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MEASURING CRIME (Official statistics (The Office for National Statistics…
MEASURING CRIME
Official statistics
The Office for National Statistics is responsible for collecting a wide range of quantitative data on varying areas of interest.
It hold the information on current crime surveys carried out on victims as well as those recorded by the police.
Some of the areas covered include criminal damage, property crime, drug crime as well as physical and sexual crime.
Evaluation: Unreliable because they underestimate the true extent of crime and some crimes are unreported therefore it lacks true representation how much crime has happened.
Evaluation: Also police priorities may distort official figures, e.g in Nottinghamshire, police are more likely than other regions to record theft crimes under £10 which reflects the sudden spike of theft crimes in this region.
Evaluation: Good for identifying trend.
Evaluation: Walker et al found that only 42% of crimes were reported to the police. There's unaccounted information as some people don't report the crimes.
Victim Surveys
One of the largest victim surveys carried out in the UK is the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), which was previously known as the British Crime Survey and can be found online.
It's a face-to-face survey which collects data from 50,000 households in the UK (2016/17), who are selected at random through a 'postcode lottery'. This means that not all households will be interviewed and also participants have the right to withdraw or to refuse to be interviewed.
Adults and children are questioned on their experiences of crime and questions are followed up to obtain their attitudes on crime and the police, as well as to help identify those groups most at risk.
Evaluation: They have a greater degree of accuracy because victims are more likely to include the details of the crime more than the police reports.
Evaluation: Victims may not have accurate recall of what happened so they may put down what they think happened which can lead to unreliable information.
Evaluation: Helps to get information on unreported crimes.
Evaluation: Depends on the honesty and accuracy of the answers provided and you can only report 5 crimes - leads to an underestimate
Evaluation: Random sampling doesn't account for those in high-risk categories such as the homeless.
Offender Surveys
These surveys are designed to take information from offenders, often those in prison, in order to develop an understanding of the behaviour and attitudes of offenders.
The Offending Crime and Justice Survey (OCJS) was a longitudinal study carried out between 2003 and 2006. It took data from a variety of areas including self-reported offending, indicators of recidivism (repeat offending) and the types of offences committed.
By interviewing a range of young offenders looking back over the previous years, they identified specific trends in anti-social behaviour, namely a peak between the ages of 14 and 16, and the relationship between offending behaviour and the use of drugs and/or alcohol. This kind of data helps researchers to identify potential risk factors and develop ways to prevent a person from becoming an offender, for example, through treatment programmes targeted at certain age groups.
Evaluation: Provides and insight of how many people have committed a crime. However, some offenders may not want to reveal their serious crimes.
Evaluation: Social desirability bias may occur, depends on the honesty and accuracy of answers
Evaluation: Hales et al (2007) reported that participants of the crime and justice survey said they were honest in their answers.
Introduction
It's important to consider the frequency of criminal activity across the country, so that one can observe if crime levels change over time or where they appear to happen the most.
There are three mains ways that crime is measured by forensic psychologists and these include both quantitative and quantitative measures. These are: official statistics, victim surveys and offender surveys.