Topic 2: Measuring Crime

Topic 2: Measuring Crime

1. Discuss the problems inherent in defining and measuring crime

   • The legal definition
   • Social harm approach
   • Publics perception of crime
   • Inovation vs consistency in measures
   • Objectivity of those collecting crime data
   • Consideration of the population and social context
   • Type of crime:some are not best reflected in simple counts
   • Should all crimes be recorded equally
     • Should some crimes be weighted greater than others
       • But do crimes effect all groups the same?

2. Critically evaluate the benefits and limitations of methods measuring crime

   • Ways of measuring crime: 1. Official records (Police recorded data) 2. Victimisation surveys 3. Local surveys 4. Self report surveys 5. International comparison data
   • Police recorded data
     • What does it measure?
       • Since 1857, the Home Office has produced a regular series of national crime statistics for England and Wales based on annual returns from the police and courts . From 2001 this became 'Criminal Statistics England and Wales which is divided into two main sections: offenses recorded by the police and offenders cautioned or found guilty.
         • Data recorded by the police is based on whether an offence is notifiable according to the Home Office and therefore omits many minor offenses such as motoring offenses
     • What are its benefits?
     • What are the limitations?
       • Police reports only reflect crimes that are reported or considered a crime by the legal standard
         • There are multiple reasons why people may be reluctant to report certain crimes, ranging from the loss or harm being considered too trivial to embarassment or fear of not being believed
           • For example, crimes that likely to result in insurance claims are more likely to reported than crimes such as domestic abuse where a partner has to be implicated.
             • Therefore, police figures tend to distort the frequency of certain crimes compared to others
       • The objectivity of police reports have been challenged, with the public trust in these figures being low.
         • Smith (2006) identified the following reasons for my trust may be low: presentation of statistics may be in conflict with individuals experience of crime, potential for the police or government to manipluate stats , deifntions of crime being at odd with common sense definitions, and conflicitng stats apparently open to a wide range of interpreations
         • However, one of the reason trust in police stats may be low is that people do not distinguish between antisoical behaviour and crime so whilst stats suggest a drop in crime, many people percieve antisocial behaviour to be rising. Yet, this behaviour would not be recorded as a criminal offense (e.g Mackenzie et al, 2010)
   • Victim Surveys: 'The British Crime survey"/"Crime Survey for England and Wales"
     • What does it measure?
       • Since 2001, this survey has been administered annually with 40,000 household being asked whether they had experienced victimisation in the previous year
     • What are the advantages?
       • The CSEW provides information on unreported and unrecorded crime, unlike the police reports, and because of this it can provide information on the types of crime that don't appear in the official statistics
         • It is not affected by changes in levels of crimes reported to the police or police recording procedures
           • It allows a comparison over time between the police recorded data and household reports
             • What have these comparisons suggested?
     • What are the limitations?
       • The CSEW only covers selected kinds of 'personal' and 'household' crimes
         • These include: theft of/from vehicle  Vandalism of private property  assault/wounding  robbery  theft from person and bicycle theft
         • Therefore the survey omits sexual offenses, crimes against corporate victims, fraud, possession and dealing drugs
           • Furthermore, the survey does not count crimes committed against children under 16
             • It is based on estimates from a sample population and is therefore subject to sampling error
               • In particular, the BSC may not reflect the experience of victimisation of specific groups in society which may be higher than 'averages' suggest
                 • see page 173 of Maguire and Mcvie
   • Self report surveys
     • What do they measure?
     • What are the limitations ?
     • What are the advantages?
   • Local surveys
     • What do they measure?
       • Local surveys focus on victims reports of crimes in specific areas
     • What are the advantages?
       • Allows us to examine how different communites or groups may have different experiences of crime compared to the averages suggested by police recorded data and CSEW
         • Has indicated differences in risk of victimisation between groups and even greater differences between subgroups (e.g race, gender)
       • Provided important complementary data
     • What are the limitations?
       • Can obviously only inform about a certain population