This is what I used to achieve full marks on the written part of Unit 1! It has been tweaked many times after the use of feedback from my whole Social Sciences Department to become perfect. This is the final draft of my write-up that I used for the controlled assessment and this resource covers AC1...
Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) was created for the main purpose of learning
more about the public. Specifically, how the public perceives what a crime is and the victims'
experience that they’ve had as well as trying to understand them. As well as the reported
crime stats, the government also want to learn insights about the unreported crime and
possible reasons why these crimes go unrecorded as they delve into the ‘dark figures’ of
crime. However, the Home Office stats - Police recorded have a main purpose to assist law
enforcement agencies in documenting and managing reported crimes so that they can
maintain the public safety.
The reliability of CSEW is relatively high as there is a standardised method where the same
questions are asked consistently and can be compared to the results of past survey periods.
Another thing to take into account is the rigorous training that the survey administrators will
be put under so that they are able to make the data collection more consistent. Some people
can question the reliability of CSEW as it bases off their results on if the public are honest
and can recall what they’ve done (ie if they have committed a crime or not before). With this
taken into account, results may vary and be inaccurate for this and also cultural reasons as
some may be convinced that what they are doing is legal, however they could be against the
UK’s laws which they don’t understand are illegal, for example things like FGM. If a female is
reporting a sexual assault crime, they might feel insecure and uncomfortable disclosing
information about this to a male interviewer instead of a female interviewer which can lead to
certain crimes or only parts of a crime being uncovered rather than the full story. The
reliability of the Home Office stats - Police recorded, there is a standard procedure that
occurs where law enforcers will document and record reported crimes which will enhance
the consistency. However, crime tends to go underreported to the police and will affect the
reliability as these crimes will not be reflected in the official statistics, creating a false sense
of safety if the rates of certain crimes are low, like domestic abuse in households.
The vailidity of CSEW can vary and is dependent on the public. Most of them will be more
vulnerable with their answer as it is anonymous and won’t be chased up unless necessary
and can uncover many untold crimes that some are just too scared to speak out and report.
If an individual does share their perceptions and experiences of crime, some may be
influenced to say what they think is a societal norm answer rather than what actually
happened or what they actually believe. It may not truly represent the population as most
may not be willing to complete the survey. Even if they are willing to do the survey, some
may forget what crimes that they have committed, some may not know what they have done
are considered a crime or some may not know that they have been a victim to a certain
complicated crime. On the other hand, the validity of official police records can be seen as
innacurate. Using legal definitions for crimes are great on paper but they have their
limitations in the real world as most situations contain complicated thinking and decisions as
most of it might be legal but they could have overstepped a tiny bit into illegal activities.
Some laws are outdated and the public may perceive a crime as a norm in society, such as
sleeping rough. Most crimes will just go unreported as it occurs so often on the streets and
the police aren’t able to record every single crime that happens in the country simultaneously
and will have pressure to take care of the bigger cases like murder before they treat small
petty crimes like pickpocketing or stealing from corner shops.
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