Topic 2 -measuring crime

• Social distribution of crime, deviance, and victimisation refers to the social characteristics of offenders and victims such as social class, gender, ethnicity, and age.
• Typical victim and criminal according to Official Statistics: working class, male, young, disproportionately likely to be black.
• Significant decline in crime: CSEW shows 12 million offences in 2004, compared to 6 million in 2019.
• Three ways to measure crime

  1. Official crime statistics
  2. Victim studies - used by CSEW
  3. Self report studies
• In conclusion, it may be best to use methodological pluralism when measuring crime since SRS, OCS and victim surveys offer a broader picture than one method alone.