Crime and Deviance - Episode 2

In episode 2 - 

1. How is crime measured - Official crime statistics
2. Victimisation surveys - strengths and weaknesses
3. Self report studies - strengths and weaknesses

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to episode two of Crime and Deviants
for the Sociology Show podcast. In this episode, we are
going to look at how crime is measured in the UK.
The first thing for you to remember is that there
are three different ways in which crime is measured in
the UK. We have official crime statistics, victim surveys, and

(00:20):
self report studies. So official crime statistics or the OCS
includes police records and the Crime Survey of England and
Wales or the CSEW. We then have victim surveys and
this includes the Crime Survey for England and Wales and
localized victim surveys. And victim surveys are where a person
indicates all the crimes that may have been committed against

(00:43):
themselves during the last year. We then also have self
report studies, which again are a survey conducted in which
the person indicates or admits any crimes that they have
committed over the course of the last year. These, of
course are anonymous. So firstly, let's just think about official
crime statistics in general. Remember, for some sociologists positivists in particular,

(01:07):
they see a real benefit of official crime statistics because
they tend to be large scale macro often largely generalizable
and representative, as they cover a large number of people. However,
for many sociologists, in particular interpretivist sociologists, they see a
real weakness to official crime statistics. They say that statistics

(01:29):
can lack depth, they can lack detail, they do not
give validity or insight or the shtayan, and so there
are many criticisms or problems of overall crime statistics. It's
also worth mentioning, of course, that crime statistics only really
show us a small fraction of the actual crime that's
going on. It's estimated that crime stats actually only show

(01:50):
about ten percent of all crime. The rest of crime
is what is known as the dark figure of crime.
Or perhaps a better analogy is the iceberg theory. You
imagine an iceberg. Only the tip of the iceberg tips
out of the water. The rest is hidden underneath. So
just try and remember that statistic that actually we probably
only see a small percentage around ten percent of real crime.

(02:13):
It could even be lower than that. So let's start
with official crime statistics. Official crime statistics refer to any
data produced or collated by the government. They are collated
by the Home Office and published by the Office for
national statistics. They include both or either police statistics and
court and prison records and the Crime Survey for England

(02:35):
and Wales. These crime statistics are published every six months.
So what are the advantages of the official crime statistics. Well,
your two groups, functionists and right realists really really do
like the use of crime statistics. They uncritically accept the
official crime statistics as a fair reflection of the problem
of crime. They argue that police statistics are useful because

(02:58):
they are widely geographically representative. Since they are supplied by
forty five territorial police forces plus the British Transport Police.
Most members of the public know the number nine ninety
nine and can therefore report crimes either in person or
over the phone. This means that the sample reported to
the police should theoretically include all ages, classes, genders, ethnicities

(03:22):
and so on, so that the statistics produce reflect a
huge data set and therefore can be used to generalize
across the UK. Functions and right realists also say that
the reliability should be high, and reliability may be high
for the police statistics because they are standardized thanks to
high levels of training for police officers to make sure

(03:43):
that crimes are recorded in the same way by all officers,
ensuring consistency. They also operationalize carefully. Each police force should
have the same understanding of key concepts around enforcing the law,
ensuring reliability e g. What constitute and assault, aggravated assault
or manslaughter, etc. The statistics are also gathered every year

(04:06):
and in the same way and again. This increases the
reliability as they are collected again and again to see
emerging trends and patterns over time. Functions, of course, believe
in the idea of consensus, so they see the polics
representing all of us and do not question their motives.
They therefore assume that what is reported and recorded is

(04:28):
what they call a social fact, and so the figures
reflect reality, meaning, according to functionists, there is high validity
in these statistics. Functionists trust the police figures. They reject
the suggestion that they are socially constructed. We know that
some crimes are highly likely to be reported. For example,
if victims see some benefit to themselves, such as an

(04:50):
insurance claim or a stolen car, they are going to
report it. So the statistics for some crimes are likely
to be higher in validity than others. Practically, police statistics
are also easy to access and they've already been compiled.
Remember they are secondary data for a sociologist. The data
is published and up to date, and so can be

