Official Crime Statistics

OCS are a secondary document source which are mainly based on figures from the police and courts. They are published by the home office (Government)

Favoured by positivists 

• Offer the opportunity to identify crimes over time
• Provide useful information on the social makeuo (characteristics) of the offenders 
• The statistics can be used to generate and test sociological explanations of crime
• They can help the government shape and evaluate their policies on law and order
• They are easilly accessible and constantly up to date

• Dissapproved by interactionalists due to the validity and reliability of OCS; they argue OCS vastly underestimate crime and therefore only show the tip of the iceberg
• Interactionalists argue that statistics are socially constructed
• The BCS shows that the public don't always report crimes- in 2008 only 42% of crimes were reported
• OCS underestimate white collar crime & cybercrime. White collar crimes are usually committed by middle class whites - Langan
• The relative invisibility of white collar crime is a problem as OCS will underestimate MC crime
• The 2008 BCS estimated only 75% of crime is recorded by the police
• Sociologists have argued that the police are more likely to concentrate on offenders from the least powerful sections of society. Home office research shows blacks are 8X more likely to be stopped and searched than whites

Left realists recognise OCS have limitations, however they do not dismiss them as interactionalists tend to do. Instead they argue that they show basic reality of crime and they can be useful if supplimented with other quantative measures such as local victim surveys