1.6 Evaluate methods of collecting statistics about crime
Home office statistics - The UK has 43 regional police forces plus the British transport police,
who every month report to the home office the number of crimes recorded in their area. The
numbers are then sent to the office of national statistics who publish final statistics for the whole
country. The statistics cover all notifiable offences and focus on things like crimes committed
against individuals and their property. All officers and all forces classifying a given incident
would be expected to follow the same procedure, and use the same definitions of crimes.
However, it is possible for different officers to classify the same incident differently. For instance,
say an individual got attacked with minor injuries - something like scratches, one officer might
classify this as assault with no injury whereas others might decide that this offence is assault
with injury. Different forces also have different policies which means they would define crimes
differently, so a theft of property worth less than £10 would be a crime to some forces while
others would make it a crime if it was £20. This variation in recording crimes means it reduces
the effectiveness of seeing how crime rates have changed over the years, as different police
methods or policies produce different results, meaning it's not always reliable.
Home office statistics are able to get statistics on crimes that are recorded, but not all crimes get
reported, and just because a crime gets reported doesn't mean it necessarily gets recorded.
People only report about 40% of crimes they are victims of, so annuanly about 800,000 crimes
that occur go unreported, none of which is covered by the home office, which I believe is the
biggest downfall for this method. The police also only record about 60% of the crimes that
people actually report to them, so there is a large scale of crimes that are not included in the
statistics given to the public. By not covering the dark figures of crime the statistics leave out a
lot which can be known as the iceberg analogy. As the home office statistics are based on
police recordings, it makes this method less valid as there are a lot of factors that get in the way
of police recording crimes. There are no ethical issues from the home office statistics because
individual offenders and victims are not identifiable.
The purpose of this research is used as an indicator of crime trends, the police are more active
in uncovering it and the rise in knife crime has led the police to form special squads to target
this. There is a high level of confidence that most crimes do get reported and recorded so
therefore their statistics are seen as a reliable source. However, the changes in the law,
changes in the counting rules and changes in the notifiable offences list all make the home
office statistics less reliable as they are not compared like with like over time. Also it isn't just the
police that record crimes and publish them there are other agencies (HM revenue and customs)
that do this that are not included in the home office statistics.
Crime survey for England and Wales - The CSEW is a survey for victims that asks a sample of
people each year about what crimes they have been victims of in the preceding 12 months.
There is an average of 50,000 people interviewed each year face to face about their experience
of crime. The interviews are conducted by trained interviewers asking the same set of
questions, so it's highly reliable as the same answers will be given regardless of who the
question is asked by, so the results are consistent. However, asking questions based around
Home office statistics - The UK has 43 regional police forces plus the British transport police,
who every month report to the home office the number of crimes recorded in their area. The
numbers are then sent to the office of national statistics who publish final statistics for the whole
country. The statistics cover all notifiable offences and focus on things like crimes committed
against individuals and their property. All officers and all forces classifying a given incident
would be expected to follow the same procedure, and use the same definitions of crimes.
However, it is possible for different officers to classify the same incident differently. For instance,
say an individual got attacked with minor injuries - something like scratches, one officer might
classify this as assault with no injury whereas others might decide that this offence is assault
with injury. Different forces also have different policies which means they would define crimes
differently, so a theft of property worth less than £10 would be a crime to some forces while
others would make it a crime if it was £20. This variation in recording crimes means it reduces
the effectiveness of seeing how crime rates have changed over the years, as different police
methods or policies produce different results, meaning it's not always reliable.
Home office statistics are able to get statistics on crimes that are recorded, but not all crimes get
reported, and just because a crime gets reported doesn't mean it necessarily gets recorded.
People only report about 40% of crimes they are victims of, so annuanly about 800,000 crimes
that occur go unreported, none of which is covered by the home office, which I believe is the
biggest downfall for this method. The police also only record about 60% of the crimes that
people actually report to them, so there is a large scale of crimes that are not included in the
statistics given to the public. By not covering the dark figures of crime the statistics leave out a
lot which can be known as the iceberg analogy. As the home office statistics are based on
police recordings, it makes this method less valid as there are a lot of factors that get in the way
of police recording crimes. There are no ethical issues from the home office statistics because
individual offenders and victims are not identifiable.
The purpose of this research is used as an indicator of crime trends, the police are more active
in uncovering it and the rise in knife crime has led the police to form special squads to target
this. There is a high level of confidence that most crimes do get reported and recorded so
therefore their statistics are seen as a reliable source. However, the changes in the law,
changes in the counting rules and changes in the notifiable offences list all make the home
office statistics less reliable as they are not compared like with like over time. Also it isn't just the
police that record crimes and publish them there are other agencies (HM revenue and customs)
that do this that are not included in the home office statistics.
Crime survey for England and Wales - The CSEW is a survey for victims that asks a sample of
people each year about what crimes they have been victims of in the preceding 12 months.
There is an average of 50,000 people interviewed each year face to face about their experience
of crime. The interviews are conducted by trained interviewers asking the same set of
questions, so it's highly reliable as the same answers will be given regardless of who the
question is asked by, so the results are consistent. However, asking questions based around
