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Unit 1 criminology- 1.6 Evaluate the methods of collecting statistics about crime
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This is a perfect answer to AC 1.6, for year 12 Criminology students.
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1.6- Evaluate methods of collecting statistics about crimeHome office statistics
One way of collecting crime statistics in the uk is the home office statistics. This is
police recorded crime, where every month the 43 regional police forces in the uk
have to send their figures to the home office. These figures are eventually sent to the
office for national statistics who create a database for the whole country. These
statistics cover all crime that is recorded, no matter how big or small the offence.
One purpose of home office statistics is, it can be an indicator of crime trends, for
example if knife crime has gone up in the past year, the police now know they have
to do something. For example they may patrol or set up more cameras in the areas
where knife crime rates are high.
When data is published it should be reliable, valid and ethical. Reliable data is if
someone else doing the same research would get the same result. Home office
statistics are reliable to some extent as different police forces would be expected to
follow the same procedures. However, it can lack reliability as some officers may
classify the same incident as different. For example, if a victim had a minor injury
such as a bruise from an attack, a certain officer may count this as an assault and
another won't.
Validity is where the data must truly be measuring what it sets out to measure, it
should include a balanced representation of geographical areas. Home office
statistics are valid to some extent, the police records are clear about what they are
measuring. However, it does not include the dark figure of crime. Police recorded
crime excludes the dark figure of crime, this where crime goes unreported and
unrecorded. Some crimes such as theft may go unreported as the items that get
stolen are usually low value, therefore the public don't see the point in reporting it.
Another reason is you may have no faith in the police, you may seem them as
unhelpful. Therefore you won't bother to call and may even try to deal with the
situation yourself. Also the police may not record crimes as they might not believe a
victims story for example, with “honour” crimes the police may not believe that the
family is trying to kill another family member reporting it. Using an iceberg analogy to
describe the dark figure of crime, when an iceberg is floating in the ocean, only the
tip is visible. The rest of the iceberg is invisible, this is the unwitnessed, unrecorded
and reported crimes that do not show up on home office statistics. Therefore can
also lack validity as you may not always get a true picture of what's going on.
Ethics refers to issues of morality, or right and wrong. Ethical research should
include the victims' right to privacy and anonymity. Home office statistics is written in
quantitative. This is numerical data for example, numbers instead of words.
Therefore, there is no ethical issue of breaching an individual's privacy. For example
the victims of rape are not identified from home office statistics, only the total
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