Defining and measuring crime

• What is a crime?

  Any act that breaks the law and warrants some form of punishment.
• what are the problems in defining crime?

  historical and cultural
• What are the three ways of measuring crime?

  Official stats, victim surveys and offender surveys
• what are official stats?

  This describes the number of crimes reported to and recorded by the police. However, many crimes go unreported by victims. Only around 25% of offences are including in the official figures.
• official stats research 


  Farrington and Dowds : they found that the borough of Nottingham was more likely than other regions to record thefts under $10, which explained the apparent spike of thefts in that area.
• what are victim surveys?


  this records the people’s experience of crime over a period of time. more than 50,000 households are randomly selected to take part in a survey. they rely on accurate recall.
• what can victim surveys lead to?

  telescoping. this is when a victim may remember an event as happening in the past year when it in fact did not.
• offender surveys definition?

  Involves the individual volunteering details of the number and types of crimes they have committed.
• what is the risk of offender surveys?

  offenders may want to conceal some of their crimes or they exaggerate the number for social desirability.
• what is the politics of measuring crime?

  some political parties have an interest in using some measures over others when discussing rates of crime across the country.
• What are the cultural issues?

  What is considered a crime in one culture may not be judged as such in another. Eg. In the UK, having more than one wife is the crime of bigamy. However, this is not a crime in cultures where polygamy is practised. In 2014, forced marriage was made illegal in the UK.
• what are the historical issues?

  the definitions of crime change over time. eg. a parents right to smack their child was outlawed in 2004 with the introduction of the Children’s act.
• What is the multidisciplinary approach?

  All three of the methods have reliability and validity issues with the data they produce. Therefore, a combination of all measures provides the best insight into the true extent of offending.