(05:10):
accessed by any member of the public via the Internet.
According to these groups functioning some right realists, there are
also few ethical worries as offenders and victims are not
named and they remain anonymous. However, there are many disadvantages
to police statistics. Interactions are highly critical of police statistics

(05:31):
because they believe that they reflect only a narrow version
of reality, not the whole truth. They are incomplete because
not all crimes are reported or recorded, and only certain
people seem to get labeled as criminal. Therefore, interactionists suggest
that police statistics lack validity because they do not reveal
the dark figure of crime, or, as mentioned earlier, it

(05:54):
does not account for the Iceberg theory. Siicarell found that
police officers in his study were more likely to arrest
and charge working class youth the middle class youths, even
though they carried out the same amount of crime. Thus,
police statistics may have low validity because they reflect the
labeling process rather than the actual crimes that are being

(06:14):
carried out There are lots of instances where crimes go
undetected and unreported, and this challenges the police statistics because
many more crimes may exist, but they do not actually
appear in the statistics in terms of what we're seeing
as the general public. The main reasons for this is
because they've not been reported, they've not been recorded, or

(06:34):
they've gone unpunished. So why might this happen? Where There
are a variety of reasons as to why this may occur. Firstly,
the victim may be unaware that a crime is being committed,
such as if they were a victim of a financial fraud.
People may not report crimes because they were some way involved.
Imagine if a person were a drug dealer themselves and

(06:55):
their stash was stolen from them, are they really going
to go to the police. Likewise, they may fear retaliation,
particularly if they were a victim against a very dangerous
individual or gang. It may be that the crimes perceived
as too trivial or too small. Let's imagine that you
had an old, rusty bike tied up outside your house
and someone stole it. Perhaps you couldn't be bothered to

(07:17):
let the police know because it's seen as far too
insignificant disadvantage. Communities are also less likely to have faith
in the police and therefore are much less likely to
report crimes, which arguably compacts the problem. Some groups just
simply don't want to have any connection or relation with
the police at all. Some people may also not report

(07:38):
certain crimes, such as sexual offenses and domestic violence, because
they're too embarrassed or they just simply don't want to
report it. We know that those two offenses in particular
are massively underreported. And finally, maybe the person who's a
victim may lack power. For example, a young child may
be neglected or abused, but doesn't understand that they've had

(07:58):
a crime committed against them, or may not have the
ability to be able to report it to the police
in the first place. One might assume that if a
crime is reported to the police that they would obviously
record every instance of this, but this isn't always the case.
The police are trained to be professional and use a
discretion when appropriate. This means that officers may decide that

(08:20):
a crime is too trivial and thus not record it
as a crime. In twenty twenty, the hm Inspectra of
Constabulary reported that in the Greater Manchester Police Force alone,
around two hundred and twenty crimes a day when unrecorded.
In the twelve month period reviewed by inspectors, it was
estimated the force of recorded only seventy seven point seven
percent of reported crimes. This shows that police recorded practices

(08:44):
can impact on the validity of crime statistics. In other words,
they don't show a true picture, but also the reliability
of the statistics because they're not being recorded in the
same way each time. Simply, the recording of crime may
also be different in different localities, for exact example, between
the inner city areas and urban areas. Marxists reject police statistics.

(09:06):
The sociologist Gordon, for example, suggests that the bourgeoisie selectively
enforce the law against the less powerful groups. Gordon argues
that police officers are the strong arm of the bourgeoisie
and so operate in ways which reflect the interests of
the ruling class. As such, the police may choose to
pursue people and groups they perceive to be a threat

(09:27):
to society and not others. Gordon suggests that the police
are selective in the way in which they apply the law,
choosing challenging members of the working class to prosecute and
imprison to uphold the illusion of a perfect capitalist system.
The research of Waddington also conductive research on what he
calls canteen culture. His research on canteen culture of the

