Police Recorded Crime

1.Police recorded crimes

2.Victim surveys

3.Self-report surveys

• The Official Crime Statistics (OCS) include statistics produced from police, court and prison records
• It also includes data collected from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)
• This is a victim survey which asks people about their experiences of crime.
• They are collated by the Home Office and published by the Office of National Statistics

• Easy to access
• Up to date (yearly) and show emerging trends
• Cover the whole population and go back many years – patterns and trends can be identified
• They are ethical – recorded and identified through legal means
• Provide ‘whole counts’, not estimates

• Doesn’t include undetected, unreported crime
• Doesn’t include unrecorded crimes
• These are known as the ‘Dark Figure of Crime’
• Don’t provide a complete picture of each crime
• Accuracy between areas may vary, e.g., if an area has a specific target to meet
• Changes in public perception may make certain crimes more noticed
• Pressure on police to meet crime reduction charges may lead to some crimes ‘disappearing from figures’

• Functionalists trust quantitative data as it is seen as reliable and representative. They believe there is a value consensus in society and would not question police motives.
• The New Right believe that laws are made to benefit society. They focus on explaining crime in the deprived sections of society (underclass).
• Left realists recognise that police figures are not perfect but shouldn’t be ignored. They suggest improving by using other methods, such as victim surveys.
• Some feminists accept the official picture about how men commit more crime. They look at high levels of social control applied to women.

• Marxists see police recorded crime figures as a tool to control the working class. They try to scare us and justify more policing.
• Interactionists agree to an extent with Marxists. They focus on the social construction of crime statistics and pay attention to labelling.
• Radical criminologists focus on the power of the police to label for political reasons. They challenge the overrepresentation of ethnic minority groups.
• Feminists focus on how female offenders are treated differently. They also argue that male crime against women is underrepresented.

• Police recorded crime figures are affected by the discretion and decisions made by the police.
• Some individual police officers may be corrupt or have their own reasoning for mis-recording individual crimes.
• Recent studies show evidence that suggests practices do compromise the accuracy of the statistics.
• Police are also influenced by the stereotype of the typical criminal.