Crime Stats Flashcards
Crime Stats - Official Stats
• Quantitative data used by government + agencies to make decisions about soc
• Gov + institutions (police) Use this data to inform policy making
- Registration –> official births/marriage
- Official Surveys –> census
- Administrative Record –> Truancy/conviction rates
Crime Stats - Official Stats Evaluation
Strengths
• Provides us with general overview or UK pop
• Make easy comparisons between groups
• Gov have power to compell people = high response rate
Disadvantages
• Lacks validity - manipulate for gov interest (unemployment rate)
• Definition of terms different to sociological
Crime Stats - Theoretical Issues - Positivism
• Representativenews –> important to make general statements about soc
- more representative than surveys conducted themselves (budget) –> large scale, whole population
- Crime surveys interview 50,000 people
- Great care taken with sampling procedures
• Reliability –> People would agree on figures - trained, standardised techniques
- Census is a questionnaire administered in the same way to everyone
- But census coders may make errors
Crime Stats - Theoretical Issues - Interpretivism - Cicourel
• Social Constructs (Cicourel) –> believe Stats are Constructs representing labels
- Treat Stats as a topic + investigate how they are socially constructed (mental illness)
• Hard Stats –> more valid (Births, deaths)
- Small number unrecorded
- Little disagreement with definition
- Can’t manipulate
• Soft Stats–> Less valid
- Compiled from admin records created by state agencies
- Represent agencies decisions (truancy)
- Neglected as unknown/dark figures of unrecorded cases
- Easily manipulated
Crime Stats - Offending, Sentencing + Punishing - Official Stats
• 3 ways to gather crime stats
1) Official Stats –> tell us number of arrests
- Large samples, don’t reflect offending rate, seen as police actions (racism motivation)
Crime Stats - Offending, Sentencing + Punishing - Victimisation Studies
2) Victimisation Studies –> Ask victim of crime for recollection of ethnic identity of offender
- British Crime Survey -
• White people less likely to have experienced crime (13%)
• Mixes ethnicity most likely to have experienced crime (20%)
- Only 20% see victims fave
- Bowling + Phillips –> Victims influenced by racial stereotypes + expectations
Crime Stats - Offending, Sentencing + Punishing - Self-Report Studies
3) Self-Report Studies –> ask people to disclose own criminal beh - high validity
• Graham + Bowling - Black (44%), White (43%), Indian (30%)
• Sharpe + Budd - Found similar patterns
• Challenges official stats + victim surveys
- highlights inconsistency
Crime Stats - Evaluation
• Marxists –> Official Stats are created by state + are part of ISA
- Are ideological - convince us crime is a wc issue = false class consciousness
• hides true cause + inequality
• Feminists –> Quantitative methods are patriarchal
- created by men
- doesn’t reflect women’s lives
Crime Stats - Crime + Deviance are geographically related
• No universal understanding of crime
- consent to sex: 14 Italy, 16 UK
- LGBTQ: Poland frown upon it
- Abortions: USA = illegal, UK = legal
Crime Stats - Crime + Deviance are time related
• Smoking in pubs used to be legal
• Child labour + child beating was legal
Crime Stats - The History of Madness - Foucalt
• Treat mentally ill more humanly than past
• 16/17th century - renaissance
• 18th century - Great confinement
• Modern - confinement + Psychology
Crime Stats - Crime + Deviance are social Constructs
• Social Constructs = concept that doesn’t exist in reality but has been created + constructed by soc
- depend on interpretation, time + Geography
- depends upon definition = subjective + relative
Crime Stats - Social control
• Hobbes –> state of nature - life before soc was carnage + chaos
- soc needed a state/authority to control + prevent chaos
• Social control –> methods to make sure people follow norms + values
• Informal control –> agencies with no legal power to enforce law
• Formal control –> agencies with legal power to use force/coercion
Crime Stats - Power + Control
• Power = ability to define crime
• Control = ability to shape definition of crime + Deviance + enforce social control
- media
Crime Stats - Criminal Justice System - The police + Canteen culture - Holdaway
= police, courts, gov responsible for creating + enforcing law
• Police have dev own Subculture
- result of working in specialist + demanding role + spending long hours together
- suspiciousness - categorise people on assumption
- internal solidarity + social isolation - rely on each other for support + protection
- Conservatism - hold + promote traditional values
- Masculinity –> physical strength
