When looking at the study of crime and in particular the recording of crime statistics, you have to consider why some acts will be seen as deviant and others will not, why people might report some crimes and not others as well as why the police will record some crimes and not others. Therefore it does depend on nature of the act and what other people do about crime as argued by Becker (1963:14). Arguably what other people do about crime can be interpreted in two ways; if other people do something about crime like report it or if other people do nothing about crime. At least 3 things must happen before a crime is recorded; it must come to someone’s attention that a crime has taken place, it must be reported to a relevant agency and the agency
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Additionally validity of recorded crime statistics can be questioned by the ‘dark figure of crime’ which refers to all crimes that are not formally captured in official police data (Wilson, 2009, p.71). All of this will make the study of crime difficult as you will not have a representative picture of crime that is taking place due to the invalidity and unreliability of crime …show more content…
There is a variety of reasons behind the police recording or not recording crime. The police might record crime as they might feel that they have an obligation to record crime because other parties may require an official recognition of an incident. Police recording the crime that people report to them will make the recording of crime statistics increasingly valid as these statistics will be mundane realistic. However there are also reasons why the police does not record crime such as; there might be insufficient evidence, there might be a little chance of the offender being successfully detected and prosecuted and the victim might withdraw their complaint (Hale, 2013, p.50). To support the idea of police not recording crime is the idea of ‘cuffing’ where a police officer does not record crime which has been reported or the police officer downgrades a reported crime to an incident which does not have to be included in the official statistics (Joyce, 2013,
Additionally validity of recorded crime statistics can be questioned by the ‘dark figure of crime’ which refers to all crimes that are not formally captured in official police data (Wilson, 2009, p.71). All of this will make the study of crime difficult as you will not have a representative picture of crime that is taking place due to the invalidity and unreliability of crime …show more content…
There is a variety of reasons behind the police recording or not recording crime. The police might record crime as they might feel that they have an obligation to record crime because other parties may require an official recognition of an incident. Police recording the crime that people report to them will make the recording of crime statistics increasingly valid as these statistics will be mundane realistic. However there are also reasons why the police does not record crime such as; there might be insufficient evidence, there might be a little chance of the offender being successfully detected and prosecuted and the victim might withdraw their complaint (Hale, 2013, p.50). To support the idea of police not recording crime is the idea of ‘cuffing’ where a police officer does not record crime which has been reported or the police officer downgrades a reported crime to an incident which does not have to be included in the official statistics (Joyce, 2013,