Week #2 Reading: Newburn Flashcards
About the Newburn Reading:
Basic introduction to the three primary measures of criminal behaviour and describes the advantages and disadvantages of each.
What are some Pitfalls of counting offenders and offences in official statistics
If offender is has 3 charges, the ‘principle’ offence may be the only one recorded in official statistics
- Another offender however may be in court 3 different times and recorded 3 different times
Statistics can only contain info about a limited set of offences, not all offences
- Notifiable offences are all crime reported to, or discovered by, the police and then recorded (which is then reported to Home Office)
- Can be the most serious
- The problem is summary offences, or more minor offences that aren’t recorded
- Although they aren’t serious there is a sizable number
- Therefore police recorded crime doesn’t represent all crime
What is the clearance rate?
- Indicator of police efficiency
- Number of conditions which may allow crime to be defined of having been cleared up
- Someone has been charged/cautioned/ convicted
- Offence was taken into consideration by court
- Victim unwilling to give evidence etc.
- Vary between offence types and police forces
What is the attrition rate?
- The proportion of all offences that eventually end up in CJS and more particularly with a caution or conviction
- In all recording only small proportion end up in caution or conviction
- Shortfalls in reporting and in recording are the two major factors in what is referred to as the ‘attrition rate’ in the criminal justice system
What is the BSC?
- asks respondents about crimes they experience in last 12 months and whether they reported and why [not]
- Using crimes covered by both sets of data it’s possible to produce estimates of rates of reporting
- 2005/06 estimated 42% of incidents were reported
- Reporting rate varies across offence types
How do we then know what proportion of offences are reported?
Use the BCS (British crime survey) as a comparison
What are ways crimes might not be known?
victim unaware of offence - petty theft
victimless crime
- drug purchase
crimes unreported to police
What is attrition?
More crimes occurring than appearing in statistics
What are ways that legislation impacts crime?
New legislation creates new offences (crimes that didn’t exist before)
- Such as racial harassment
- As new legislation creates new offences, it allows for additional crimes to be recorded in official statistics
Legislation may be repealed
- Homosexuals no longer being illegal
These, and other factors (such as police regulated neighborhoods differently) influence what is found in statistics and whether or not these crimes are reported to police or recorded
What are the trends in overall crime in England?
- 19th century and early 20th had low recorded crime rates compared to 21st
- Remained so until late 50s
- Crime rises every year until early 90s
- Crime has been changing over time, rise in violent crime and criminal damage
- We can use other sources of data as a point of comparison
Assess official statistics?
- Most important lesson in relation to any data-set: it will always have limitations
- No data source has complete accuracy
What are disadvantages of the UCR system?
- Cannot tell us much about ‘overall crime rate’ in US
- Only covers limited range of crimes
- Limited list is too focused on street crime and doesn’t include white collar crimes and other serious crimes
- It’s not compulsory for police departments to report, so doesn’t cover whole country
- Variation between how police departments record crime despite existence about rules of recording procedures
What are advantages of the UCR system?
- Part 1 offences focus on clearly a clearly identifiable set of crimes that the public would agree to be crimes which they are concerned about
- Unlike criminal statistics in England and Wales which has broad range of offences which may not concern public
What are non-index offences in UCR?
- Only cover crimes which result in arrest (unlike part 1)
- Less serious offences, and are underestimated
- Covers other forms of violence (assault), theft, sex offences, drunkenness, and fraud
What were the first national crime statistics ?
France
- published in 1872
- Adolphe Quetelet,
- recognized dark figure
England and Wales
- Criminal Statistics
- Until mid-to-late 19th century sentencing statistics were one of the main sources of info about crime
- Main publications: Criminal Statistics, Sentencing Statistics, Prison and Probation Statistics
US
- Collecting systematic data took longer than in Europe
- Uniform Crime Report (UCR), 1920
- Police departments provide info on specific crimes and are compiled by FBI
What are the two main methods used for measuring criminal trends?
Data collection by law enforcement agencies
- Concerns crimes reported by the public or brought to authorities attention
- Cons of this method:
- There is ‘dark figure’ or a lot of unreported crime
Survey methods
- Used to elicit info from a representative sample of the population about their experiences of crime
- Primarily as victims
- Usually spans over previous year
- Victimization surveys viewed as a more accurate measure of crime levels and trends than data collected by law enforcement agencies
What aspects effect whether something is deemed criminal?
- Whether anyone knows about them
- If they know, whether they consider them worth doing anything about
- If they do, whether the police or anyone else acts upon, or is able to act upon, what they report
Is there a such thing as crime?
- There is no simple thing called crime
- There are criminal offences
- These offences are defined by criminal law
- What we consider criminal is a social construct
What is the objective of victimization surveys?
Objective is to seek to interview representative sample of population and ask questions about victimization experiences
- Over past year
Ability of victimization surveys to provide accurate measure of crime rates enables them to be used as a ‘social barometer’
Can be used to estimate size of the gap between reported and unreported crime
Can be used to asses crime prevention effects of particular initiatives
What is the method of the BCS?
- Respondents asked a broad range of crimes, and if they have experienced any in past year
- follow up questions to explore nature of offences, and whether they reported
What are the merits of the BCS?
police statistics of recoded crime seemed adequate as a measure of police work-load, but – because of unreported and unrecorded crime – deficient as an index of crime
Alleviates public misconceptions about crime
- Promised a more informed picture of crime which might help create a more balanced climate of opinion about law and order
Boost criminological research and theory
What are the limitations of the BCS?
- Doesn’t include under-16s, therefore no inform on youth victimization
- Household sample, and doesn’t include homeless who experience high rates of victimization
- Doesn’t include business, ignores white-collar crime
- Relies on people to report their experiences, so murder or victimless crimes (drug purchase) aren’t included
What are the main messages of comparison between official data and victimization surveys?
- the BCS clearly indicates that there is a very substantial amount of crime never reported in Criminal Statistics
- Increase in crime that occurred until 90s were less steep than indicated in statistics
- General trend of crime is similar in both data sources
- Both the BCS and official records show balance between car crime, other property crime, and violence against one person
What are the objectives of self-report studies?
- Develop measures of the extent of crime using very similar definitions of crime to that of official statistics, but in a way that would overcome the cons of the latter
- Develop a more accurate measure of crime
