Official Crime Statistics

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  • Created by: bekoko
  • Created on: 17-12-15 12:03

Measuring Crime: Official Crime Statistics

Advantages

  • Easy and cheap to access, little effort is needed on behalf of the sociologists
  • Contemporary data
  • Collected in a standardised, systematic, scientific way
  • Reliable as can be easily checked and verified
  • Allows for comparisons between groups
  • Few ethical issues as no direct contact with criminals
  • Sociologists not put in danger

Disadvantages

  • Does not show complete picture as doesn't break down statistics (e.g. no statistics regarding socio-economic background of criminals)
  • Open to political abuse, parties pick best figures to support their argument
  • OCS are socially constructed as society decides what is criminal so that's what is recorded
  • Unable to infer human stories underpinning crimes/don't know reasons why
  • May be based on operational definitions (clear understanding of what is being measured) sociologists don't agree with
  • Police may engage in administrative practices which result in statistics that are partial in their picture of crime (e.g. coughing and cuffing)
  • Counting rules used by police to categorise crimes change overtime so its hard to draw comparisons of crimes between particular time periods

Evaluation

The OCS are our main source of information about crime, e.g. functionalists, whereas subculturalist sociologists attempt to explain why the working class and young people are more criminally minded just because the statistics say they are. On the one hand whilst research based on the OCS can be considered reliable because they can be easily checked and verified, the information within the OCS may not necessarily be 100% reliable because police administrative practices, such as coughing and cuffing, could be distorting the image of crime being created.

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