AC1.6- Evaluate methods of collecting statistics of crime
Crime statistics can come in two forms:
Home Office statistics.
Crime survey for England and Wales.
Home Office Statistics
What are Home Office Statistics?
Home Office Statistics are police recorded crime statistics that are gathered from individual police
departments to form both local and national statistics. They are broken down into the type of
offence that was committed, the location that the offence was committed in and the period of time
that it took place.
Purpose of research:
They can inform the public about what the police are prioritising and placing their activity in
more often. If there are a higher number of statistics recorded in areas such as knife crime,
it can tell us the police are placing priority on knife crime, whereas if statistics are
significantly lower on things like home burglary, we can be told that the police are placing
less priority onto that area.
The public can also tell which crimes are being more reported and investigated into.
It also gives the public a perception of crime trends. If there is an increase in motor thefts,
motorists are more likely to give insurance their vehicles and take measures into protecting
them to avoid becoming a victim of the crime. Similarly, if there is an increase in street
robberies people may take measures to begin protecting themselves from these sort of
crimes, such as carrying something to defend themselves or carrying less valuables with
them.
Examples of Home Office Crime Statistics:
Between April 2020 and March 2021, the Home Office collected statistics on how many women were
killed and how many men were killed in England and Wales. With the statistics they could deduct the
number of gendered murders and who commits the murder by gender and showed that 117 women
were murdered, compared to 416 men being murdered. Only ten of these victims were murdered by
women, the rest men. This meant that the police could overall conclude that 92% of women were
killed by men when the suspect of the murder was known, and 60% of women knew their killer prior
to their murder. These statistics were really important as they gave a meaningful insight as to who is
killed each year by gender and meant that police and the public had a better idea on how many men
and women are killed by other men and women and would’ve also broken-down common locations
and times of the murders, making it easier for police to predict where to put patrolmen to help the
, crimes being prevented. This may not be an accurate revelation of crimes that are occurring
however, and it could be that some of the murders weren’t discovered, or the perpetrators were
never caught, which can distort these crime statistics and make them inaccurate.
Reliability
Reliability is defined as when a method used to collect data is repeated by a different collector, the
same results will be achieved as the original.
Statistics gathered by the Home Office Statistics are typically thought of as reliable because
they are collected directly from police forces themselves and despite them being from
separate forces, each force should have roughly the same procedure for recording and
collecting the crime statistics as they use the same procedures and names for crimes.
Despite procedures and ways of naming different crimes, many forces can still make
mistakes or label crimes differently to other forces and this can change the reliability of
crime statistics that are gathered and published. For example, if a robbery was to take place,
some forces may give themselves a threshold of £20 to define it as a serious home theft,
whereas others may give themselves a threshold of £10 to define it as a home theft. Despite
this being a very small number of differences, it can make a big difference in whether the
crimes are reported and published, or whether they go unpublished. When this is repeated
for many different offences, the amount that crime statistics can become inaccurate is large
and this means that published statistics on assault and theft can differ greatly from the true
amount that are published because of the small difference in thresholds that officers use.
Regarding assault, one officer may see someone who was involved in an attack and walked
away with very minor scratches on their hand, and classify and record this as assault,
whereas others many unrecord the crime and not classify this as assault, and when this
differs greatly for different forces, it can mean the real statistics are very different.
So, while Home Office Statistics are thought to be greatly reliable because they come from
forces themselves and not an exterior collector, as well as the forces using the same
procedures, the reality is that the crime statistics gathered can differ greatly from force to
force despite many of the statistics being similar, but this difference has occurred because
of the way different officers perceive and have thresholds for different crimes. This means
that the reliability of Home Office Statistics is lower than originally perceived by most
people. While it is still considered reliable on the most part, it isn’t fully reliable and some of
the crime statistics can differ in reliability.
Validity
This refers to whether the statistics that are produced by the Home Office provide a true picture of
the crime.
Validity can be altered on whether the crime is reported to the police and then recorded in
the statistics. Crimes which have a high rate of being under-reported such as rapes and other
forms of assault are often under-shown in the statistics, for example 45,000 rapes being
reported in 2016-2017, but the estimated actual number of rapes being recorded in 2016-17
is likely far higher than the statistics. People only report around 40% of the crimes that they
have been involved in, whether they are a victim or a witness. People don’t report crimes for
Crime statistics can come in two forms:
Home Office statistics.
