrecording of crime have become ingrained, including within senior leadership.

Question 11

FUNCTIONALIST VIEW ON POLICE RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS

Answer 11

Functionalists believe in the existence of social facts and measuring social behaviour scientifically.

They would trust quantitative data produced in the statistics and see it as reliable and representative.

Functionalists also believe there is a value consensus in society, so would see the police as representing all of us, and not question their motives. Thus most functionalist and subcultural explanations use the
‘typical criminal’ presented in police recorded figures as their starting point in explaining crime, focusing on young, working class males in particular.

Question 12

NEW RIGHT/ RIGHT REALISTS VIEW ON POLICE RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS

Answer 12

the New Right and right realists accept the official picture of the typical criminal presented by the police recorded figures, since they too believe that laws are made for the benefit of society and applied equally, and that the police are representing the interests of the whole society.

They focus on explaining criminality amongst the most deprived sections of society, referred to as the
‘underclass’, since statistics suggest that most crime is committed by such people.

Question 13

LEFT REALISTS VIEW ON POLICE RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS

Answer 13

Left realists recognise the police figures are not perfect, but they should not be dismissed, because they are about real crimes. They suggest police recorded figures should be supplemented by other methods, such as victim surveys.

Question 14

FEMINISTS VIEW ON POLICE RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS

Answer 14

Some feminists accept the official picture that females commit significantly less crime than males, and try to explain why. They look at the high levels of social control applied to females, for example.

Question 15

MARXISTS VIEW ON POLICE RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS

Answer 15

Marxists see the police recorded crime figures as a tool used to control the working class and justify their control and oppression. Police statistics are used to scare us and justify more policing.

Question 16

INTERACTIONISTS VIEW ON POLICE RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS

Answer 16

Interactionists agree to an extent with Marxists.
They focus on the social construction of crime statistics, paying particular attention to police labelling and the consequences of interactions between certain powerless groups in society and the police and the courts.

Question 17

RADICAL CRIMINOLOGISTS VIEW ON POLICE RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS

Answer 17

Radical criminologists combine aspects of Marxism and interactionism in their approach to understanding crime, thus they tend to focus on the power of the police to label for political reasons.
Such ideas have also been used to challenge the over-representation of certain ethnic minority groups in the police recorded figures.

Question 18

SOME SOCIOLOGISTS INCLUDING FEMINISTS VIEW ON POLICE RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS

Answer 18

Some sociologists, including feminists, focus on the way that female offenders are treated differently by the police and in the courts. Feminists also argue that, if anything, male crime against women is underrepresented in the police figures. So they do not challenge the idea of the typical criminal being male, but do challenge the accuracy of the statistics.

Question 19

What are victim surveys?

Answer 19

This is an alternative way of measuring crime which involves surveying people about which crimes they have been victims of in a given period. Victim surveys are likely to include some crimes which have not been reported to the police.

A major contribution made by victim surveys to the measurement of crime is the doubt they cast on the accuracy of police recorded crime figures.

The biggest example of a victim survey is the Crime Survey for England & Wales (CSEW) which is included as part of the official crime statistics by the Government.

Question 20

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

Answer 20

The CSEW is one of the largest social surveys conducted in Britain. It is currently carried out by the British Market Research Bureau on behalf of the Home Office, and mainly involves face-to-face structured interviews.

It has been carried out since 1982, though it was called the British Crime Survey (BCS) until April
2012. Initially it was biennial, but since 2001 it has been carried out annually. Only those over 18 were originally included, and then those over 16, but since 2009, children aged 10-15 are also included, usually as part of their parents’ survey.

The CSEW has a nationally representative sample of around 35,000 adults and 3,000 children per year. The response rates for the survey in 2013-14 were 75 per cent and 68 per cent respectively, which is relatively high. The survey is weighted to adjust for possible non-response bias and to ensure the sample reflects the profile of the general population.

Respondents are interviewed in their own homes by trained interviewers using a structured questionnaire that is administered on a laptop computer. Respondents are asked about property crimes (such as burglary) and personal crimes (such as theft from the person or violence) which they themselves have experienced The reference period to which these questions relate is from the first of January in the calendar year preceding the survey, up to the date of interview.

