Forensic psychology - defining and measuring crime
- Created by: luv4dob
- Created on: 05-02-18 12:44
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- Defining and measuring crime
- Problems in defining crime
- Cultural issues: laws aren't the same in every country
- Historical issues: laws change over time
- Ways of measuring crime
- Official statistics: government records of number of crimes reported and recorded
- Weakness: 'dark figure' of crimes unreported by victims or unrecorded by police, some commentators suggest only 25% of crimes are recorded
- Victim surveys
- Strength: Greater accuracy than official stats (less dark figure).
- Weakness: victim may misremember events that happened in the past and recall might not be accurate
- Offender surveys: tend to target groups of 'likely offenders'
- Strength: provides insight into how many people were involved in a crime
- Weakness : likely to be less reliable bc offenders may want to hide their previous crimes (even though the surveys are confidential) or want to exaggerate their crimes bc of ego
- Weakness: targeted nature of surveys means that some crimes (such as burglary) are over-represented
- Weakness: political parties may misinterpret stats to help them gain votes
- Official statistics: government records of number of crimes reported and recorded
- Problems in defining crime
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