This document is for anyone in year 12 - criminology unit 1 ac 1.6 (EXAM BOARD - WJEC). This clearly describes ways in which statistics on crime are collected, ethics and strengths and limitations.
AC1.6 Evaluate the methods of collecting statistics on crime
Introduction:
To collect statistics on crime there are two ways:
1. Police recorded statistics (Official Statistics) - statistics which are formed by police
recording a crime. Most of their statistics come in the form of detailed quantitative data.
2. Crime Survey for England and Wales (formerly known as the British Crime Survey) – this
is a systematic victim study that asks about 50,000 people ages 16 and over and children
from 10-15 (from 2009 onwards) that live in private households about the crimes they
have experienced in the past year. They allow the victims to answer the questions
anonymously and also allows them to state their opinion about the police.
Reliability:
The Official Statistics are fairly reliable. Firstly, they are cheap to collect, readily available,
and also provides detail quantitative data to the public. The statistics, as they are mostly
quantitative, they draw out patterns and trends and can be used to make predictions in the
rise or fall on the number of crimes. They also give the scarcity of resources and the
expenses of funding the research. Furthermore, they can be very useful as they are recorded
by the police who knows what crimes should be reported and are fairly accurate as the
police should record the crimes as the victim reports it.
the statistics from Crime Survey for England and Wales could be more reliable than the
Official Statistics as they allow every victim out of the 50,000 that are being asked to report
and record their crimes. Police are pressured into not reporting a crime which means that
Official statistics aren’t always that reliable, however, Crime Survey records every crime that
the victims report and therefore shows more ‘dark figures of crime’. They also allow the
victims to give qualitative data which is very detailed and can cover a larger area of crimes.
Validity:
The Official Statistics are not so valid. It is found that 20% of police is pressured into not
recording crime to lower the number of crimes recorded. This leads to false data. It is said
that 800,000 crimes have been unreported and within that large number 25% of them were
sexual assaults and 800,000 crimes is 19% of all crime recorded. Also, crimes are being taken
off too which can lead to crimes being unknown of, also called ‘no-criming’ of 200 rape
cases.
The Crime Survey is more valid than the Official Statistics. That is because all crimes reported
are also recorded onto the system. However, people can lie on the surveys about their
encounters and could also exaggerate what happened. That makes it less valid. If the
participants were harmed or distressed as a result of giving the data that will make the data
invalid.
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