measuring crime

• Socially constructed


  under reporting of non-crimes, such as a fear of being a snitch or not enough evidence

  Invisibility of crime start unreported such as white collar, crime, corporate crime, state, crime and domestic violence due to difficult for police to catch such as no petrol being there, hidden state paid the police to protect them and no witnesses

  Police practices such as systematic bias, that is selective law enforcement, where police infinite resources
• Cook


  police target, poor areas that breed crime, and avoid middle-class areas
• lack of reliability


  Croall- recording varies between different police forces

  Cuffing is police, don’t record the crime

  Coughing is police, encourage offenders to commit crimes
• police don’t record all known-crimes

  Moore, Chapman, Aiken- police act as filters such as a 2008, BSA 42% off, reported crimes were recorded
• Police don’t record, because

  Bribed

  Their own family may have committed it

  unserious crime

  lazy
• selective law-enforcement


  Box – police concentrate on the least powerful sections of society

  Cicourel– juvenile officer has typical offender in mind and middle-class parents skilled at negotiation
• Theory view on stats

  Functionalist, agree and see subcultures as typical offenders- Cohen, Hirschi

  Interaction is as useful and so don’t tell about real level of crime-Becker

  Marxist see as in favour of rich and working classes and lower classes are invisible- snider, milliband

  Realist, see it has some value as it sees the fears- lea & young

  Feminist say it under extent to which female seen as victim- connell, messerschmidt
• crime statistics


  Guided by police courts, and CJS, recorded annually, and published to short trend in lawbreaking

  Increased crime due to law change lack of money status

  Decrease crime due to decrease vehicle theft as increased safety such as alarms

  OCR say in 2004 and five there was 5.6 million crimes in England, England and Wales
• crime stats


  Irrational fear of crime due to media, publicising crime and creating moral panics, such as warnings on CCTV and ATMs

  This shows crime is socially constructed- durkheim, cicourel
• crime statistics


  Positive is that identifies rising, and decreasing trends, easily accessed, helps government, shape, law, policies, practical, saves, time and money- newburn says degree of acceptance that the OS don’t show trends

  Negative is that unreported crimes aren’t part of it such as the dark figure, not valid or reliable- cicourel, abbas, hall, becker, Morrison, crime starts or final product of process of deciding reporting
• victim survey


  Ask people which crimes the victims of, CSEW in England and Wales that measures crime and sees its representative and interviewed people in their own homes and did structured interviews and found online crimes occurred

  Also, victim crimes occurs to shoplifting and the wasn’t representative
• victim survey


  Young – fear of crime is rational unreal because males of more victims of crimes and the Islington survey found women or the increased victims as no reporting of sexual assault

  The reliability of victim service depends on the memory and honesty of the people
• victim survey


  Finds out crimes such as rape and sexual assault

  Islington crime survey found crime shaped and fear of crime at night increase
• self report studies


  Ask people which crimes they have committed

  Qualitative, –shaw Jack roller show which was an analog of the life history

  Quantitative – campbell gender., doubt
• self report studies


  Longitudinal see peers family

  Example: Edinburgh youth study short 4000 youth and sold gender differences of career which led to increase age criminal responsibility from 8 to 12 in Scotland

  Cambridge – Farrington found 411 working class meal risk factors

  Youth live – Graham and bowling, flood page et al
• official crime statistics, police


  police statistics that are quantitative secondary and positivists prefer
• self report studies


  Quantitative and questionnaires
• victim survey


  Quantitative large scale positively preferred due to structured interviews

  Qualitative and small scale and interpretivist preferred because unstructured interviews
• self report studies


  Positive is that it’s in-depth, reliable longitudinal and has a steady flow

  Negative is that it has decreased validity people can lie unethical due to consent