In this essay, I will assess the different methods used to measure criminal activity, as well as their effectiveness and limitations. I will be looking to history in order to better understand and compare today 's ways of counting crimes and transforming them into statistics. I will also be questioning the various definitions of crime and what they entail across different cultures.
Before going into detail about how effectively crime can be measured and evaluated, I would first like to mention that the term can be interpreted in different ways across different parts of the world, as I elaborate in one of the further paragraphs. However, in Western societies, I believe that crime can be defined in two ways: on a legislative level (the more …show more content…
However, if we want to take a broader look at this type of social deviance, we must take statistics into account. That was first done in the UK in the 60s, with the appearance of the first victimisation surveys, then perfected in 1982, when the first British Crime Survey was carried out. Before that, people had to rely on police records, which didn 't take into account the dark figure of crime. As Hough and Mayhew (1983) reported, not only did the BCS offer new ways of numbering crimes that were not present in police records, as well as a means of identifying the sorts of people most likely to be victimised, it also provided information for the UK about the impact of crime on victims, and their experience of the police. Statistics show that only 4 out of 10 crimes are actually reported to the police (crimesurvey.co.uk), information known to us because of the survey, so it can 't be denied that it has proven to be an invaluable asset to the measurement of crime. However, even with the survey, we can 't be sure that we have successfully recorded all crime in the UK. For instance, victimeless crimes, such as drug abuse, vandalism, etc., are unlikely to be reported in crime surveys, which leaves us with only police records of such …show more content…
There are many reasons why a crime might go unreported; fear, negligence, unawareness, corruption…the list goes on and on. How can we estimate, as accurately as we can, the size of the infamous „dark figure“? Is this even possible? If it is, then it is no small feat; as it were, the number of unrecorded crimes undoubtedly depends on many things, such as the ‘…activity of justice in reaching the guilty, on the care which these latter will take in hiding themselves, and on the repugnance which wronged individuals will feel in complaining, or on the ignorance in which perhaps they will be concerning the wrong which has been done them’ (Coleman and Moynihan 1996: 5). As I understand it, this quote questions the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in firstly finding the perpetrator of a certain crime, then effectively prosecuting him or her; the ability of the perpetrator to escape the watchful eye of the law; the remorse the criminal may or may not feel after committing the crime and his or her reluctance (or lack thereof) to give themselves in, as well as the awareness of what he or she has done, and the
Before going into detail about how effectively crime can be measured and evaluated, I would first like to mention that the term can be interpreted in different ways across different parts of the world, as I elaborate in one of the further paragraphs. However, in Western societies, I believe that crime can be defined in two ways: on a legislative level (the more …show more content…
However, if we want to take a broader look at this type of social deviance, we must take statistics into account. That was first done in the UK in the 60s, with the appearance of the first victimisation surveys, then perfected in 1982, when the first British Crime Survey was carried out. Before that, people had to rely on police records, which didn 't take into account the dark figure of crime. As Hough and Mayhew (1983) reported, not only did the BCS offer new ways of numbering crimes that were not present in police records, as well as a means of identifying the sorts of people most likely to be victimised, it also provided information for the UK about the impact of crime on victims, and their experience of the police. Statistics show that only 4 out of 10 crimes are actually reported to the police (crimesurvey.co.uk), information known to us because of the survey, so it can 't be denied that it has proven to be an invaluable asset to the measurement of crime. However, even with the survey, we can 't be sure that we have successfully recorded all crime in the UK. For instance, victimeless crimes, such as drug abuse, vandalism, etc., are unlikely to be reported in crime surveys, which leaves us with only police records of such …show more content…
There are many reasons why a crime might go unreported; fear, negligence, unawareness, corruption…the list goes on and on. How can we estimate, as accurately as we can, the size of the infamous „dark figure“? Is this even possible? If it is, then it is no small feat; as it were, the number of unrecorded crimes undoubtedly depends on many things, such as the ‘…activity of justice in reaching the guilty, on the care which these latter will take in hiding themselves, and on the repugnance which wronged individuals will feel in complaining, or on the ignorance in which perhaps they will be concerning the wrong which has been done them’ (Coleman and Moynihan 1996: 5). As I understand it, this quote questions the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in firstly finding the perpetrator of a certain crime, then effectively prosecuting him or her; the ability of the perpetrator to escape the watchful eye of the law; the remorse the criminal may or may not feel after committing the crime and his or her reluctance (or lack thereof) to give themselves in, as well as the awareness of what he or she has done, and the