Summary Criminology Unit 1

Review: Research Operation Yewtree from 2015, which started with the uncovering of Jimmy Saville. Answer the following questions on your desks: 1) Why would a TV documentary lead to members of the public coming forward to report crime? 2) Why would cases involving celebrities gain greater media coverage? 3) How might police priorities be changed when the media reported cases of historical child sexual abuse ? A new priority - social media hate crime Hate crime has recently been a priority of the police. In 2016 a new unit was created in London’s Metropolitan Police Force to investigate hate speech online. As part of a funded two year project the unit will be responsible for the filtering and identification of hate crimes online, before informing regional police forces which will take action against crimes committed online. UNRECORDED CRIME Unrecorded crime involves crimes that are reported to the police but are not recorded by them as offences. This means an investigation into the alleged crime is unlikely to happen and the offender will not be punished or other crimes prevented. Clearly, the more serious these offences are, the more serious the consequences could be. Task: 1) To support your comments on the above, research unrecorded crime and use the statistics on different police-force areas in your controlled assessment. This will help develop and add detail to your work. The dark figure of crime If the police do not record a crime, it will not appear in the police statistics. These unrecorded crimes are known as the dark figure of crime. This is all the other crime – including the crimes no-one has witnessed, crimes that were witnessed but not reported, and crimes that were reported to the police but not recorded by them. The absence of unrecorded crime from the OCS means that the government and the CJS get a distorted picture of the patterns of crime in the country, leading them to focus only on the types of crime that appear important from the statistics while neglecting others that may be more serious. 2) Working with a partner, use the link below to search for crime in each of your local postcode areas. o What crimes, and how many of each, have been committed in your two areas in the last month? Compare the two areas and note down similarities and differences. o Click on the crimes and find out the status of the investigation. For example, have the offenders been caught? Are there any differences between the two areas? o Now look at stop and search in your two areas. Find five stop and searches for each area and note the following: a. Object of search