were selected randomly from a large sample of London households. The results showed
that most of the boys had committed an offence for which if they had been caught the would
have been liable for prosecution. 70% had stolen from a shop and 17% had stolen from
private premises. Instead of interview's self report studies are used, this is a questionnaire
that a person fills in about the crimes he/she has committed. They show the true level of
crime is higher than the reported level of crime.
Offender surveys are not used that widely now, instead victim surveys are carried out. The
most important method of this type of data collection is household surveys. An example of
this is the first British Crime Survey (BCS) which was carried out by Hough and Mayhew
in 1983. They selected 16, 000 households from the electoral register. Their aim was to
interview one person aged 16 or over from every household. Interviews took place and
interviewees answer questions about any crimes in which they had been the victim. Victim
surveys provide quite a reliable picture of the amount and types of crimes committed.
B) Discuss problems with using these methods
Although all these methods of collecting data on crime provide a valuable source of
information they do still have some drawbacks. The main drawback of police statistics is
that the police have control over what is recorded as a crime to appear in the official
statistics. A study carried out by Hood and Sparks (1970), showed that only two-thirds of
serious crimes that are reported to the police are recorded on their files. Hough and
Mayhew (1985), identified that a reported crime may be unreported due to a mistake or
lack of evidence available to charge someone. When an offence is committed an offender is
not necessarily always charged. In some cases the police may issue an informal caution,
therefore this does not appear in the official statistics. Even though crimes are reported the
victim may drop the charges later on, the crime then becomes a ‘no crime. A reported
crime does not mean a recorded crime. It was discovered that ‘no crime’ cases account for
18-28% of initially recorded crimes (Sparks et al, 1977). This is one of the reasons for
distorted figures in the official statistics. Also the media highlights the fact that there has been
an increase of crime in a certain area or of a criminal group, but it is usually because the
police have cracked down on them, this increases the amount of those types of crimes
recorded as statistics. Victims of crimes have a major effect on the crime statistics as they
are selective in the types of crimes they report. E.g. there was a high rate of reporting of
theft of motor vehicles and a low rate of reporting of theft in a dwelling as if in a home the
offender maybe a guest in their home. Not everyone realises that some acts are considered
to be criminal acts, this means a lot of crimes go unreported, e.g. physical violence may not
be considered an assault but more like bullying. A lot of victims do not like involving the
police if they have a good reputation in the community, therefore they prefer to deal with the
matter personally. In acts of some homosexual behaviour, prostitution and drug dealing,
‘willing victims’ are involved. But not all crimes have a victim therefor there may not be
someone to report the crime e.g. vandalism of a public telephone box.
The disadvantage of offender surveys is that the truth is not always told or if someone is
asked who knows the offender they may not be giving the correct information. Some
offenders may be proud of the crime they have committed or did it to seek attention so
theses offenders will exaggerate the crime. Whereas the offenders who feel the opposite will
hide details and crimes committed. Research has shown that the age, sex, socio-economic
status and race of the offender effects the quality of crime reporting. This is because a
young, male of low status may not recognise his actions could be considered as a crime as
he may not be aware of the law. Race also has an effect as some ethnic minorities may not
know the laws of the UK. Some reports are carried out in schools but the problem is that
the students who commit the crimes may be truant or absent so they are not included in the
report. To overcome these problems of reliability, the report could be checked against the
police’s records of crimes. This was done by Blackmore (1974) and he found high levels
of agreement.
Victim surveys are a preference to offender surveys, yet they still have some problems. The
figures produced from these surveys underestimate the amount of crime as its main focus is
on offences against the person and property. So it ignores the area of crimes such as fraud.
There is a problem of respondent accuracy which also occurs in offender surveys. Whether
the interview is carried out face to face or over the telephone effects the interviewees'
responses. This is because the interviewee may not feel comfortable with the interviewer, so
the interviewer needs to form a rapport between him and the interviewee to help the
interviewee open up more. The characteristics of the interviewer such as their age and sex
have an important effect as a woman may not feel comfortable talking to an old man about
her experiences of being raped. Sparks et al (1977) found the amount of crimes reported
were related to the respondent’s educational achievement.
Although the three main agents of collecting data on crime have their problems especially
with reliability, they still do provide a lot of insight and information about crimes. Offender
and victim surveys show overall that the figures gained from these surveys are a lot higher
than what actually appears in the official statistics. The figures that the crime surveys
produce have potential to shape theories of crime and also they influence political and social
policies on managing and controlling crime.
MANDEEP .K. POONIA