Official Crime Statistics

• Definition


  Crime statistics drawn from the records kept by police and other official agencies. They are published every 6 months by the home office. Collected since 1857
• Strengths


  + Useful for understanding macro crime patterns

  + Good for comparison to find trends

  + Measure police efficiency

  + Show where police should concentrate resources

  + Provide the public with information

  + Basis for sociologists to explain crime

  + Reveal police assumptions and stereotyping
• Weaknesses


  - Not all crimes are reported, not all are witnessed and not all are recorded.

  - Police interpretation and bias (cuffing (crimes removed from statistics later on), coughing (offender encouraged to admit a number of offences to only be charged for one), skewing(putting resources into areas measured by performance indicators))

  - Does not show dark figure of crime