According to the Home Office the comparison of recorded crime and the BCS “provides a useful assessment of the gap between crimes committed and their recording by the police” (Comparing BCS estimates and police counts of crime 2004 p3). Therefore, it could be assumed that the government has recognised the limits of crime statistics and are formulating policies to rectify this. Despite the BCS being “one of the largest social research surveys conducted in England and Wales” (2002-2003 British Crime Survey p5) it does not cover the whole population. It fails to take into account the population resident in institutions such as halls of residence, for example those at university, those in residential care, the prison population, members of the armed forces and those under 16 years old. This is not representative of the whole population, therefore these statistics could be seen to lack ecological validity as it generalised limited results to the rest of the country.
According to Maguire the BCS is “fast replacing the official crime statistics as they key ‘official’ source of statistics used in policy making, planning and performance measurement as well as research” (Maguire 2002 p323). There are both positive and negative implications of this; the BCS has gained respect as it looks into crimes that are not reported by using victim interviews, however it is limited as it does not take into account the entire population so the “dark figure” of crime is not addressed contrary to the claims of the Home Office (Comparing BCS estimates and police counts of crime 2004 p1).
In recent years the government has introduced extensive electronic technology for the purpose of analysing crime statistics, examples of these include victim surveys, national and local record systems maintained by the police, national databases for offenders (the offenders index), databases for offences (the homicide index) and data warehouses to house the combined information. There have also been advances in the analytical tools available, for example the introduction of computer packages for multivariate analysis, location of offences and identification of hot-spots (Maguire 2002 p325). In theory these advances would result in more reliable crime statistics, however there are weaknesses; if social exclusion, stereotypes and discrimination are issues within the criminal justice system then these tools are unreliable as they are simply promoting and publicising these discriminations. This in turn could result in an increase in social exclusion and lead to less focus on other areas that could be affected by violent crime.
There have also been increases in the overall capacity of the criminal justice system, therefore is it possible that the increase in the number of arrests and convictions may not represent actual changes in the amount of crime but could represent the capacity of the system to process the individual cases of violent crime as the result of more policemen, courtrooms, judges and prisons? (Muncie 2001 p196)
The media also has a key role to play in the crime figures released by the government. Hidden types of crime, e.g. domestic violence and sexual abuse have been given more focus on T.V. and in the news (Maguire 2002 p326), this promotes more awareness within the general public and therefore results in more focus on these types of crimes by the police. However as these types of violent crime were largely overlooked in the 1950s any comparison of crime statistics would be unreliable. Even today these examples of violent crime are widely under-represented. The media also plays a key part in how police crime figures are presented, this presentation is important as it can result in positive changes in statistics being twisted to portray an increase in violent crime. A main example of this is in 1980 when two leading newspapers presented two contradictory headlines; the Evening News declared that ‘London Violence Growing’ and the Evening Standard declared that ‘London is Winning the Crime War’. It turns out that both articles were right, they had simply created their headlines from different sections of the report (Muncie 2001 p35). This is effectively summed up by Maguire when he stated that “rising crime rates, growing intolerance and fear of crime among the public, sensationalist media reporting and exploitation of the subject by politicians have all combined to produce a general perception that crime is getting out of control”(Maguire 2001 p329).
There have been many theories surrounding official crime statistics released by the government. One main example of this is Hall et al (1978) who claimed that “crime waves are deliberately manufactured by governments with the assistance of the police and media during economic recessions when their popularity is low and/or the legitimacy of the class structure is weakened” (Maguire 2002 p329). Support for this can be found in Taylor’s (1998) argument that the increases in crime between 1914 and 1960 “can be largely accounted for by senior police officers playing the crime card in order to improve their establishment”, by reporting a large number of crimes they were able to push for more funding (Muncie 2001 p28).
Social factors also affect the reliability of violent crime statistics. Research has shown that a crime is more likely to be reported if the victim believes that an arrest will happen (Muncie 2001 p26); key examples of this are rape and domestic violence. Although in recent years these crimes have been focussed on more, police procedures have changed and sentences have been extended, the whole area is still under-represented and crimes are often not reported. The social definitions of crime have evolved considerably over the last century; this is particularly the case with domestic violence. Therefore the dramatic rise in domestic violence as reported by the home office could be the result of changes in social views rather than an increase in violent crime.
To conclude, police recorded crime figures do not provide any straightforward answers to the question of violent crime; the true facts surrounding this type of crime are most likely unobtainable. The facts depend heavily on not only our definition of violent crime, an issue in itself as it depends heavily on political, social and cultural views and therefore varies widely, but also on the validity of the statistics obtained, this again contains many contradictions such as discrimination, stereotyping and social exclusion, these factors continue to affect the validity of violent crime statistics. The final and arguably most important problem remaining is that especially with violent crime it is impossible to ever obtain complete figures as many victims fail to report crimes committed against them, this is especially the case with situations where the victim has no outlet or psychological factors dominate such as, child abuse, domestic violence and rape
Sources Used:
Barclay, G (ed.) (1993) Digest 2 Information on the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales. The Home Office.
Barclay, G (ed.) (1995) The Criminal Justice System. The Home Office.
Home Office (2004), 2002-2003 British Crime Survey (England and Wales) Technical Report Volume 1
Home Office (2004), Comparing BCS estimates and police counts of crime 2003/2004
Home Office (2004), Crime in England and Wales 2003, 2004
Maguire, M. (2002) Crime Statistics: The ‘Data Explosion’ and its Implications in Maguire, M. et al (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, Oxford, Oxford University Press. pp323-370
Mayhew, P., Aye-Maung, N and Mirrlees-Black, C. (1994) The 1992 British Crime Survey. HMSO.
Muncie, J. (2001) The Construction and Deconstruction of Crime in Muncie, J. and McLaughlin, E. (eds.) (2001) The Problem of Crime. Sage. 2nd Edition.
Muncie, J. and McLaughlin, E. (2001) The Sage Dictionary of Criminology. London, Sage. pp195-196
