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Unit 1 Criminology essay 4 Evaluate the effectiveness of two statistical sources of information on crime
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Unit 1 Criminology essay 4Evaluate the effectiveness of two statistical sources of information on crime
Crime statistics are used in crime to estimate levels and trends, assess its costs to and impacts on
society, and inform law enforcement approaches to prevent it. Creating a framework for defining and
thinking about crime, and leads to the law enforcement acting upon the most common patterns of
crime. There are two UK crime statistics sources: Home office statistics, and crime survey for England
and Wales.
Home Office Statistics
There’re 43 regional police forces in the UK. Every month these police forces report to the Home
office the number of crimes they have recorded in their area, through crime open data tables. These
statistics are then sent to the office for National statistics who publish final statistics for the whole
country. Crimes that are recorded can be notable offences (crimes that could be tried by a jury), and
less serious crimes tried by a magistrate (assault without injury).
Reliability refers to whether a method for collecting information gives the same result, if used by a
different person. If it is reliable, when repeated by someone else they will get the same result. Police
recorded crime statistics are reliable, because different officers and different police forces classifying
a given incident, are expected to follow the same procedures. However, police recorded crime
statistics may not be reliable, as different officers may classify the same incident differently. For
example: If a victim suffered a few minor scratches in an attack, one officer may classify it as an
assault without injury; however a different officer may decide that it is an assault with injury.
Validity is the accuracy of measurement of a concept, in a quantitative study, (is the instrument
measuring what it’s supposed to measure). Police recorded crime statistics aren’t valid, because the
number of crimes are underestimated due to unreported and unrecorded crime. For example: the
police recorded over 45,000 rapes in 2016-17, which underestimates the true number, as victims don’t
report the offence and the police may fail to report it.
There are six main reasons why the victim may not report a crime: If a stolen item was of low value; if
the victim has no faith in the police; if the victim sees them as incompetent and unhelpful; victim may
feel embarrassed or ashamed; victim may fear the reprisals from the offender, they may prefer to deal
with it themselves; they may fear getting in trouble themselves.
There are seven main reasons why the police may not record a crime: They may not believe the
victims story; they may not have enough evidence to secure a conviction; victim may refuse to press
charges; incident may not have been a crime; they may regard the crime as trivial or a waste of time
and resources; the particular crime may not be a priority; they might not want to record a crime they
know they can’t solve (increasing their clear up date).
Ethics concerning research on crime includes issues like: whether the offender/ victim’s right to
privacy and anonymity are protected. Because individual offenders and victims aren’t identifiable from
home office statistics as there is only the overall numbers of offences, home office statistics are
ethical and no-one's privacy is breached. They present data impartially, objectively and free from
political and commercial influences.
Police statistics fail to give a true picture of crime, because they only tell us about crimes, they don’t
help understanding other issues, (fear of crime). However, they can also be useful as a measure of
police activity, as they tell us about the police’s activities and priorities. Like forming special squads to
target knife crime and racially motivated violence is likely to lead them to more arrests for these
offences. And they’re a useful indicator of crime trends. If the number of recorded knife crimes
increases yearly, this may indicate a real change going on in society. Police statistics are a good
measure for crimes that we’re confident that most of the crimes do get reported and recorded
(homocides).
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