Even when a crime is reported to the police it may not appear on the statistic. The officer may think of it as too trivial or there may be insufficient evidence for a prosecution. Evidence suggests that forty per-cent of crime is not recorded to the police, although this figure may have risen due to the law introduced in 2002 to ensure all crime is recorded.
Another reason why crime statistics may be inaccurate could be due to the policing itself. When certain crimes are highlighted and cracked down on by the police, it is far more likely that a higher number of these types of crimes will be found and reported, for example in the case of a drink-driving crack down. Likewise more police in certain areas that maybe troublesome anyway, can lead to a higher crime rate as more crime is discovered. Changes in legislation may also have an effect. For example in 1977 crimes of less than twenty-pounds or less were required to be investigated, therefore rising the crime rate by seven-percent. Likewise the formal cautioning of young people in the 1970s also made the crime rate increase.
Problems also lie in who interprets the data and what is the purpose of the production. Statistics can be used to make the government look good, to see how successful a police force is and used by the media to create ‘moral panics’. An example of a ‘moral panic’ was in the case of mugging; the media highlighted this supposed crime, leading to more suspicion and awareness of it, even though it wasn’t even a crime in terms of the law.
Evidence that crime statistic are flawed come from various other surveys that have been carried out to examine the full picture of crime in Britain. The British Crime Survey was a household survey that asked the general public to give information on any crime they were aware of, regardless how trivial it seemed. The survey found that forty percent of those who did not report the crime did not do so because they thought the act too trivial, thirty-three percent said they thought the police would be unable to help and eleven percent said the crime was a private matter. There had been a sixty seven percent increase in crime according to the general statistics, but only fifty-seven according to the survey, providing evidence of how official crime statistics are inaccurate. The British Crime Survey shows a different level of crime to the official statistics, most likely because he looks at the dark-figure of crime.
Official statistic also shows what seems to be a very biased picture of crime, with offenders seemingly to be young, male, black, poorly educated and with a disturbed childhood. Self-reporting studies also give information on crimes that are undercover, using mainly qualative research methods such as questionnaires and interviews. The questions usually focus on street crime. They seem to confirm the that street crime is most likely to be committed by young, working class males, but this does not stand for crime a whole. The self-reporting studies are often very unreliable because the respondent can be untruthful; they are also biased because they do not include white-collar crimes. This biased is illustrated by Chambliss’ study ‘Saints and Rough necks’, he found that police frequently do not take middle class youth delinquency seriously. With the help of middle class parents, delinquents are able to persuade authorities that their acts are mealy harmless pranks.
From a sociological perspective official statistics and their validity vary. Functionalists see official crime statistics as a social fact, therefore accept them, this leads functionalists to believe that it is primarily the working class that commit crimes. The Contemporary left do not accept official statistics as they see them as manipulated by those in power, therefore invalid, where as Left Realists do accept them and believe they show a street crime as a major problem. For sociologists coming from an Interactionists perspective, the statistics are seen as social constructs, in other words created by the people, therefore are biased to courts and the police. However, if the statistics of crime are incorrect this means that sociological theories on crime that depend on these statistics are also incorrect, which can cause a major problem to sociological ideas and improvement.
In conclusion, crime statistics provided by the police, government and courts seem to have many flaws to them, not showing a full picture of crime in Britain. This means there is no secure basis for sociologists to base their research and theories round, placing doubt on the validity of their work. For example, it cannot really be said there has been a ‘crime wave’, rather more crimes are just being reported. However, until a better method of measuring the level of crime is found, the Official statistics have to be depended upon.
