Defining and measuring crime -A-Level Psychology

Crime-any act that breaks the law where the consequence of conviction by a court is punishment e.g. imprisonment.

Problems in defining crime:

Cultural issues in defining crime-what is considered a crime in one culture may not be judged as such in another.

Historical issues-definitions of crime change over time e.g in 2004 a parent’s right to smack their child was outlawed.

Ways of measuring crime:

Official statistics

-are government records of the total number of crimes reported and recorded in the official figures

-published by the home office on an annual basis

-give an insight into the number of crimes occurring across the country and in specific regions

-crime prevention strategies and policing initiatives can be developed to areas most in need

Victim surveys

–record people’s experience of crime over a specific period.

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

-50000 households are randomly selected to take part in the survey.This has enabled the office for national statistics to produce crime figures.

Offender surveys

-involve individuals volunteering details of the number and types of crimes they have committed.

-these tend to target groups of likely offenders based on risk factors such as previous convictions,age range and social background.

-the offender crime and justice survey which ran from 2003-2006 ,was a self -report survey.It measured self reported offending and indicators of repeat offending,trends in the prevalence of offending,drug and alcohol use,the role of co-offenders and the relationship between perpetrators and victims.

Evaluation:

Official statistics-unreliable as they significantly underestimate the true extent of crime as some crimes go unreported by victims or unrecorded by police.25% of offences are included in official figures.The other 75% is referred to as the dark figure of crime,that do not appear in the official statistics for many reasons e.g.variations in police recording rules.A study conducted by Farrington and Dowds 1985 found that that police in Nottinghamshire were more likely than other regions to record thefts of under £10 and this explained an apparent spike of thefts in the area.This suggests that policing priorities may distort official figures.

Victim surveys-are more likely to include details of crimes that were not reported to police so may be more accurate than official statistics.In 2006/2007 official statistics suggested a 2% decrease in crime from the previous year whereas the British crime survey showed a 3% increase.Telescoping may occur where a victim may misremember an event as happening in the past year when it did not and this may distort figures.
Offender surveys-provide insight into how many people are responsible for certain offences.Although confidentiality in offender surveys is assures,responses may be unreliable.The targeted nature of the survey means that certain types of crime are overrepresented ,whereas middle class offences such as corporate crime and fraud are unlikely to be included.