Official Crime Statistics

Definition: Crime statistics are drawn from the records that are kept by the police and other
official agencies, these records are published every six months by the Home office. Official
statistics are useful for revealing long terms patterns in crime as they have been collected since
1857.

Advantages of official crime statistics include:

 Useful for understanding macro crime patterns

 For comparison with previous years to discover trends in crime

 To look at the police clear-up rate to measure police efficiency

 To show where the police should concentrate resources to reduce crime

 To provide the public (often via the media) with information on crime patterns

 To provide a basis for sociologists to explain crime including what is and what is not
shown in the statistics

 To reveal police assumptions and stereotyping, as the statistics are in part generated
by the activities of the police themselves and the offenders they choose to pursue and
the offences they choose to record.

Disadvantages of official crime statistics include:

 Not all crimes are reported. Police recorded statistics are based on what the criminal
justice agencies collect. But crimes cannot be recorded if they are not reported in the
first place - a high proportion of crimes are not reported to the police at all.

 Not all crime is recorded: When people actively report an offence to the police, we
would assume that these actually make it into the official police statistics. However, in
any one year over 50% of all the crimes reported to the police fail to make it into the
official statistics.

 Police interpretation/bias. The police play an important role in filtering the information
supplied to them by the public, according to what they see as important. There are
many factors which may affect their decision to record the crime including:

o How serious the crime is

o How the crime is categorised

o Police discretion
 o The social position of the person reporting the crime

o If the police feel that they might benefit their career by following up the crime

Activity
For each of these reasons give an example of a crime which might be affected by this factor.

 The role of the courts. Official statistics also reflect the decisions and sentences of the
courts, however these processes are also inevitable socially constructed, the result of
numerous social processes. British courts work on the assumption that many people will
plead guilty –75% do. If people do plead guilty, the idea is that their defence will try to
get them the lightest sentence/punishment. This in known as plea-bargaining and
occurs more openly in the USA. Guilty pleas are much more common in less serious
crimes.

 The role of the government. What is considered to be a crime changes over time as a
result of governments changing the law in response to cultural changes and the
influence of powerful groups. So comparing crime rates over time is very difficult
because definitions of crimes change. For example, the use of Cannabis: as its use is
more widespread, the numbers of offences for possessing it have dropped. The police
statistics make it look as if cannabis use is dropping when in fact the opposite is likely to
be happening.

Activity
In your own words, use what you have learnt to summarise the key strengths and weaknesses
of official crime statistics.
Victim surveys
Definition: A sample of the population, either locally or nationally, is asked which offences have
been committed against them over a period of time. The best known victimisation study is the
British Crime Survey which since 2000 has been collected every year. It has been in operation
since 1982 and is now referred to as the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The
sample is large with almost 40,000 people being interviewed annually and asked if they have
been the victim of a list of selected crimes. Supporters of the survey believe it is more ‘valid’
than the police statistics.

Advantages of victim surveys include:

 This approach overcomes the fact that a significant proportion of offences are
never recorded by the police.

 Gives a picture of the extent and patterns of victimisation – something completely

 Can be useful in looking at trends over time, for example the Crime Survey for England
Wales is carried out every year. The response rate for this survey is also relatively high.

 Whilst the Crime Survey for England Wales does not provide detailed information about
particular places, there have been other victim surveys that have focussed on
particular areas such as the Islington Crime Surveys (1986 and 1990) which
reported a higher level of victimisation of ethnic groups, and also domestic violence.

Disadvantages of victim surveys include:

 The problem of basing statistics on victims’ memories is that recollections can be

 The categorisation of the crimes that has been committed against them is left to the
person filling in the questionnaire and this can lead to considerable inaccuracy in
categories.
  Victim surveys overlook a range of crimes, such as fraud and corporate crime, and
any crime where the victim is unaware of or unable to report a crime. Even though victim
surveys are anonymous, people still appear to under report sexual offences.

 Victim surveys are dependent upon people being aware that they are victims. The
media play a key role in this as they provide illustrations of ‘crimes’ and generally
heighten sensitivity towards certain forms of behaviour. This is known as sensitising
the public towards (certain types of) activity that can be seen as a crime worth reporting.

 The CSEW itself suffered from the problem of not collecting information from those
under the age of 16. From 2009 the survey has however included a separate survey to
record the experiences of young people aged 10-15.

Self-report studies
Definition: A sample of the population are selected and asked what offences they have
committed. Some self-report studies are qualitative although most tend to be quantitative.

Advantages of self-report studies include:

 Self-report studies are a useful way of gaining access to information about antisocial
behaviour or hidden crimes such as domestic violence or white collar crime.

 Can find out more about ‘hidden offenders’ – people who haven’t necessarily been
caught by the police. As such they can challenge what is believed, based on police
recorded crime statistics, to be the ‘typical criminal’.

Disadvantages of self-report studies include:

 Self-report studies are often longitudinal and this can create logistical problems when
following the same group of participants over a number of years.

 Participants may not be truthful in their reporting so there may be questions over their
validity.

 It can be difficult to match how the offender has described the crime they
committed with how the police categorise it.

 Representativeness can be a problem as often self-report studies are completed by