Defining and measuring crime

Key terms

Crime - An act committed in violation of the law where the consequence of conviction by a court is punishment, especially where the punishment is a serious one such as imprisonment.

Official statistics - Figures based on the numbers of crimes that are reported and recorded by the police which are often used by government to inform crime prevention strategies.

Victim survey - A questionnaire that asks a sample of people which crimes have been committed against them over a fixed period of time whether or not they have been reported to the police.

Offender survey - A self-report measure that requires people to record the number and types of crime they have committed over a specified period.

Problems in defining crime

This complicated by the fact that laws are often subject to change and that not all acts that break the law are punished.

Cultural issues in defining crime

  • What is considered a crime in one culture may not be judged such as in another.

  • An example of this is laws on marriage, in the UK having more than one wife is the crime of bigamy however it is not a crime in cultures where polygamy is practised.

  • In 2014, forced marriage was made illegal in the UK, but still practised in some cultures.

Historical issues in defining crime

  • Definitions of crime change over time.

  • Parentā€™s right to smack their child was outlawed in 2004 with the introduction of childrenā€™s act.

  • Homosexuality was considered a crime until 1967.

Ways of measuring crime

Official statistics

  • These are government records of the total number of crimes reported to police and recorded in the official figures. These are published by Home Office on an annual basis.

  • This allows the government to develop crime prevention strategies and policing initiatives.

Victim surveys

  • They record peopleā€™s experience of crime over a specified period.

  • The crime survey for England and Wales asks people to document the crimes they have been a victim of in the past year.

  • In order to compile the figures, 50,000 household are randomly selected to take part in the survey and this has enabled the Office for National Statistics to produce crime figures based on a victim surveys since 1982. In 2009, a separate survey was introduced to record the experiences of younger people aged 10-15, and complete results are published on an annual basis.

Offender surveys

  • They involve individuals volunteering details of the number and types of crimes they have committed, These tend to target groups of likely offenders based on ā€˜riskā€™ factors such as previous convictions, age range, social background etc.

  • The offender Crime and Justice survey, which ran from 2003-2006 was the first nation self-report survey of its kind in England and Wales.

  • As well as measuring self-reported offending, the OCJS looked at indicators of repeat offending, trends in prevalence of offending, drug and alcohol abuse, and the role of co-offenders and the relationship between perpetrators and victims.

Evaluation

Official statistics

  • They have been criticized as unreliable in that they significantly underestimate the true extent of crime.

  • Some commentators suggest that so many crimes go unreported by victims or unrecorded by police that only around 25% of offences are included in the official figures

  • The other 75% make up what criminologists refer to as the dark figure of crimes, they may not appear in the official statistics for many response but one is police recording rules.

  • One study found that police in the borough or Nottinghamshire were more likely than other regions to record thefts of under Ā£10 and this explained an apparent spike of thefts in this area ā†’ this suggest that policing priorities may distort official figures.

Victim surveys

  • They are more likely to include details of crimes that were not reported to the police so they are thought to have a greater degree of accuracy than official statistics.

  • Evidence is 2006/7 statistics suggested a 2% decrease in crime from the previous year where the British Crime Survey showed a 3% increase.

  • Victim surveys rely on respondents having accurate recall of the crimes they have been a victim of.

  • Telescoping - may occur where a victim may misremember an event as happening in the past year when it did not and this may distort the figure.

Offender surveys

  • They provide insight into how many people are responsible for certain offences

  • Responses may unreliable, they may want to conceal some of the more serious crimes they have committed.

  • Certain types of crimes may be overrepresented whereas fraud is unlikely to be included.

Evaluation extra

The politics of measuring crime

Political parties have vested interest in using some measures rather than others when discussing rates of crime across the country, the political party in opposition will typically focus on measures that make the government look bad by suggesting that crime is increasing, whereas party in power will emphasis measures that show crime is falling.

Multidisciplinary approach

Each of the methods has issues in terms of reliability and validity of the data they produce. This means that crimes should be carefully scrutinise and interpreted with caution.

Researchers advocate a multidisciplinary approach when measuring crime, a combination of all available method provides the best insight into the true extent of offending.