Official crime statistics, victim surveys and self report studies and three ways to build up a picture of crime
Official statistics are drawn from records kept by the police and other official agencies and published by the Home Office annually
Sociologists use these statistics as a secondary source of data to obtain information on a range of crime-related issues eg. the number of offences recorded
Official statistics on a crime are a useful resource as long as they are used critically
official statistics provide a cheap and easily available resource
they can show change over time
they contain a large amount amount of information
the data can be combined with the results of victim surveys and self - report studies to estimate the 'real' rate of crime
Although statistics appear to be a straightforward measure of the real level of crime, they need to be treated with caution. Crime recorded by the police represents only a partial picture of the total amount of crime committed
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