The problems of crime reporting

Mark Easton points out how the statistics are read by various groups to suit their agenda. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14156161

A problem with the crime survey approach is seemingly each year those interviewed tell the researchers that they themselves have suffered fewer crimes—but they are adamant that nationally crime is on the rise. This disconnect between experience and perception is the key to the problem of measuring crime.

One reason why BCS figures diverge from public perception is that the survey misses out huge swathes of crime. Interviewers do not ask about rape (sexual offences are surveyed differently) or murder (whose victims are unavailable for comment). The survey does not enumerate crimes against businesses and it under-reports things such as drug offences where the notion of victim is vague. And people under the age of 16 are not interviewed—a serious limitation, since young people are disproportionately likely to be victims.

Police figures also have their shortcomings, starting with the fact that they miss all unreported crimes. Many that are reported are poorly defined. People are particularly concerned about violent crime, for example—but half of all crimes that the police categorise as violent do not end in injury. The report suggests reclassifying these oxymoronic offences—which would mean tidying up oddities such as bigamy and “concealment of birth” as well as the much more prevalent “common assault” and “harassment”, which sound worse than they are.

In particular police figures are untrusworthy because of  the socialisation of the police and their shortage of time and resources. The Sociologist Holdaway shows how the police develop an occupational culture which emphasises the notion of police discretion, and how officers are socialised into a particular set of norms and values.  The concept of police discretion implies that police officers have discretion – that is, they have the power to turn a ‘blind eye’ to offences when they feel that an offence is too minor to bother taking further action, or perhaps when they feel that the probable outcome will not warrant the effort that will be required on their part. .  According to Holdaway, the occupational culture of policing, puts great value on action and aggression.  This can lead police officers to focus their activities on particular types of offences, e.g. violent crime at the expense of traffic offences, armed robbery rather than shoplifting.

As a result of these criticisms, sociologists and social historians have talked of the ‘dark figure’ of crime, whilst others have used the metaphor of the iceberg to explain crime statistics. Measured levels of crime, are only levels of reported crime – there is always a ‘dark figure’ of unreported crime.  As with icebergs, a small proportion of crime is visible, but the bulk remains hidden from our view.