DEFINING AND MEASURING CRIME

• What is a crime?

  behaviour that breaks laws and is punished by the legal system
• what is deviance?

  behaviour which goes against the norms, values and expectations of a social group or society
• what is social control?

  mechanisms within society that reinforce appropriate behaviour and reduce bad behaviour
• What is the dark figure of crime?


  the total crime committed, including crimes that are undetected
• What affects whether a person reports a crime?

  fear of criminal

  Guilt

  Gaps in witness

  Embarassment
• What is police recorded crime?

  incidents of crime that police write up in an official police report
• what are crime figures primarily based on?

  two sets of statistics

  crime survey for England and Wales and police recorded crime data
• what is the crime survey for England and Wales (CSEW)?

  structured verbal survey that is completed by around 50,000 adults ages 16-59 each year about their experience of being a victim of crime in the last 12 months
• what is the Crown Prosecution service (CPS)?

  organisation that decides whether an arrest is pursued to a prosecution. Analyse merits of a case, range of evidence and likelihood of a conviction. If a case has more than 50% chance then it will go to court
• Methodological facts of the CSEW

  annual survey of 50000 people

  selected by random sampling

  victimisation is capped to 5 a year per respondent

  fraud not included until 2015

  murder not included
• what is victimology?

  study of the rate of being a victim of crime
• self report study of crime

  way of measuring or studying crime where people are asked to talk about crimes that they have committed. Often produce useful data about anti-social behaviour and petty crime but rarely reveals much about serious crimes
• practical disadvantages of a self report study of crime

  May not answer

  Lie
• ethical disadvantages of a self report study of crime

  glorify crime

  could cause danger

  harm
• theoretical disadvantages of a self report study of crime

  withhold information

  not representative

  not reliable

  question quality is low
• what is positivist victimology?

  argues people contribute towards their own victimhood through certain characteristics or behaviour. Takes away responsibility from criminal. an open door isn’t invitation to rob someone.

  blames victims for putting temptation in front of a criminal
• What is critical victimology?

  Looks at patterns and characteristics of a group and how those features make victimhood more likely
• patterns of victimisation

  Working class most likely to be victims

  very young and very old

  women - domestic or sexual crime

  men - violent crime

  Mixed race most victimised group