Section (b) measurements of crime

Question 1

What are 3 sources of official crime statistics

Answer 1

Hospitals
Courts - conviction records
Police counts

Question 2

How can official statistics allow trends to be identified

Answer 2

Show changes in crime rates over time

Question 3

What else do official statistics allow for?

Answer 3

Comparisons

Question 4

What do sociologists see official statistics as?

Answer 4

A social construct

Question 5

Why don’t official statistics accurately reflect crimes?

Answer 5

Unreported and unrecorded crimes don’t appear in official statistics

Question 6

What are self-report studies?

Answer 6

Research that uses confidential questionnaires or interviews to ask people what cries or deviant acts they have committed

Question 7

What have self-report studies revealed about patterns of crime?

Answer 7

That there are significant numbers crimes committed by women and the middle class

Question 8

What do self-report studies and victim surveys uncover?

Answer 8

Crimes that were not reported to the police and why they were unreported

Question 9

Advantage of self-report study to respondent

Answer 9

Anonymity and confidentiality mean that there are no consequences for those who admit to crimes

Question 10

What have self-report studies revealed about patterns of crime?

Answer 10

That there are significant numbers crimes committed by women and the middle class

Question 11

What do self-report studies uncover?

Answer 11

Crimes that were unreported and why they were unreported

Question 12

Advantage of self-report study to respondent

Answer 12

Anonymity and confidentiality mean that there are no consequences for those who admit to crimes

Question 13

Why might people be more willing to answer self-report studies?

Answer 13

Anonymity and confidentiality

Question 14

Why aren’t self-report studies representative?

Answer 14

Most have been of adolescents in school, so whole categories of crime are ignored e.g. middle class crime

Question 15

Why might there be a problem with the validity of self-report studies?

Answer 15

Respondents may exaggerate to impress their peers or the researcher. Researchers can’t be sure of how many and which responses are valid

Question 16

Why might there be a problem with the relevance of self-report studies?

Answer 16

Some include questions on trivial offences (e.g. travelling on public transport without paying) that are a test of honesty rather than criminality.

Question 17

What type of crime can’t victim surveys cover?

Answer 17

Victimless crimes e.g. drug abuse

Question 18

What encourages victims to be honest in victim surveys?

Answer 18

They are anonymous

Question 19

Why is there a greater response rate for victim surveys

Answer 19

People are more likely to admit to crimes they have been victims of than crimes they have committed

Question 20

How are victim surveys unable to cover all types of crime?

Answer 20

They cannot include victimless crimes e.g. drug abuse,

Question 21

What victims aren’t usually included victim surveys

Answer 21

Children, as they are often not respondents

Question 22

Example of a crime that is still underreported despite the use of victim surveys

Answer 22

Sexual offences

Question 23

Why is the validity of victim surveys questionable?

Answer 23

They rely on the memories of the respondents, which may be faulty e.g. forgetting whether an offence happened in the past year

Question 24

How might police manipulate the statistics?

Answer 24

Crimes are made to disappear by recording them as a false report or downgrading their seriousness

Question 25

What else shapes the way police record crimes?

Answer 25

The media and political pressures, e.g. being under pressure to clear up crimes about which there is a moral panic

Question 26

Examples of invisible crimes that don’t go into police statistics

Answer 26

Corporate crime, white collar crimes