Criminology Topic 5 - Statistics And Patterns Of Crime

Front 1

Types of crime statistics

Back 1

three different ways to build a picture of crime patterns:

• police recorded statistics
• victim surveys
• self report surveys- studies that anonymously ask people if they have ever committed a crime

Front 2

Police recorded statistics

Back 2

• drawn from records kept by the police and other official agencies
• published every six months by the home office
• first collected in 1857- makes them useful - provides a historic overview

Front 3

Police recorded statistics as a social construction

Back 3

PRS can be seen as a product of society as they only show crimes that have been reported and recorded by the police

Front 4

Reasons not reported

Back 4

• fear - of perpetrator or reprisal (retaliation)
• Vulnerable- not aware that its a crime- not aware of the law
• close to the offender
• victim blaming/shaming
• self incrimination- could get in trouble themselves
• not important enough
• damage reputation- don't want to appear weak (high status)
• no faith in the police

Front 5

recorded crime

Back 5

• HMIC (her majesty's investigators of constabulary) - 1/5 of crimes reported to police that should have been recorded don't end up being included in police statistics
  
• number of violent crimes recorded by the police has increased in recent years

Newburn (2013)- This only reflects the changes in police counting rules

- e.g. classification of crime has changed so what would have been counted as one kind of crime is now counted as two

- this would increase recorded crime rates

Front 6

reasons crime is not recorded- filtering process for crime

Back 6

• Prioritising/seriousness e.g. Anti-social behaviour
• Classifying- when a crime is reported it is the polices job to classify the offence- could be classified wrong
• Social status- the police may not view the social status of the person reporting the crime as being high enough
• e.g. a prostitute reporting rape or a crime
• Discretion - Anderson et al (1994) - youths who co-operate and are polite to the police are less likely to be arrested than those being disrespectful

Front 7

The role of the courts

Back 7

• official statistics also reflect the decisions made by the courts
• British courts work on the assumption that most people will plead guilty
• (around 75% of the people charged will do so to receive a 'lighter' sentence)
• In the US this bargaining is far more open (known as plea-bargaining)
• this process can distort police statistics

Front 8

Victim surveys

Back 8

• can be national or local surveys
• started in the 1980's
• The most recognised is the CSEW (previously the BCS)
• random selection- objective
• aims for accurate representation of the population e.g. half male, half female
• anonymously ask people if they have been a victim of crime
• also ask for opinions on crime and how it is handled
• positivist research with qualitative elements in it

Front 9

Evaluation of the CSEW

Back 9

+ gives a better picture of the 'dark figure of crime'

+ done every year

+ similar questions so can compare

- less likely to report it - e.g. domestic violence - survey sent to the household

- ratio of sample to population is still low

- government survey- not enforced so not everyone will respond

- white collar crime and similar crimes such as public offences aren't counted because they don't have any one victim

- murder wouldn't count either because the victim is dead

- not every victim realise that a crime is being committed against them

- by trying to apply to the whole country it actually applies nowhere specifically

- you can't use the information on a local scale because its not relevant

Front 10

local victim surveys

Back 10

• most famous are the Islington Crime Surveys (ICS) - Harper in 1986 and Jones et al 1995
• showed that the CSEW under reported the higher levels of victimisation of minority ethnic groups and domestic violence

Front 11

Self report studies

Back 11

• surveys that ask people in which a selected group or cross section of the population what offences they have committed
• this information gives an insight into hidden offences

Front 12

self report and offending

Back 12

useful to determine whether there is a systematic bias in the criminal justice system which might result in certain types of offenders being more likely to be processed

Front 13

perspectives on criminal behaviour

Back 13

Positivist

• scientific, quantifiable, generalise, macro, top down
• like official statistics - ONS
• accept crime statistics

Interpretivist

• reasoning
• focus on the individual
• bottom up
• qualitative
• don't like crime statistics - not specififc

Marxist

• positivist - top down
• general- rich oppress the poor
• wouldn't like statistics- collected by the rich
• misrepresented because of this - ignore white collar crime

Feminism

• positivist and interpretivist-patriarchy
• survey ignores the dark figure of crime such as domestic violence
• data collected for and by men
• criminology is patriarchy- women misrepresented throughout crime
• need to look at crime from a more female perspective

Left realism

• they're realistic
• believe the crime statistics are a fair and accurate representation or crime