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A Discussion Of The Usefulness Of Official Crime Statistics And Other Types Of Crime Information.

Although ‘official' statistics should provide an accurate representation of crime, criminologists and sociologists are keen to emphasize that they should be seen in a critical mindset. This essay is focused on determining just to what extent official statistics provide an accurate representation of the extent of crime through examining different arguments concerning their limitations and benefits. This essay also focuses on other types of crime data such as the victim survey and qualitative data, to see whether they provide a more truthful portrayal of crime.

The first half of the essay analyses the usefulness of official statistics. Here a main theme is the socially constructed nature of crime and crime statistics, and the consequences of this, and how the accuracy of official statistics is affected by the problems associated with police recording, such as the inconsistency of police behaviour and reporting patterns, both by the police and the public. The second half of the essay looks two types of alternative crime data; victimization surveys and qualitative data. Here the key point is drawn from the work of Coleman & Monynihan (1996: 21), that these types of data provide an alternative, rather than a directly comparable, overall picture of crime to that offered by police statistics: ‘fuller' than the later in some respects, but ‘narrower' in others.

Official crime statistics refer to the data obtained directly from the police and the court system. Although they are accredited for being ‘official', criminologists and sociologists are keen to emphasize that they should be viewed with a critical mindset. Two fundamental theories relating to this critical view of official statistics: ‘the tip of the iceberg' and the ‘dark figure' of crime, relate to the argument of the existence of a vast number of unrecorded crimes, hidden away from the official statistics.

From a more micro perspective of the system, the accuracy of official crime statistics as a...