Defining and measuring crime

• Define crime

  Crime refers to a behaviour that is seen as unlawful and is punished by the state, it is harmful to either an individual, group or society as a whole
• How does crime vary

  • From country to country
  • crimes can change over time
• What can be used to measure crime

  • Official statistics
  • victim surveys
  • offender surveys
• Explain official statistics

  • An annual report
  • the statistics are based off of an incidents reported to the police or any crimes that have been discovered by the police
• Explain victim surveys

  • The survey produces information based off of what crimes a sample of people say have been committed against them over a fixed period of time
  • sample of about 50,000 households are randomly selected from royal mails list of addresses
  • Each person is interviewed using a fixed set of questions which relate to general attitudes
• Explain offender surveys

  • The survey produces information about the extent of offending, drug use and anti social behaviour
  • the aim of the survey was to increase knowledge about young people and criminal behaviour by questioning offenders
• What is a strength of using official Statistics

  The statistics are able to be compared to discover trends in the data
• What is a limitation of using official statistics

  • This doesn’t represent all crimes as some go unreported
  • people may not be aware a crime has been committed against them
  • people may be scared of the stigma attached to a crime
  • people may believe that the police won’t take the crime seriously so don’t report it
• What is a strength of using victim surveys

  All groups of people are represented as it’s a random sample
• What are the limitations of using offender surveys

  • The offenders may downplay their involvement in the crime or their behaviour
  • self report surveys arent completely accurate
• What is a limitation of defining crime

  • There are cultural variants in the law
  • e.g crime of passion
  • in France, more lenient sentences are given out if it is evident that an offender acted out of a string and unplanned impulse
• What is a strength of defining crime

  • There are universal concepts