These statistics are used by sociologist in order to receive information about the numbers of crimes reported to the police. Official statistics have many purposes but there foremost aims are to supply policy makers with an indication of the extent of crime, in order for them to introduce effective policies to try and reduce such crime, and to assess the performances of the criminal justices system. The data gathered to form official statistics is provided to the public by form of the internet and through the media. The media often use official crime statistics and portray them as an accurate representation of the extent of crime. They often turn the statistical information into ‘moral panics’, the effects of this been distressing to those in society. As a result of this the fear of crime is amplified, making those in society behave abnormally, as a consequence people are often left more vulnerable to society. An example of this is when some women will not venture out after dark because of the fear of rape. Hence the reason why it is of great significance to everyone that official statistics are an accurate representative of the degree of crime. However dim, the reality of this is getting more and more accepted as statistics offer an undersupplied degree of the actual crime level itself, as Benjamin Disraeli’s expresses this in his view that there are ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ (Jones, 2003; 50). From examining official statistics it becomes clear to the eye that there are many flaws within them, the way in which they are detected, recorded, measured, and represented. As young states:
‘At heart the extent of crime is a political as well as a behavioural matter… The figures for crime… are not hard facts in the sense that this is true of the height and weight of physical bodies. They are moral not physical statistics’. (Cited in Maguire et al, 1997; 135)
Official statistics inform the general public about ‘Notifiable offences’. Such offences include those which are recorded by the police force, included in this series of statistics are around 70 different offences split up into 8 different categories. ‘Notifiable offences’ fundamentally consist of the more serious offences. Therefore this includes indictable offences, which includes things like ‘murder, manslaughter, robbery, and rape’, offences which can only be tried by a jury at a crown court, and ‘offences triable either way’, which are usually tried by the magistrates. Therefore, this does not take into account minor offences entitled ‘summary offences’, which are account for a considerable percentage of the crimes, and are usually tried at the magistrate’s court. Therefore this misconceives the general public and makes the extent of crime appear much lower. As Kershaw et al (2000) pointed out ‘that only about 55% of the crimes reported to the police were recorded in the criminal statistics…which was shown in…an analysis of data from the 200 BCS’ (Cited in Jones, 2003; 52) . The issue of ‘notifible offences’ is problematical one as the Home Office can amend the list of notifiable offences at any time, and have done so. They have altered some notifiable offences to summary offences, for instance ‘criminal damage of £20 or less was not counted before 1997, but is now notifiable’ Therefore, this led to a ‘7%’ increase in recorded crimes (Jones, 2003; 52). Such figures are then disingenuous when comparing one year to another, in this case it would mislead the public in believing that criminal offences have rose by 7% as they do not explain such changes in the published official statistics.
There is also a problematic issue with the counting of criminal offences. The way in they are counted has changed several times over the past years. The method used for counting criminal offences used to be a complicated one ‘if several offences were committed in one incident, only the most serious would be counted unless the offences were of violent or sexual nature’ (Jones, 20003; 53). This then led to problems with misinterpretation as many police forces looked at it differently. Due to this the counting rules were amended again in 1998 where one crime was recorded per victim. This then led to an immense increase of ‘7%’ in recorded crime rates, in effect making the extent of crime appear much higher (Williams, 2004, cited in Simmons 2001; 45). It also makes it challenging job for researchers and policy makers to compare these statistics to those from previous and leading years.
An additional problem highlighted with the use of official crime statistics is that some offences are not recorded; these are called the ‘dark and grey figures’ of crime, there are several reasons why such crimes are left out. The official statistics only represent the Home office police forces, they do not account for the other, equally important, non- Home office police forces. Such forces include the British Transport Police, the Ministry of Defence, the UK Atomic Energy authority, the Inland Revenue, and Customs and Excise. The only way in which these offences will be placed in the official crime statistics is if they are brought to court. As already mentioned 55% of offences fit into this ‘dark figure’ of crime, such crimes include tax and VAT evasion. This is classed as the ‘dark figure’ of crime, Wiles (1997) believes:
‘…there is a dark figure of crime sufficiently large to render reported and recorded offences highly suspect as a basis upon which to make inferences upon criminal behaviour in general’ (41)
Yet again this makes the official crime rate appear much lower than it is in reality as theses non Home office forces cover a significant proportion of crime, in effect; the official statistics make the crime rate appear less than half of what they actually are.
