Defining And Measuring Crime

• Problems In Defending Crime

  Historical issues in defining crime

  Definitions of crime change over time because attitudes change according to historical context e.g. smacking children, homosexuality
• Problems Defining Crime

  • Cultural issues in defining crime
  • Issues with punishment
  • Issues of age and intention
• Crime is culturally relative


  What is considered a crime in one culture may not be judged as such in another due to differing social attitudes
• Not all acts that break the law are punished but may still cause harm, e.g. breaches of contract
• The same behaviour can be seen as criminal in one case but not another based on the age of the offender and if the offender is of 'sound mind'
• The definition of crime is a social construction related to the dominant morals and values of a particular culture at a particular time
• Mesuring Crime

  1.Official statistics2.Victim surveys3.Offender surveys
• Official Statistics

  •These are government records of the total number of crimes reported to the police (or when the police observe or discover an offence) and recorded in the official figures.•They are published by the Home Office on an annual basis and are a useful ‘snapshot’ of the number of crimes occurring across the country and in specific regions.•They allow the government to develop crime prevention strategies and policing initiatives, as well as direct resources to those areas most in need.
• Victim Surveys

  •These record people’s experience of crime over a specific period.•It is a questionnaire that asks a random sample of 50,000 households (aged 16+; the sample comes from the Royal Mail’s list of addresses) which crimes have been committed against them over a fixed period of time (usually a year) and whether or not they reported them to the police.•In 2009, a separate survey was introduced for people aged 10-15.•Both are published on an annual basis.
• Offender Surveys

  •These are a self-report measure that involve individuals volunteering details of the number and types of crimes they have committed over a specific time period.•They tend to target groups of likely offenders based on ‘risk’ factors e.g. previous connections, age, social background etc.•They also look at 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.