Official statistics

• Official crime statistics are any data produced or collected by the government. They are collated by the Home Office and published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS.) They include police, court, and prison statistics, and the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW.)
• Functionalists and Right Realists accept OCS as a clear reflection.

  • Geographically representative as supplied by 45 forces and British Transport Police
  • Most people know 999 so data can be generalised despite differences in age, class, gender, and ethnicity.
  • High reliability due to the standardised high levels of training and operationalising, ensuring consistency.
  • Police represent everyone due to value consensus so what they record is social fact so is high in validity
  • Easy to access, few ethical worries due to anonymity
• Interactionalists reject OCS as they reflect a narrow version of reality

  • Lack validity as they don't show the dark figure of crime
  • Reflect the labelling process rather than the actual crime
  • Many crimes not reported- victim was unaware, involved, fear retaliation, lack faith in police, embarrassed, or lack power.
  • Trivial crimes aren't reported- 1 in 5 reports are not recorded by police (HM Inspectorate of Constabulary 2014)
• Cicourel

  Police officers are more likely to arrest and charge working class youth than middle class youth, despite doing the same amount of crime
• Marxists reject OCS

  • Bourgeoisie selectively enforce the law against less powerful groups which reflect the interest of the ruling class - Gordon
  • Self fulfilling prophecy due to police stereotypes of criminals which lowers validity - Waddington
• CSEW advantages according to positivists

  • Highly representative due to a nationally representative sample of 35,000 adults and 3,000 children. 75% response rate.
  • High reliability due to the structured interview and operationalised terms
  • High validity as they are in their own homes
  • Special measures for domestic abuse - asked to compete in privacy
  • Victim survey shows dark figure of crime
• CSEW disadvantages

  • Doesn't reflect white collar or corporate crime, reinforcing the narrative that crime is a working class issue - Snider (Marxist)
  • People may be unaware they are victims, feel embarrassed, fail to remember, or have an unreliable memories of the event due to the trauma.
  • Doesn't reveal victimless crimes
  • Low response rate lower representativeness and generalisability