(09:49):
police also suggests that the police statistics are not to
be trusted because they reflect the police stereotypes of who
they believe to be typical criminals, which influence them to
stop and search groups. This includes ethnic minorities, youths, men
rather than women in the working class. This may also
lead to a self fulfilling prophecy where the only people

(10:10):
found to be committing these crimes are the groups who
are stopped and searched in the first place. Many criticize
statistics therefore for lacking in validity because they fail to
understand in any depth why something is happening or why
a crime is being committed. Statistics are quantitative, and as
a result, they may indicate that something is the case,
but not the reasons why. Remember that feminists also prefer

(10:34):
to use methods which focus much more on the victim,
offering a much more empathetic and qualitative approach. Although official
crime statistics are formed mostly by figures from the police
and courts. The government does supplement this with extra information
an annual survey called the Crime Survey of England and Wales.
Victim surveys are studies about the victims of crime, rather

(10:57):
than offenders. Interviewers ask people if they have been a
victim of crime in the last year and whether they
reported it to the police. Respondents are asked questions in
their own homes by trained interviewers using a structured interview,
with some questions administered on a laptop. Victim surveys reveal
the dark figure of crime and the reasons why people

(11:18):
may not have reported the crime committed against them to
the police in the first place. Positivists argue that the
Crime Survey for England and Wales is high in representativeness
because it uses a nationally representative sample a stratified random
sampling technique of thirty five thousand adults and three thousand
children aged between ten and fifteen with parental consent per year.

(11:42):
The response rate, though, has fallen from around seventy percent
pre pandemic to around forty two percent in twenty twenty three.
The information is collected by professional, trained interviewers and the
interview is structured so that there is high reliability because
the key terms are off operationalized clearly. Each interview we'll

(12:03):
use the same questions phrased in the same way, and
answers are coded. It can also be argued that this
survey does produce some high validity because respondents are asked
questions in their own home where they feel more comfortable.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales has been successful
at developing special measures to estimate the extent of domestic violence, stalking,

(12:25):
and sexual victimization, which are least likely to be reported
crimes to the police. For these questions, the laptop is
given to the respondent and they are asked to complete
in privacy to avoid embarrassment and thus raise validity. There
are many disadvantages, however, of the Crime Survey of England
and Wales, such as it very very rarely reflects white

(12:46):
collar crimes, that's crimes committed by the middle and upper classes.
Those with power. Marks Is such as Snyder, argue that
by continually asking about issues such as street crime rather
than white collar crimes, we reinforce the narrative that crime
is a working class issue. People may not be aware
they are victims of crimes, and the crime Survey for

(13:06):
England and Wales relies on victims to have objective knowledge
of the crimes committed against them. People's memories of traumatic
events are often not that accurate, or they may fail
to remember all of the crimes they've actually experienced over
the previous twelve months. As with police statistics, people may
be embarrassed or fear reprisals, and so that data is
not entirely valid. In addition, victim surveys don't reveal victimless

(13:32):
crimes such as underage drinking. The response rate, as already noted,
is forty two percent, not one hundred percent, so some
data has not been captured. Where's all that missing data gone?
This means that representativeness may be lowered if not every
person completes the survey. If those that don't respond are
the people who have suffered any crimes, this distorts our

(13:54):
view since we may not be able to generalize what's
actually occurring with data in relation to crime. Therefore, we
do have real problems with potential validity, representativeness, and generalizability
when it comes to the Crime Survey of England and Wales.
Now let's be a little bit more specific to victim surveys.

