Outline and assess the usefulness of official statistics in measuring crime Essay

Sociology Outline and assess the profitableness of decreed statistics in measuring abomination. Crime is essenti ally any sort of behaviour or an act which breaks laws of a society and is penalise by the legal system. What is considered outlaw or deviant is culturally determined. This means that what is considered criminal or deviant changes with time and place, as the values, norms and expectations change. What whitethorn non be delicious in one society at a fictitious charactericular time whitethorn be acceptable in other country or acceptable at another time, for example drug cafes in Amsterdam.Police Crime regards deliver been preserve and published annually by the position Office since the year 1857. Crime statistics be compiled in the basis of offences notified to the police. In this respect, they provide evidence of abhorrences that argon cognize to the police and functionaryly recorded by the police. Official statistics be useful in measuring disgust becau se they allow us to spot trends and patterns in the crime judge and the social spineground of criminals/ victims (quantative data).Also, these statistics help specify administration policy. Theories like functionalism lease use official statistics to break away theories to explain patterns in the official statistics. Durkheim employ statistics to measure felo-de-se rates, a form of deviance among societies and groups and developed theories about suicide. Others, like Merton expect that the statistics were valid and reliable and went on to develop explanations about working-class criminality.Many population now turn to victim measures much(prenominal)(prenominal) as the British Crime Survey (BCS) as more reliable reference works of communicateation. dupe Surveys ar so called because they ask a sample of the population what crimes they defy been a victim in the previous 12 months. This increases validity as they overwhelm all crimes that pot have been a victim of, regardless of whether or not they insure the crime to the police. A number of crimes ar not covered by the survey. These include crimes against business, crimes where there is no direct victim, such as possession of drugs, crimes against victims under 16 and crimes that have involved death. some other source of survey data on crime and deviance is self-report studies, where people are asked if they have committed any crime. Self-report studies are akin(predicate) to victim surveys except that they ask respondents to acknowledge to crimes they have committed. This type of survey data are less widely used than BCS, but are also unnamed and representative of the population.Steven Box, a Marxist, analysed 40 self-report studies and conclude that juvenile crime was not a working-class problem but quite a that the middle-class were less likely to labor caught. I look at respondents may not tell the truth because they may musical note embarrassed, may exaggerate or they may h ave forgotten the offence.To conclude, I believe the official statistics are very useful to us as they help to inform us about the rates of crime as well as government policy. They are annually published and anyone with internet access shtup view/download the data. These statistics cover a large part of the population and as they are compile by the state they are seen to have a great deal of validity.They can easily be compared to the previous statistics and their quantative character allows trends and patterns to be established. The ability to go back and check the findings means that the data are reliable. However, there are some disadvantages of official statistics. It is reported Official Crime Statistics notwithstanding show 30% of crimes committed.The other 70% is described as the Hidden Figure of Crime. Official crime statistics further show crime known to the police. In other words, not all crime is reported to the police. This may be because people may be reluctant to report a criminal incident if they do not have faith in the police to investigate and solve the crime. Another reason may be because they are scared, they could have been threatened by the criminal. Interactionism have a negative view on official statistics, they believe it as be of little worth. Cicourel stated that police are more likely to suspect and hear some people than other imputable to labelling.