Outline and Assess the View That Official Crime Statistics Are Not Useful to the Sociologist
Official crime statistics are quantitive date and come from different sources such as The British Crime Survey, Official Government Statistics and Self-report Studies.
The Official Government Statistics are accumulated from police and count records; these include convictions, cautions and Crown prosecution service. Whereas, the British crime survey is a victim study which takes place every year. It shows a representative sample of over 16s living in private residents in England and Wales. It is untaken by face to face interviews where respondents are asked about their experiences with crime incidents in the last 12 months. In 2004/5 over 45,000 people took part in the survey. It helps to identify those people most at risk of different types of crime which helps them to plan prevention programmes. The British Crime survey looks at people’s attitude toward crime and the Criminal Justice system. Self report studies ask people if they have committed a series of offences over a period time, which they haven’t got caught or haven’t reported to the police. Most people don’t know that they have committed a crime or even know the penalties for the crimes which they have done. For example, using the company phone to make a personal call can result in £5,000 or 6 months on prison.
The prison population is illustrated in the Official Government Statistics. Nearly three-quarters of prisoners were in receipt of benefits immediately before entering prison. This displays that lower classes such as under class and working class are more likely to commit a crime. This can be explained by Millers study of working class males. Millers said that this anti social behaviour is just an extreme development of normal, working class male values. He says that these working class males have six ‘focal concerns’ which lead to deviance; trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement, fate and autonomy. They claim that they don’t look for trouble it just finds them while being physically strong
The Official Government Statistics are accumulated from police and count records; these include convictions, cautions and Crown prosecution service. Whereas, the British crime survey is a victim study which takes place every year. It shows a representative sample of over 16s living in private residents in England and Wales. It is untaken by face to face interviews where respondents are asked about their experiences with crime incidents in the last 12 months. In 2004/5 over 45,000 people took part in the survey. It helps to identify those people most at risk of different types of crime which helps them to plan prevention programmes. The British Crime survey looks at people’s attitude toward crime and the Criminal Justice system. Self report studies ask people if they have committed a series of offences over a period time, which they haven’t got caught or haven’t reported to the police. Most people don’t know that they have committed a crime or even know the penalties for the crimes which they have done. For example, using the company phone to make a personal call can result in £5,000 or 6 months on prison.
The prison population is illustrated in the Official Government Statistics. Nearly three-quarters of prisoners were in receipt of benefits immediately before entering prison. This displays that lower classes such as under class and working class are more likely to commit a crime. This can be explained by Millers study of working class males. Millers said that this anti social behaviour is just an extreme development of normal, working class male values. He says that these working class males have six ‘focal concerns’ which lead to deviance; trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement, fate and autonomy. They claim that they don’t look for trouble it just finds them while being physically strong