The final major use of the official statistics is in interoperating crime and the trends in crime by criminologists. They allow criminologists to see how crime is changing and migrating in modern society.
The official statistic relies on three key stages, discovery, reporting, and recording. Discovery is talking about weather crimes are found out, for example drug abuse has no victims to report the crime so is only discovered when it becomes a major social issue in an area. The second stage is reporting, this is where the crime is reported to the police. The final stage is recording, though this stage seams simple it is the stage with the most influence over the British Crime Statistics (BSC). “It was estimated that only 60 per cent of the type of offences covered by the BCS and apparently reported to the police were recorded by them (Mayhew et al., 1994).” (J.Moynihan. Understanding crime data: Haunted by the dark figure.). This is due to the way the BCS are recorded crimes have to fit specific guidelines to be reported. They are also effected by police enforcement policies e.g. if one area has a crack down on drugs and there are a large per cent age of convictions that showed up on the BCS then that area would look like it had a drug problem, which it wouldn’t compared to anywhere else it just has stricter drugs control.
Criminologist get a much broader more accurate view of the criminal situation than most, this is because the BCS are not the only thing that they use to asses the criminal activity in Britain. They also use Self-report studies and victimisation studies, these combined with the BCS give a much more accurate view of the dark figure. The dark figure is a phrase used to describe crimes that do not show up in the official statistics because they failed to pass through one of the three stages that crimes need to go through to be in the official statistics. For example some one caught in position of a small quantity of cannabis may only get a warning and so would never show up in the official statistics.
Self-report studies are where criminologists ask people directly about their involvement in criminal activity through questionnaires etc. These are a way of finding those people involved in crime who where not in the BCS. This type of report is good for confessions to lesser crimes, but generally people do not admit to involvement in violent/unacceptable crimes (e.g. those crimes which truly out rage society), these types of studies also miss out corporate and governmental crimes. Also this type of study is often carried out during the evening, when younger people etc are more likely to be out. This is important to remember when assessing the usefulness of these studies, as they are likely missing out young people who are more likely to be involved in certain criminal activities e.g. drug abuse. These studies are very useful in illuminating sum, but not all, of the dark figure.
Victimisation studies are questionnaires sent out to the population trying to target those people who have been a victim of crime but not shown up in the official statistics because they where failed to be reported. The sample is proportionally representative of the population. These once again wish to quantify the dark figure, aiming to pick upon unreported crime.
Both of these are useful to help illuminate what the official statistics missing out how ever many criminologists feel that they are enough and that they only illuminate the tip of the ice burg. Britain is compared to an ice burg in terms of crime; we only have an idea of the peak that we can see, through the BCS, victimisation sties, and self-report studies, however the truth is we can’t see how deep under the water the ice burg spreads. “Self report studies and victimisation surveys concentrate upon their own universe of crimes; self-report studies are good at counting offenders of a “trivial nature”, while victimisation surveys are suited to colle3cting data on “ordinary “ offences.” (J.Moynihan. Understanding crime data: Haunted by the dark figure.).
So why do criminologist turn to these other studies? Well the BCS are unreliable as well. They rely on the reporting of crimes, which as I have discussed my not always be what happens in a criminal incident. The victim may not report the crime or the police may not have enough evidence for anything to take place e.g. unreliable victim or the act was one that couldn’t be proved, in this case no report is made. The officer may just issue a caution; in this case no report is made. There are also changes in the way in which the official statistics are reported. Changes in the classification of crimes can also cause problems, if information comes to light that changes the nature of the case the police wont change the initial classification unless it becomes homicide or a “no crime” e.g. kidnap victim turns up after taking a sudden holiday etc. Changes in legislation can also affect the data e.g. when a act is passed that changes the penalties of a crime it must be noted other wise the official statistics would show increased sentencing for a crime which may look high when the figure is really just had its minimum penalties increased.
Now returning to the dark figure, who is it that makes up the dark figure? Sutherland suggested that the dark figure was comprised of white-collar crime; these are crime which take place in the work place e.g. embezzlement. These crimes are dwelt with in a very different way to the conventional “crime”, mostly this type of crime is dwelt with in the civil courts, and standard penalties are often not used. Respectable members of society commit these types of crimes, this type of crime is very often undetected by the police and when it is the perpetrators are treated with less severity. This makes the crimes look some how less important this stigma is often emphasised by the lack of prison sentences handed out for crimes of this nature. White-collar crime is left out of the official statistics.
On the other hand Otto Pollak suggested that the dark figure was not comprised of white-collar crime but female offenders. Pollak said that women where less likely to be caught, and if caught then they where less likely to be reported, and if reported he said that women where dwelt with more leniently than men. His premise rested around 2 main things, the first being a women’s ability to fake or conceal their true intentions etc he specifically sited sexual arousal. The second was that men had a bias towards treating women more easily because of the social stereotype of women.
Both have merit but neither seems wholly accurate the dark figure isn’t going to be a specific group of unidentified criminals.
So how useful are the official statistics? Well on their own they have only specific use such as helping legislation. However they can be put to much better use when combined with various sources of other data as mentioned above. Though even then we have no idea of the dark figure which, due to the way in which the BCS are recorded and reported we do not see all crimes. There is very little way that this dark figure can be uncovered through the official statistics. Though they could be improved to include more crimes and handle the classification and recording of reports more accurately the official statistics are still useful.
J.Moynihan. Understanding crime data: Haunted by the dark figure. Open university press. 1996.
