crime stats + measurement of crime

What does Stephen Box argue in Crime and Mystification

1. there is an increase in violent crimes and a false optimism that law and order policies will be successful, resulting in a fear of crime

2. crime should be understood in its social context rather than assuming criminals are inherently abnormal

What stats did Box find

- 85% of serious crime convicts are male

- 40% of convicts were unemployed

- 4% of gen pop are black but 1/3 of convicts are black

what is Box's idea of liberal scientism

- official crime statistics don't give you a full picture of crime → unreported and unrecorded crimes show white males and women commit more crimes than originally thought

what is the liberal scientific problem of slippage

1. people do not report crime because they think the police is inefficient

2. the administration of criminal justice is fine in principle but fails in practice

why does the criminal justice system fail

1. differential deployment - swamping areas with high West Indian population

2. Methodological suspicion - only suspecting people with criminal record

3. plea bargaining - negotiating guilty plea for lesser sentence

4. judicious judicial decision - judged on who you are rather than what you have done

what does schur argue is the solution to slippage

a strict limitation on police and judicial discretion and less stigmatisation by decriminalising some behaviours or imposing less incarceration

what is Box's idea of radical reflexiveness

Researchers do not provide an adequate definition of what constitutes a serious crime leading to mischaracterisations of crime in self-reports and victim surveys

what does Sumner argue

criminal law categories are ideological constructs designed to criminalise only some victimising behaviours committed by the relatively powerless, and to exclude those frequently committed by the powerful

how is society controlled through criminalisation

behaviour more typically engaged in by subordinate groups is incorporated into criminal law and then legal sanctions are imposed

what is the radical reflexive view of symbolic victories

some criminal laws passed are symbolic victories which the dominant class grants to inferior interest groups to keep them quiet, but once passed, they are never efficiently or systematically enforced

what is the exception to symbolic victories

Some criminal laws (for example, laws against rape, murder, and assault) are in the interests of all people, not just the bourgeoisie. These laws do not protect us all equally

argument against the exception to symoblic victories

the upper class benefits more from these laws, as the way that serious crimes are constructed excludes many similar acts more likely to be committed by powerful individuals

e.g. deaths resulting from acts of negligence from the employer are excluded from murder (Swartz)

What is Box's concept of mystification

Criminalisation is a social control strategy which:

1. make the underprivileged more likely to be imprisoned

2. create the illusion that the dangerous class is at the bottom of society and are deserving of poverty and punishment

3. render invisible the crimes committed by the state and corporations

4. elevate the criminal justice into having the interests of "justice for all"

5. make ordinary people more dependent on the state for protection against lawlessness

what does Williams argue about the media

the public understands crime through media coverage but this does not necessarily reflect reality as the media focuses on sensational crimes increasing public fear

What does Williams argue about moral panic

Repeated, exaggerated coverage can create a moral panic, where a person or group is presented as a threat to society.

white collar crime

offences committed by people in professional or respectable positions, such as fraud.

corporate crime

wrongdoing connected to a company's activities, potentially harming employees, consumers or the public.

official crime statistics

- collected by the police, courts and prisons to measure crime, inform government policy and help the public assess risk.

- They only record crimes that come to the attention of authorities and are processed through the relevant system.

criticism of crime statistics

not completely objective: they are affected by legal definitions, police priorities, recording practices and organisational policies.

Court statistics show even less crime because many offences are never solved or prosecuted.

why are crimes unreported/unrecorded

1. Victims may fear the offender, feel embarrassed or believe reporting will achieve nothing.

2. Police may use discretion over whether an incident is recorded or how it is classified.

3. Crimes that are difficult to detect, such as fraud or corporate wrongdoing, may remain hidden.

4. Changes in recording rules can make crime figures rise or fall without any real change in offending.

what is the dark figure of crime

offences that occur but do not appear in official statistics.

what are the unofficial methods of measuring crime

1. self-report studies

2. victim surverys

self report studies + criticism

- Ask people to disclose offences they have committed, including offences never detected by police.

- They help researchers understand hidden offending and investigate who commits crime.

However, participants may lie, forget offences or refuse to disclose serious wrongdoing. Results also depend on who is surveyed. Some lack institutional trust and may feel uncomfortable self reporting

victim surveys + criticism

- Ask people about crimes they have experienced, whether or not they reported them to police.

- These surveys reveal unreported crime, reasons for not reporting it and which groups are most at risk.

However, they struggle to measure crimes without identifiable individual victims, such as pollution or safety violations. Corporate crime, crimes against children and some sexual offences may also be missed or underreported.

What does Tim Newbirn argue

The stats which show increase in the number of recorded crimes are sometimes skewed → in 2003 6 million crimes were recorded by the police, the highest on record, but this was following a change to counting rules in 2002

William Petty, 17th century

crime state "would produce a useful means of judging the moral health of the nation and assist in the making of policy decisions."

what are the two sources of official stats posted by the home office

1. police recorded crime

2. CSEW

Wheeler on police returns

"Police returns should be viewed as the product of a series of interactions between: the offender who commits an illegal act, the members of the public who may witness or be the victims of the act, and the police responsible for law enforcement."

criticisms of police returns

1. accorded an unjustified degree of truth that forms the basis of political decision making (e.g. reduction in violent crimes linked to the increase in floggings)

2. fails to account for crimes not reported to the police and not recorded by the police

8 factors that influence whether crimes are reported to the police

1. changes in attitude (e.g. broader defintion of rape = recorded cases of rape trebled since 1990s)

2. subcultures

3. institutional immunity

4. victims are willing parties (drug offences)

5. nobody knows the crime occured (road offences)

6. victim does not know they are a victim

7. victim threatened to not report crime

8. apathy (nothing to be gained by reporting)

subcultural influence on reporting crime

1. subcultural toleration of behaviour as normal (e.g fistfighting in the black country)

2. subcultural antipathy towards the police

what is institutional immunity

- certain institutions exercise authority to deal with crimes without reporting them to the police (e.g. churches, universities)

- Cornell 7 example

4 factors influencing whether police record the crime

1. misogyny

2. the relationship between the suspect and the victim (domestic violence cases)

3. the characteristics of the victim

4. victim saying they do not want the punishment to escalate

police recording stat

only 60 % of crimes reported to the police were actually recorded in 1992

- increased to 90% in 2025

dark figure of crime stat

60% of crimes actually committed are hidden under the dark figure of crime (Crime survey of England and Wales 2025)

uneven distribution of the dark figure

different types of offences and offenders are likely to be differentially reported and processed. → overrepresentation of street crime and an underrepresentation of suite crime

police may also misclassify crime

- have discretion to decide whether to record crime as s18 GBH or s47 ABH

- of 100 cases recorded as s18 only 16% were convicted under s18

CSEW + criticism

annual survey of 50,000 households asking whether they have been a victim of listed crimes over the last 12 months

1. no guaranteed validity, victims may be embarrassed and leave out info

2. excludes homeless, prisoners and those in precarious living situations

3. subjective, people may believe a crime is more serious than it is

Turner G in Tax Watch (2021)

The report finds that between 2009 and 2019 the UK prosecuted 23 times more people for benefits offences than tax offences. This is despite the value of tax fraud being nine times higher than benefits fraud.

Corporate Manslaughter & Homicide Act 2007

Actus reus = the organisation's gross breach of a relevant duty of care, causing a person's death, where the way its activities are managed or organised substantially contributes to that breach.

- Punishable by fine or rectifying the conditions that caused this