(14:15):
Some victim surveys can help uncover the wider impact of
crime on a community. Left realists are particularly keen to
focus on working class victims and to provide solutions to
cope with the crime. Jones carried out the Islington Crime Survey.
This survey not only focuses on a specific geographical area
that in his city, but also on the impact of

(14:37):
crime on individuals, lives, and particularly vulnerable groups. The studies
showed that a third of all households have been touched
by serious crime in the last twelve months. Crime has
rated a major problem behind unemployment. The qualitative element of
the survey unveiled that crime really altered people's lives. Twenty
five percent of all people avoided going out after dark

(14:59):
because of a fear of crime. Twenty eight percent said
that they felt unsafe in their own homes. More than
half of women stated that the fear of crime is
real and rational, and that it is not an exaggeration
to conclude that many women in inner city urban areas
live in a state of virtual curfew. These findings and

(15:19):
victimization were influential in developing the theory of left realism.
They led left realists to believe that crime and fear
of crime, especially in inner city areas, is very important
in shaping people's lives, and the official crime statistics alone
doesn't truly reflect this fact and so needs to be
supplemented by victim surveys. The Islington Crime Survey also found

(15:43):
that not everyone has the same likelihood of becoming a victim,
since young household's, lone parents, and the unemployed were more
than twice as likely to be a victim of crime
as the average person. The poor were also more likely
to be subject to multiple Victimization surveys can also be
useful in testing the success of social policy initiatives. For example,

(16:05):
Farrington and Painter use a victim survey to test where
their improved street lighting reduce crime rates. They sent victimization
surveys to household a thousand in total before and after
the new street lighting was installed. Respondents reported that they
felt safer and this led to safer spaces because potential

(16:26):
criminals feared being spotted. Victimization fell by forty three percent.
Farrington and Painter point out that the importance of using
a victimization survey helps reveal crimes such as receiving drugs,
which the police may not be aware of. This study
shows the importance of using victim surveys rather than police
statistics to reveal crime and fear of crime from a

(16:49):
personal perspective. Feminists also favor victim surveys because they believe
criminology should start with the victim, not the perpetrator. Feminists
seek empathetic, in depth, qualitative data which reveals what it
feels like to be a victim. For example, do Bash
and Dobash used two female researchers to carry out one

(17:10):
hundred and nine structured interviews with women who had experienced
domestic violence. Forty two of the women were living or
had been living in a women's refuge. Dobash and Dobash
found that twenty three percent of their sample actually experienced
violence before their marriage, but believed it would cease once
they were married. The other seventy seven percent had not

(17:32):
experienced before marriage, but did experience it once they were married.
The first violent episode usually consisted of a single blow
with little physical injury. It was often preceded by an argument,
usually about the husband's possessiveness and his ideas about his
wise responsibility to him. This episode was normally followed by shock, shame,

(17:54):
and guilt from both parties. The husband begged for forgiveness
and promised it would not happen again, whilst wives often
attempted to understand the action in terms of her own behavior,
the idea that perhaps she brought it upon herself. Few
females responded to the attack with physical force themselfs do
Bash and Dobash found that such violence became routine and normal.

(18:18):
They found that men felt they had the right to
punish or discipline their wives for being bad wives or mothers.
Women too, expected domestic violence to be a normal part
of their marriage and consequently rarely complained about it or
sought medical attention. They left the relationship when children were
threatened with violence, too feministy in depth data is much

(18:39):
more valuable than statistics because it allows us to see
how crime impacts on individuals and crime, and therefore gives
us better validity. There are, of course, many problems with
smaller scale victim surveys and studies. Many victim surveys often
use small samples, which of course reduces the generalizability. For example,
in that dobashan day Obash study. They used a sample

(19:01):
of women who were living in domestic violence hostels, and
therefore they were not probably representative of women who may
experience low levels of domestic violence, may not experience any
domestic violence, or to the men who experienced domestic violence. Finally,
let's move on to self report studies. Remember this is
an anonymous questionnaire, self completed, and it is where the

(19:25):
person completing it admits to crimes that they've committed over
a twelve year period. As well as being asked how
often they commit illegal acts. Respondents are generally asked details
of their background, such as age, gender, or ethnicity. One
of the advantages of self report studies is that they
provide evidence against the typical delinquent, as shown in the
crime rate Graham and Bowling conducting the self report study

(19:48):
of twenty four hundred people aged fourteen to twenty five.
They were interviewed in their own homes face to face,
then completed as self completion questionnaire which used twenty three offenses,
and are asked them to admit which, if any, they
had committed. Crime rates for blacks and whites were almost
equal forty four percent for whites and forty three percent