Question 21

CSEW advantages

Answer 21

The CSEW tends to show that crime is much higher
than the police figures suggest, for some crimes up to 4 times higher. In order to classify incidents, the survey collects extensive information about the victims of crime, the circumstances in which incidents occur and the behaviour of offenders in committing crimes. The CSEW has been successful at developing special measures to estimate the extent of domestic violence, stalking and sexual victimization, which are probably the least-reported to the police but among the most serious of crimes in their impact on victims. The survey also includes questions on people’s attitudes about crime-related topics such as anti-social behaviour and the effectiveness of the police.

Question 22

CSEW disadvantages / limitations

Answer 22

Limitations of the CSEW
Though many commentators and politicians claim that the CSEW is a more accurate measure of crime in England and Wales than the police recorded statistics, it does have its limitations, including:

• Victimless crimes, or crimes where the ‘victim is a large corporation, such as fare evasion or shoplifting, will not appear;

• Only people over 16 have been asked in the past so crimes with child victims were not picked up, though this has now changed;

• The CSEW only surveys a sample, so overall trends are an estimate which may not be representative (especially for rare crimes);

• The response rate is around 75 per cent, missing potentially important data (see below for more on this issue).

Question 23

Hough and Mayhew (1985)

Answer 23

(1985) who carried out the first British Crime Surveys commented that, ‘the value of crime surveys should be assessed not against the yardstick of perfection, but against the existing alternatives: survey and police statistics combined enable the contours of crime to be mapped far better than police statistics alone.’

Question 24

The Islington Crime Survey

Answer 24

The Islington Crime Survey (Jones, Maclean and Young, 1986) was first conducted by the Centre for Criminology in inner city London.

A second survey was carried out in 1990, and a similar survey was carried out in Merseyside (Kinsey, 1984).

These surveys not only focused more on specific geographical areas than the CSEW, but also focused on the impact of crime on individual’s lives and particularly on vulnerable groups.

Question 25

First Islington crime survey

Answer 25

The first Islington survey showed that a third of all households had been touched by serious crime in the last twelve months, and crime was rated as a major problem, second only to unemployment. Because there was a qualitative nature to the questions, the survey was also able to uncover the degree to which crime shaped people's lives. For example, a quarter of all people always avoided going out after dark, specifically because of fear of crime, and 28 per cent felt unsafe in their own homes. More than half of women stated that fear of crime meant that they did not often or ever go out after dark. Young argues that the Islington survey shows that fear of crime is real and rational, pointing out that it is understandable that 46 per cent of people admitted to worrying 'a lot about mugging, given that over 40 per cent of the population actually knew someone who had been mugged in the previous twelve months.

Question 26

Young (1988)

Answer 26

1988 argued that women’s fear of crime is not simply a moral panic. Using carefully trained researchers to conduct sensitive interviews in the Islington Survey, he found: • Higher female victimisation rates than official police figures suggested. • This was because sexual and domestic offences were often not reported through official channels.

Question 27

What do police-recorded figures suggest about crime victimisation by gender?

Answer 27

Police-recorded figures suggest that males are more likely than females to be victims of crime. However, this overlooks many unreported crimes (especially sexual and domestic offences against women).

Question 28

Dobash & Dobash (1979)

Answer 28

1979 conducted in-depth interviews with women in a refuge to study domestic violence. • Their qualitative research was not meant to compete with police statistics. • Instead, it aimed to access a specific group of victims and understand the impact of crime on their lives.

Question 29

What are the general limitations of victim surveys?

Answer 29

Many victim surveys share limitations of the CSEW (Crime Survey for England and Wales). • They may lack representativeness. Qualitative surveys can gain validity but still face key issues: • Depend on memory and honesty of participants. • Different thresholds of crime (what counts as crime varies by person). some unaware they were victims; others include non-crimes like trespass • Response rate problems: low participation harms representativeness and generalisability. Non-responders may include victims of sensitive crimes (e.g., sexual offences), people are often distrustful of surveys, or specific social groups. • Non-victims who see it as irrelevant may not respond, causing overestimation of crime.

