defining and measuring crime

• crime


  any illegal act punishable by incarceration or any other punishment after consideration by a judge and jury during legal trial
• historical issues with defining crime 


  what was considered a crime at one point in time may not be considered a crime according to modern standards e.g smacking a child is no longer acceptable as attitudes towards discipline have changed
• cultural issues with defining crime 


  what is a crime in one culture may not be a crime according to another culture because societal attitudes/norms differ across cultures

  e.g having more than one wife is common and legal practice in some cultures
• official statistics 


  describes number of crimes reported to and recorded by the police which are then processed by home office annually
• victim surveys 


  peoples experiences of crimes. e.g CSEW 50,000 randomly selected households self report frequency and types of crimes committed against them in past year
• offender surveys


  targets randomly selected cohort of criminals to give details of frequency and types of crimes the committed across a time period
• a problem associated with official statistics ...


  it is susceptible to concealing the fact that 75% of crime goes unreported

  this may be due to the victim fearing revenge or feeling untrustworthy of the police

  suggests official statistics may be an inaccurate representation of crime
• a strength of victim surveys ...


  it has the advantage over official statistics

  this is because it is less likely to conceal the statistic of unreported crime due to its used of self report

  this is because the individual may feel less responsible for their actions of reporting rime
• a strength of offender surveys 


  they have been useful in preventing crime due to showing the patterns and risk factors of offending behaviour therefore this demonstrates a real-life application