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With the alarming increase in crimes between 1950 and 1960 till 1990 (Newburn,
2017: 65) and the accusations that the official police crime statistics were manipulated by
the police forces to benefit themselves (increased pay and manpower) (Smith, 2006: 1), a
new form of crime measurement was developed, the British Crime Survey (BCS) in 1981
(Lewis, 2013: 224), that is now known as the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)
(Liebling et al., 2017: 165). They were primarily victimization surveys and questioned
random household inhabitants if they experienced victimization in the previous twelve
months. In the U.S. the National Crime Victimization Survey (1972) covered frequency,
characteristics and consequences of criminal victimization (Newburn, 2017: 55). The survey
approach came to reveal unreported crimes (Liebling et al., 2017: 165) and the results were
amazingly true, crime recordings were incomplete and unable to provide a global view on
crime levels and trends, nevertheless unique. “Under half of the offences identified by the
surveys were recorded by the police” (Walker, 1995: 4). Walker (1995) in her study indicates
that in 1991 crime surveys showed that only 50% of the identified offences were reported
to the police, and about 60% recorded, and the main reason for not reporting was that
respondents found the offence to be too trivial (55%) (Walker, 1995: 11). Another 25%
thought that police could not do anything and 12% dealt with the offence privately (Walker,
1995: 11). Highlighting the issues of the “dark figure” (unreported crimes) and mistrust in
the police capacity, crime survey statistic’s figures shortly become more credible and
revealed a different extent of crime (ONS, 2018: 9). Consequently, it had brought to our
attention possible factors that made the two datasets to report different crime rates. One of
the reasons we can easily deduct is the different procedures they have used to measure
crimes, surveys instead of reporting.
Local crime surveys, like the Islington Crime Survey, found higher level of sexual
assaults and that a third of local household in poorer areas had been subject by burglary,
robbery, or assault (Newburn, 2017: 60). Indicating that crime attitudes were related with
people’s own experience with crime (Newburn, 2017: 60), statistics become relevant or
contradictory to people’s experience and build trust, or, on the contrary, mistrust in crime
statistics and the way they are presented. In order to trust that crime rates are real, and to
be able to make sense of them not only in terms of crime trends and levels, we need to
make sure that they are backed with accuracy and strong reliability by more than one
official source (Smith, 2006: 11). Rather than having one single national view on crime it is
considered that a more local view will help to rehabilitate public trust in crime statistics
(Smith, 2006: 6).
In a cross-examination, Buonannano et al. (2013), between the U.S. and E.U., to test
the veracity of “crime drop” and a possible global tendency, tried to correlate factors like
incarceration rates, unemployment, and age to crime rates. Research shows how age is
strongly related with crimes, how unemployment might influence criminal behaviour and
how incarceration rates, that should deter crimes, could correspond with high
imprisonment rates (Buonanno et al., 2013: 6), but not how the positive correlation of
socio-economic factors with different crime types is affecting crime trends and if this could
prove that crime drop figures are reliable. They analyzed how a change in the proportion of
one of these factors changed crime rates and found that incarceration decreases crime
rates, but seen no or limited connection between unemployment and incarceration. In E.U.
for homicides cases, no role of incarceration was found but a positive impact for
unemployment and young males (Buonanno et al.,2013: 25). In the U.S. they explained how
homicide rates are more likely to be influenced by firearms’ use and policies. What they
strongly believe is that one major cause for crime drop was incarceration. Maybe statistics
missed to capture all of the offences, but seeing offences’ causality and consequences
enable us to understand their influence on crime and explain partially crime rates tendency.
What statistics successfully delivered is to point that, regardless of the crime
increases through time, the last tendency of crimes was to decrease or stay level, as is the
last year case (ONS, 2018: 7), and even when we exclude a number of crimes we still have
an important number of offences that lower their rates. Mistrust in statistics come from the
confusions that they might rise into the public opinions (Smith, 2006: iii). The risk of
becoming a victim according to British Crime Survey 2006/7 is 24% compared with 45% in
1995 (Loveless, 2008: 24), and the preconception that women and elderly people are more
exposed to street crimes it proved wrong. British Crime Survey reported in fact that young
males and people who are going out for drinking are being exposed to a higher risk of
assault.
Conclusion
The reflections on crime through crime rates, after extensive research, become more
expansive than police figures and survey results. We start to question the “dark figure”
through auxiliary surveys investigations, self-reports, and cross-examination. It becomes a
subject of more important attention when unreported or unrecorded crimes reveal that the
actual crime drop maybe did not occur, but statistics might rather minimize their data
range. Crimes not captured in the official statistics or crime surveys, and the past
manipulation of data or different contradictory sets of data, make the public perception to
still fear the imminence of crime. The actual rates reassure that the individual is not so
exposed to crimes as it is largely believed (Loveless, 2008: 24), but rather its properties and
goods are more likely to be part of offences and “experience fraud, than a violent offence”
(ONS, 2018: 14). What statistics are missing to represent are the factors and variables to
which they are subject to, like changes in recording procedures that altered crime trends or
failure to identify crimes, which still raise matters of concern regarding measurement errors
and to what extent we can consider these statistics data reliable.
List of references:
LawTeacher (2018) Benefits and the Limitations of Crime Statistics. LawTeacher. [online]
Available at: https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/criminology/benefits-and-
limitations-of-crime-statistics.php?vref=1. [Accessed: 7 February 2019].
Lewis, C. (2013) The truth about crime statistics. Police Journal, (Issue 3), p. 220-234.
[Accessed: 6 February 2019].
Liebling, A., Maruna, S. and McAra, L. (2017) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Sixth Ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Loveless, J. (2008) Criminal Law: Text, Cases, and Materials. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Office for National Statistics (ONS). Crime in England and Wales: year ending September
2018. London: Office for National Statistics. Available at:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimei
nenglandandwales/yearendingseptember2018#main-points. [Accessed: 5 February 2019].
Zhao, X. and Tang, J. (2017) Crime in Urban Areas: A Data Mining Perspective. Available at:
https://www.kdd.org/exploration_files/20-1-Article1.pdf. [Accessed at: 3 February 2019].