Question 30

Young (1988)

Answer 30

Young who was involved in the Islington Crime Survey, gave a comprehensive evaluation of victim surveys. • He argued there is a “dark figure” of crime even in victim surveys because: • Accuracy depends on memory and honesty. • Different crime definitions among respondents. • Response rate problems reduce representativeness and may bias results.

Question 31

Self report studies (what is it? Strengths and limitations?)

Answer 31

Ask people to admit which crimes they themselves have committed. Strengths: • Reveal minor offences not captured by police stats or victim surveys. • Can challenge stereotypes of the “typical criminal.” • Often longitudinal, shows long-term patterns and factors (family, peers, education, etc.). • May use qualitative methods (e.g., life histories) for deeper insight into criminality. Limitations: • Logistical and ethical problems (especially large-scale adult studies). • Often limited to young people and minor crimes. • Depend on honesty of respondents.

Question 32

Campbell 1981

Answer 32

found that levels of crime and deviance admitted to by females and males were much closer than the police recorded figures tend to suggest. Similarly, some self-report studies suggest that statistics overemphasise working class male involvement in crime. Found that young females admitted to much higher levels of crime than police figures suggest. • Male and female self-reported offending was much closer than official statistics imply. • Showed that police figures underestimate female crim

Question 33

Farrington – Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development

Answer 33

Longitudinal self-report study of 411 South London boys. Followed from age 8 to 32, starting in 1961. • Tracked criminal careers and many variables: family background, peers, education, area, gender, ethnicity. • Generated extensive data on patterns of offending (Farrington, 1989, 2000a, 2001).

Question 34

Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime

Answer 34

Large longitudinal self-report study of 4,000+ young people in Edinburgh. • Focus on gender differences (unlike Cambridge, which was male-only). • Collects data annually from multiple sources: gives a continuous account of lives, not just snapshots.

Question 35

The Jack-Roller, Shaw - 1966

Answer 35

A qualitative self-report life history of a criminal. involved a series of unstructured interviews to build-up a 'life history' of a criminal. Rather than measuring crime, this method gives an insight into criminality, so is favoured more by interpretivist sociologists. • Built from unstructured interviews with a young offender. • Provided insight into criminality from the offender’s perspective. • Classic interpretivist approach in criminology.

Question 36

Issues affecting the usefulness of self-report studies - VALIDITY

Answer 36

Because of the sensitive subject matter, participants may conceal offences or make false claims. Validity is often checked by comparing answers with official records. West and Farrington (1977) found that at age 18, 94% of convicted boys admitted their convictions, while only 2% of unconvicted boys falsely claimed to have been convicted. Farrington (2001) added that young males often admit offences more readily, whereas older males and females are less likely to be truthful, possibly to preserve a façade of respectability. Some studies even compare self-reports with direct measures, such as Farrington et al. (1980), who gave young people an opportunity to steal and compared this with their self-reports.

Question 37

Issues affecting the usefulness of self-report studies - ATTRITION

Answer 37

Participation and drop-out rates affect representativeness. Farrington et al. (1990) found that the most difficult participants to track were often the ones committing the most offences, meaning attrition can cause underestimates of crime. In the Cambridge Study, men who were uncooperative at 32 tended to have been uncooperative as children and adolescents. By contrast, the Edinburgh Study managed to keep 94.4% of the final cohort after four sweeps, showing that high participation is possible.

Question 38

Issues affecting the usefulness of self-report studies - ETHICS

Answer 38

Ethical concerns are central in research on criminality. Studies must ensure informed consent, confidentiality, and the right to withdraw. For example, in the Edinburgh Study, parents received letters explaining the research and could withdraw their children by returning a slip. Children were also informed about the study, allowed to refuse, and signed consent forms for access to their police records.

Question 39

Issues affecting the usefulness of self-report studies - other limitations.

Answer 39

Offenders’ own definitions of crime may not match police categories, and most self-report studies focus on relatively small groups or particular offences. This reduces representativeness and means they do not provide a full picture of crime.