Crime survey for England and Wales.
Home Office Statistics
What are Home Office Statistics?
Home Office Statistics are police recorded crime statistics that are gathered from individual police
departments to form both local and national statistics. They are broken down into the type of
offence that was committed, the location that the offence was committed in and the period of time
that it took place.
Purpose of research:
They can inform the public about what the police are prioritising and placing their activity in
more often. If there are a higher number of statistics recorded in areas such as knife crime,
it can tell us the police are placing priority on knife crime, whereas if statistics are
significantly lower on things like home burglary, we can be told that the police are placing
less priority onto that area.
The public can also tell which crimes are being more reported and investigated into.
It also gives the public a perception of crime trends. If there is an increase in motor thefts,
motorists are more likely to give insurance their vehicles and take measures into protecting
them to avoid becoming a victim of the crime. Similarly, if there is an increase in street
robberies people may take measures to begin protecting themselves from these sort of
crimes, such as carrying something to defend themselves or carrying less valuables with
them.
Examples of Home Office Crime Statistics:
Between April 2020 and March 2021, the Home Office collected statistics on how many women were
killed and how many men were killed in England and Wales. With the statistics they could deduct the
number of gendered murders and who commits the murder by gender and showed that 117 women
were murdered, compared to 416 men being murdered. Only ten of these victims were murdered by
women, the rest men. This meant that the police could overall conclude that 92% of women were
killed by men when the suspect of the murder was known, and 60% of women knew their killer prior
to their murder. These statistics were really important as they gave a meaningful insight as to who is
killed each year by gender and meant that police and the public had a better idea on how many men
and women are killed by other men and women and would’ve also broken-down common locations
and times of the murders, making it easier for police to predict where to put patrolmen to help the
, crimes being prevented. This may not be an accurate revelation of crimes that are occurring
however, and it could be that some of the murders weren’t discovered, or the perpetrators were
never caught, which can distort these crime statistics and make them inaccurate.
Reliability
Reliability is defined as when a method used to collect data is repeated by a different collector, the
same results will be achieved as the original.
Statistics gathered by the Home Office Statistics are typically thought of as reliable because
they are collected directly from police forces themselves and despite them being from
separate forces, each force should have roughly the same procedure for recording and
collecting the crime statistics as they use the same procedures and names for crimes.
Despite procedures and ways of naming different crimes, many forces can still make
mistakes or label crimes differently to other forces and this can change the reliability of
crime statistics that are gathered and published. For example, if a robbery was to take place,
some forces may give themselves a threshold of £20 to define it as a serious home theft,
whereas others may give themselves a threshold of £10 to define it as a home theft. Despite
this being a very small number of differences, it can make a big difference in whether the
crimes are reported and published, or whether they go unpublished. When this is repeated
for many different offences, the amount that crime statistics can become inaccurate is large
and this means that published statistics on assault and theft can differ greatly from the true
amount that are published because of the small difference in thresholds that officers use.
Regarding assault, one officer may see someone who was involved in an attack and walked
away with very minor scratches on their hand, and classify and record this as assault,
whereas others many unrecord the crime and not classify this as assault, and when this
differs greatly for different forces, it can mean the real statistics are very different.
So, while Home Office Statistics are thought to be greatly reliable because they come from
forces themselves and not an exterior collector, as well as the forces using the same
procedures, the reality is that the crime statistics gathered can differ greatly from force to
force despite many of the statistics being similar, but this difference has occurred because
of the way different officers perceive and have thresholds for different crimes. This means
that the reliability of Home Office Statistics is lower than originally perceived by most
people. While it is still considered reliable on the most part, it isn’t fully reliable and some of
the crime statistics can differ in reliability.
Validity
This refers to whether the statistics that are produced by the Home Office provide a true picture of
the crime.
Validity can be altered on whether the crime is reported to the police and then recorded in
the statistics. Crimes which have a high rate of being under-reported such as rapes and other
forms of assault are often under-shown in the statistics, for example 45,000 rapes being
reported in 2016-2017, but the estimated actual number of rapes being recorded in 2016-17
is likely far higher than the statistics. People only report around 40% of the crimes that they
have been involved in, whether they are a victim or a witness. People don’t report crimes for