(20:08):
for blacks, only thirty for British Asians, and so this
self report study was helpful in providing a more valid
account of patterns of offending regarding ethnicity and perhaps reinforces
the need for sociologists to be suspicious of the possibility
of police racism. Self report studies are useful as they
can reveal hidden aspects of crime not picked up in

(20:29):
the statistics, and this raises the validity in terms of gender.
For example, Anne Campbell found that levels of crime and
deviants admitted to by females and males were much closer
than police recorded figures tended to suggest. The official crime
statistics show that for every one crime committed by women,
men commit five, so the ratio is one to five.

(20:51):
This shows that men are much more criminal than women. However,
Campbell carried out small scale self report studies with their
A level classes and found that for ever every one
crime that women committed, men committed one point five, So
the difference between crime rate of men and women is
much closer than the official crime statistics suggests one to
one point five. This backs up the idea of Pollock's

(21:15):
chivalry theory. Perhaps females are committing crime, but they are
much less likely to be targeted, punished and reported. Self
report studies may also be useful to see trends over
time and track changes that Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions
and Crime is one of the largest prospective longitudinal studies
of youth offending ever carried out in the UK. It

(21:36):
was first established in nineteen ninety eight and it began
with a cohort of around four thousand, three hundred children
aged twelve on average, who are all in their first
year of secondary school in the city of Edinburgh. The
main aim of the study was to further increase our
understanding of criminal behavior amongst young people by studying them
over a long period of development from early adolescents through

(21:59):
to adulthood. This is an example of a self report
study and victim survey together so could be used to
answer both exam questions. The study found that children from
single parent families and those in care to have the
highest levels of criminality, showing that crime rates rise as
you go down through the social class scale. Boys were

(22:20):
twice as criminal as girls, and crime rates were higher
when parents were unemployed. They found correlations between impulsivity in
children who had high levels of criminality were also more
likely to be victims. They found lower offending rates for
those youths who were closely supervised by parents. The strongest
correlation was between offending rates and the use of alcohol

(22:42):
or drugs and friends who were also offenders. There are, however,
many problems with self report studies. Feminists would criticize them
for failing to highlight the way in which women are
treated differently by the criminal justice system. Self report studies
failed to highlight the victimization that women suffer, and therefore
they would suggest that victimization studies are much more effective.

(23:05):
According to feminists, these will reveal the level of victimization
that women suffer in relation to sexual and domestic violence,
which can often be lost in self report studies. Self
report studies are often carried out on young adults and
often include quite minor crimes, meaning they do not represent
the older population and cannot be generalized across other groups.

(23:26):
They also tend to be unrepresentative because they focus on
relatively small groups of people, as we found in Campbell's research,
and or particular types of crimes. They do not include
sexual crimes, domestic violence, and white collar crimes or murder.
Participants may also conceal offending or make false claims about
what they have done even though they are anonymous, because

(23:48):
they may have a mistrust of the police. So, therefore,
do we know that we're still getting accurate and high
levels of validity from self report studies? In conclusion, it
may be best to use what we call method pluralism
when we're trying to understand crime, and this means the
truly measure crime. We should use official crime statistics, self
report surveys, and victim surveys altogether to offer a much

(24:11):
broader picture rather than just relying on one method alone. So,
from listening to this episode, could you answer the following questions. Firsty,
can you name the three different ways in which crime
is measured in the UK? Can you also name three
examples of studies that use victim surveys as their research method.

(24:32):
Could you name three studies that use self report studies
as their research method? Imagine you had an essay on
one of these. Could you name two advantages and two
disadvantages of official crime statistics? Could you name two advantages
and two disadvantages of victim surveys? And finally, could you

(24:53):
date two advantages and two disadvantages of victim studies. Thank
you very much for listening, and in episode three we
are going to look at the functionist explanations for crime
and deviants. The Sociology Show podcast now offers online tutoring.
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