Following this is the ‘grey figure’ of crime which furthermore does not find its way into official crime statistics. This covers, according to the BCS, ‘of more than one- third of the offences’ actually reported to the police service. Statutory obligations are put in place to ensure that the police service record crimes but the way in which they record crimes varies. Do the police record every offence reported? Do they all give out equivalent penalties for the same offence? Do they approach everyone suspected of a crime or target certain people? The answers to these questions are straightforward; it is left to the discretion of the police force to how they deal with such issues. Different police stations and officers deal with offences in a different ways. The police services continuously have to make discretionary choice to decide whether an offence should be officially recorded, for instance, the decision whether to charge, what charge to make, and how many counts. Jones (2003) pointed out that ‘80% of reported crimes… are not recorded… for a variety of reasons’ (54). They might decide not to record an offence in order to try and improve their clear up rate or because the offence may seem to be too trivial. This again leads to misinterpretations in the official crime statistics, making them appear 80% lower than they actually are.
Most criminal offences are brought to the police services attention by the victim/s. However there are many offences, which for numerous reasons, are not reported to the police service. The BCS found that the most popular reason, with 40-55%, why people did not report crimes to the police service was because they seen the crime as been to trivial, the second reason with 23-36% was that the victims felt that the police would be unable to do anything (Williams, 2004; 71). Therefore, the crimes left unreported can not be recorded by the police. As Williams (2004) pointed out ‘almost 1.3 million of the most serious offences went unreported’, this indicates that just under half of the offences committed are actually recorded in the official crime statistics, giving a distort figure of reality.
In order to get a true representation of the actual crime rate one must look at the ‘dark figure’ of crime. This covers crimes that are not reported to or recorded by the police service or any other official institution for that matter. The methods used in order to measure this area of crime are ‘self report studies, victims surveys, and estimates’ (Williams, 2004; 81). Such methods are a great indicator of the true representation of crime and disclose a higher level of crime than recorded by the police service. This can be proven in the BCS findings as they estimate ‘that 9.5 million criminal offences occurred…’ in 2002/2003 whereas the police services official statistics recorded only ‘2.3 million’ (Williams, 2004; 81).
Evidence shows that there are considerable problems with the official crime statistics.
What can actually be learned about the extent of crime in Britain from the official crime statistics is much distorted. Not only do they give a distorted figure of the extent of crime the information provided from them is also very vague. They do not provide information on the number of crimes solved, who is sent to prison, and who commits crimes. As Williams (2004) points out:
“The more involved the incident becomes with the criminal justice system, the less representative it is of the offence” (Williams, 2004; 85).
They also give an inaccurate representation of the actual crime levels as not all crimes are reported and not all them reported are recorded. They also only include information about ‘noifiable offences’, subsequently more than half of the crimes taken place are not incorporated in the official crime statistics. How can statistical information be relied upon when it does not give a true representation? Is there an essential value of official statistics? Critics would say no to these questions, as some see the official crime statistics as been totally ‘useless’. However in comparison to other forms of crime research methods, it seems to be that they all have there uses and drawbacks. In order to balance the probabilities of such research methods being more accurate, maybe one must consider using all the research methods in a grouping format.
Bibliography
Walker M (ed) (1995) Interpreting Crime Statstics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Williams, S (2004) Textbook on Criminology. US: Oxford University
Jones, S (2003) Criminology. Great Britain: Cromwell Press.
Maguire, M (2002) Oxford University Press.
Wiles, P (1997) Oxford.
McLaughlin, E. Muncie, J (2001) Great Britain: Cromwell Press.