scholarly journals Official crime statistics – no reassurance for the victims of crime

1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 258-259
Author(s):  
Tom McClintock
Keyword(s):  
Crime Statistics ◽  
Victims Of Crime ◽  
Official Crime

7. Crime data and criminal statistics: a critical reflection

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Maguire ◽  
Susan McVie
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Crime Statistics ◽  
Crime Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
Official Crime ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Overview

This chapter provides a critical reflection on the nature and measurement of crime levels, patterns, and trends. It covers empirical and methodological questions about how much crime there is and how this changes over time and considers the relationship between what crime data are collected and published and changes in perceptions of and responses to the crime problem as a result of developments in the politics of crime control. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first provides a critical overview of the development of the ‘official’ crime statistics in England and Wales, highlighting some of the key decisions that are made about how to present statistics to the public and how to respond to legal changes, new sources of data, and the emergence of new kinds of criminal behaviour. The second section examines, and explores the reasons behind, a rapid growth in demand for new kinds of information about crime which has been evident since the 1970s. The final section summarizes challenges, dilemmas, and recent debates about the future of national crime statistics, including questions about how to maintain public trust and how to balance competing demands of relevance, comprehensiveness, and robust measurement of trends.

Official Crime Statistics: Their use and Interpretation

2002 ◽  
Vol 112 (477) ◽  
pp. F85-F106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziggy MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Crime Statistics ◽  
Official Crime

Challenges to the veracity and the international comparability of Russian homicide statistics

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Lysova
Keyword(s):  
Performance Indicator ◽  
International Comparisons ◽  
Homicide Rate ◽  
Crime Statistics ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
The World ◽  
Drugs And Crime ◽  
Official Crime ◽  
Country Specific

Homicide statistics are often seen as the most reliable and comparable indicator of violent deaths around the world. However, the analysis of Russian homicide statistics challenges this understanding and suggests that international comparisons of homicide levels can be hazardous. Drawing on an institutionalist perspective on crime statistics, official crime-based homicide statistics in Russia are approached as a social construct, a performance indicator and a tool of governance. The paper discusses several incentives to misrepresent official homicide data in contemporary Russia, including politicization of homicide statistics as a legacy of the Soviet’ era’s falsified crime statistics and the role of policing. Mainly, the paper identifies and describes the exact legal, statistical and country-specific substantive mechanisms that allow homicide statistics to be distorted in Russia. By considering legal mechanisms alone, the more accurate homicide rate may be at least 1.6 times higher than that reported in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Global Study on Homicide 2013.

Minority Paradoxes: Ethnic Differences in Self-reported Offending and Official Crime Statistics

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjen Leerkes ◽  
Ramiro Martinez ◽  
Pim Groeneveld
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Crime Statistics ◽  
Official Crime

Trust in Children as a Function of Race, Sex, and Socio-Economic Group

1971 ◽  
Vol 29 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1183-1187 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wubberhorst ◽  
Samuel Gradford ◽  
Frank N. Willis
Keyword(s):  
School Children ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Urban Crime ◽  
Crime Statistics ◽  
White Children ◽  
Victims Of Crime

Trust was assessed for 880 school children employing a method in which the children might choose to aid or not to aid a young male E who was a stranger to them. Boys were more likely to trust E and blacks were less likely to trust a white E than were white children but even less likely to trust a black E. The results were interpreted in relation to urban crime statistics indicating that the victims of crime are poor and black and that the criminal is likely to be a young man.

scholarly journals Worrying trends: The official 2008/09 South African crime statistics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Burger
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Crime Rate ◽  
Downward Trend ◽  
Crime Statistics ◽  
The South ◽  
Police Service ◽  
South African Police Service ◽  
South African Police ◽  
Official Crime

The South African Police Service (SAPS) released the official crime statistics for 2008/2009 on 22 September 2009. As usual the statistics drew huge media and public interest. This article provides an overview of the key trends and offers an analysis of the statistics. Key trends include that the overall crime rate, after a five-year respite in which there was a downward trend, is on the increase; as are the so-called 'trio crimes'  (house robberies, business robberies and car hijackings) and truck hijackings. This article briefly considers the controversy around the validity of the police's crime statistics and notes a few lessons from Colombia.

scholarly journals FALLING CRIME, RISING FEAR: 2003 National Victims of Crime Survey

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duxita Mistry
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Good News ◽  
Crime Statistics ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Police Data ◽  
Victims Of Crime ◽  
Alternative Sources

For several years, the police have maintained that crime levels in South Africa are ‘stabilising’. Without alternative sources of crime statistics, it is impossible to test these claims. The most reliable supplements to police data are national victim surveys, which are now conducted regularly in several countries for precisely this purpose. The 2003 National Victims of Crime Survey shows that crime levels, as measured by the surveys, have indeed declined since 1998. Public sentiment does not reflect this good news however – feelings of safety are much worse now than they were five years ago.

scholarly journals Are Asian Victims Less Likely to Report Hate Crime Victimization to the Police? Implications for Research and Policy in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 001112872110415
Author(s):  
Brendan Lantz ◽  
Marin R. Wenger
Keyword(s):  
Hate Crime ◽  
Hate Crimes ◽  
Crime Victims ◽  
Crime Reporting ◽  
Crime Statistics ◽  
Crime Victimization ◽  
Official Crime ◽  
Research And Policy

Anti-Asian hate crimes have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, no research has considered whether crime reporting patterns are different among Asian hate crime victims, relative to other victims. Following this, this research presents an examination of differences in reporting victimization to the police between Asian and non-Asian victims using information from 997 respondents who experienced a hate crime in the first 1 to 2 months of the pandemic. Results indicate that Asian victims are significantly and substantially less likely to report victimization to the police than other victims. Taken together, these results suggest that current estimates of increases in anti-Asian hate crime based on official crime statistics—although high—may actually be an under-estimation of the true extent of the problem.

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