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3 Write-Up

The ripple effect is what occurs when a crime is committed but not reported, and it acts like a pebble
in the water. What this means is that its not only the immediate victim that is affected but also the
wider community, for example one case of hate crime could lead to a wide spread of hate across the
rest of the community. This can be a positive thing as it spreads more public awareness

The cultural consequences of unreported crime are that leaving crimes that certain cultures have
different views on unreported will lead to more members of these cultural groups accepting these
crimes as a normality. An example of this is forced marriage which has become very excepted among
cultures. This is a negative effect of unreported crime as it eventually becomes a hidden crime
because it’s an accepted practice, so people feel there is no need to report it.

Decriminalisation and legal change are 2 different consequences of crime however they work
together with each other. Decriminalisation is what happens crimes become widespread within
society which can lead to them being lowered from a crime to a misdemeanour. This can then lead
to legal change which means the laws surrounding the certain crime change. Examples of this would
be the decriminalisation of cannabis in Netherlands for personal use, or same-sex marriage being
legalised in October of 2015. This can be positive as there is more available resourced for more
serious crimes.

Police prioritisation is what happens when police become unaware of a crime therefore resources
aren’t allocated to help deal with the crimes. The police not prioritising a crime could lead to the
public being less likely to report the crime if they believe it won’t be dealt with. For example, this
could be the possession of cannabis, which police do not prioritise as they don’t see that it’s worth
it. This can be negative because citizens will have less trust in the police and therefore try handle it
themselves.

Unrecorded crime means that statistics don’t show the correct figure of crime which leads to the
government not putting funding into stopping the crime or campaigns to raise awareness about it.
Reasons for crime going unrecorded could be that the police lack evidence, or the victim refuses to
press charges. This is negative as it leads to something called the dark figure of crime which means
that there is a distorted picture of actual crime rates.

Cultural change affecting reporting of crime can be things like new technology leading to crimes
being accepted as non-crimes like piracy, or it could be societies norms and values changing before
the law changes such as cannabis possession. This can be negative as it becomes an acceptance of
disorder, so people believe the crime is ok even when it’s not.

Procedural change means that there are new and different ways of reporting crimes instead of the
previous 999 calls or going to the police station. Examples of this can be non-emergency police
numbers, social media, telephone hotlines and voluntary organisations. This is positive because it
means people will feel more comfortable in reporting crimes and less crimes will go unreported.