Describe and evaluate ways of measuring crime (16)

Official statistics are government records of all recorded crime in the previous year, based upon police reports. They are published by the Home Office annually. Official statistics lack validity because not all crimes are reported or reported by the police. They may also lack reliability as there are differences between police forces about which crimes are recorded. For example, some police forces do not record theft if the value is less than £10. As well as this, Official statistics only count the number of criminall acts, rather than the number of criminals, so the overall picture might be misleading. It could be that relatively few criminals are responsible for the majority of crime in an area.

Victim surveys, such as the 'Crime Survery for England and Wales', selects 50,000 households randomly and asks them to document any crimes they have been a victim of in the past year. However, it is easy for the respondents to get years mixed up. They may report a crime…