Forensics - Defining and Measuring Crime Flashcards Preview

Meg's Psychology Paper 3 > Forensics - Defining and Measuring Crime > Flashcards

Flashcards in Forensics - Defining and Measuring Crime Deck (11)
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1
Q

Define crime

A

An illegal act which is punishable by incarceration or another type of punishment, after consideration by a judge and jury in a legal trial.

2
Q

What are the historical issues related to defining crime?

A

Historical issues show that what was considered a crime at one point in history, may not be considered a crime according to modern standards e.g homosexuality only being legalised in the UK in 1967, through the Sexual Offences Act of 1967

3
Q

What are the cultural issues related to defining crime?

A

Similarly to historical issues, cultural issues face the same problem. For example, smacking a child in one culture may be seen as acceptable or even encouraged as a form of ‘tough love’ , whereas this is not the case in the UK - smacking a child so that a mark is left is now punishable by law, according to the 2004 Child’s Protection Act.

4
Q

What are the 3 main methods of measuring crime?

A

Official Statistics, Victim Surveys and Offender Surveys.

5
Q

What do Official statistics describe?

A

OS describe the number of crimes reported to and recorded by the police which have been processed and published by the Home Office on an annual basis.

6
Q

What do victim surveys involve?

A

Victim surveys involve 50,000 randomly selected households to self-report the number and types of crimes which have been committed against them during the past year. It is then published annually by the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

7
Q

What do offender surveys target?

A

A randomly-selected cohort of criminals

8
Q

What do offender surveys provide details of?

A

The criminals give details of the types and frequency of crimes they have committed across a set time period e.g during the last year as recorded by The Offender Crime and Justice Survey.

9
Q

Who are offender surveys particularly useful for? Why?

A

Governmental organisations as it gives them a view of the patterns and risk factors for crime at a national scale. The results from the surveys can be used to inform crime prevention/management strategies.

10
Q

What are the limitations of the methods used to measure crime?

A
  • A particular issue related to official statistics is its susceptibility to concealing the ‘dark figure’ of crime. I.e where 75% of crime goes unreported. This may be due to a lack of standardisation of police recording policies in relation to crime , as well as the victim fearing revenge or feeling untrustworthy of the police.
  • Victim surveys suffer from the serious methodological problems associated with self report techniques and specifically , the idea of ‘telescoping’ where the victim may mistakenly believe that a crime had been committed against them significantly more recently that it actually had been due to the trauma and distress associated with it.
  • The data collected from Offender surveys may be distorted or biased because it has been collected from offenders. They may want to over-exaggerate their crimes to give themselves a feeling of accomplishment and grandeur, or under-exaggerate their crimes to diminish responsibility. This means that too much reliance cannot be placed upon the honesty and integrity of offenders in self-report measures.
11
Q

What are the strengths of defining crime?

A

+ Victim surveys have the advantage over official statistics, the ‘dark figure’ of crime is less likely to be concealed due to the self-report technique, where individuals may feel that there are less repercussions for their actions.

+ Offender surveys have been particularly useful in informing crime prevention and management strategies due to showing the patterns and risk factors of offending behaviour. Therefore, this demonstrates a real-life practical application.

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