CRIME IN SOCIETY

QUESTION

Introduction:

– topic

– context

– question/problem

– thesis (your opinion of the problem)

– sign-post (tell the reader how)

Paragraph 1:     Paragraph 2, 3 etc.

– point 1

– explanation

– evidence

Conclusion: (don’t start with something like “In conclusion” etc. because the readers will know which paragraph is the conclusion)

– how does it relate to what you asked at the beginning

– don’t repeat

– stresses the importance of your thesis statement

Strategies:

– answer “so what?”

– synthesis, not summarise

– not new meanings, new picture

SOLUTION

Introduction

To start with, during last few years the occurrence of crime in Australia has turned out to be a chief concern of public, political discussions and actions (Brookman, 2005). In spite of its spread and prevalence within the public arena, very less is known regarding the forces which drive the crime patterns and also, the knowledge base is very limited to assist intelligent estimates of the direction wherein the rates of crime are moving, particularly when altering direction (Clear and Frost, 2007). Holding such knowledge regarding the crime occurrence and measurement is essential for improving the reasonableness of public guidelines and public expenses associated with crime. Moreover, there are several means that can be adopted to measure the crime level in Australia namely; Official statistics, Victimization Surveys and lastly, the Self-report studies. Further, taking into account the above discussion this particular paper attempts to explore the three listed crime measuring techniques along with their advantages and drawbacks.

Official Statistics

Official statistics can be described as the quantitative data generated by the national and local government entities and could include a huge range of behaviour such as births, deaths, divorce and marriages, income, work, leisure and crime (Clear and Frost, 2007). Official statistics could be formulated as a by-product of the usual functioning of a government division. However, they could also arise from research devised specially to fabricate them. Moreover, two key sources of official statistics are namely; the government and surveys (Davis el. al., 1997). Additionally, an example of a survey source which produces official statistics is namely; the Office for National Statistics that is a government unit and is accountable for collecting and examining statistics. The ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) produces chief data sources which could inform the society regarding the crime victimisation. Further, the continuing sections now highlight the advantages and benefits of advantages and disadvantages of official statistics.

Official statistics are utilized by the sociologists for the reason that of there a number of advantages (Titus et. al., 1995). A key benefit is that official statistics are time and again acquired from data that has been collected from a huge sample size. Several sociologists could not probably manage to perform such vast investigation. The sample size also tends to increment the illustration of statistics. Moreover, they are also well planned and organised when investigated, so the criteria of sociological research could be fulfilled. The official statistics are generally readily available and comparatively less costly, thus the sociologists could spend more money and time on analysing facts rather than on gathering them (Titus et. al., 1995). Statistics could also at times be the only available source for a particular subject, like unemployment statistics. In addition to this, other benefit associated with official statistics is the fact that statistics make possible for the sociologists to make assessments and comparisons over time, since they are generally generated on regular basis. For instance, the Population Census that is performed after the period of every 10 years. Further, this is very much similar to longitudinal researches; although the sample size of official statistical facts is generally much bigger.

Moving ahead, after having a look at the advantages discussed above, it can be stated that the official statistics are in actuality highly valuable as a source of information and data. However, at the same time one should also not overlook the disadvantages associated with the official statistics. First of all, official statistics aren’t always generated in a resourceful form, making it tougher for a sociologist to examine and derive any patterns and trends from them. Other drawback is the fact that official statistics don’t always gauge what they actually intend to gauge (Clear and Frost, 2007). For instance, the Office Crime Rates Statistics don’t consider the actuality that not all crimes are reported. This could decline the illustration of the information and statistics. In addition to this, other factor that need to be taken into consideration at the time of understanding official statistics is that since these statistics are generally generated by the government entities, they might be politically predisposed, for instance to display that their guidelines have the foreseen effect (Davis el. al., 1997). A renowned illustration of this is that the technique of gathering unemployment statistics has altered several times that highlights that the rate of unemployment it declining (Loveday, 2000). From all these drawbacks it seems that even though official statistics could prove to be very informative and valuable, there exist various pitfalls that cannot be always avoided. Apart from all this, several researchers consider official statistics as an effective approach for collecting quantitative facts; however they also state that the statistics have various faults (Loveday, 2000). They usually agree that these statistics does not put forward measures of behaviour which could be utilized to examine possible ’cause and effect’ associations. However, interpretivists avoid the usage of official statistics for the purpose of measuring or deciding particular behaviour they refer to.

Going further, the sections below now provide an insight into the second technique of measuring crimes i.e. Victim Surveys as well as the Self-report studies.

Victim Surveys

A second means of assessing the level and types of crime is victim surveys. In victim survey technique, a group of population either, nationally and locally is asked about offences that have been done against them during a particular time period (Lauritsen, 2005). Victim Survey technique has a number of advantages associated with it. Firstly, this particular concept overpowers the actuality that police do not make a note of a noteworthy amount of crimes (Dugan, 1999). The technique also offers an exceptional picture of the degree and types of victimisation, thing that is completely absent from the official accounts. Moreover, the best-acknowledged victimisation research is BCS (the British Crime Survey) that is now gathered each year and has been in action ever since the year 1982. The BCS attempts to discover a representative sample. Additionally, the Victim surveys seeks to ask people if they had been the sufferers of a crime during the preceding year; if they had filed a report about the same to the police; and lastly, if the police had properly recorded the same (Clear and Frost, 2007). Several researches have brought to light the fact that there exists an astounding gap amid the level of crime committed as well as that ultimately recorded by police. Further, the other advantages of victim surveys includes the actuality that the people are asked about supposedly relevant issues and the decision weeds out public judgments not to report or the decisions of the police to not record, leading to better assessments of victimization and crimes (Dugan, 1999).

Going further, there are also drawbacks associated with the victim survey method. Firstly, the issue of centring statistics on victims’ remembrances is that memories are frequently faulty or prejudiced (Matthews and Young, 1986). Secondly, the classification of what offences have been carried out against them is completely left to the individual completing the questionnaire. This results in substantial inexactness in the groupings. Thirdly, victim surveys also overlook a number of offences like deception and corporate crime, and also the crimes where the casualty is uninformed of or not able to report a crime. Fourthly, in spite of being unnamed, individuals seem to under-report sexual crimes (Dugan, 1999). Further, survey also experiences the issue of not gathering data from those who are below the age of 16 years, even though this isn’t necessarily an issue related to victim survey as such.

Self-Report Studies

The third technique for gathering data and measuring crimes is self-report studies. Self-report studies are basically surveys in which a chosen set or cross-section of populace is asked what all crimes they have done (Titus et. al., 1995). This technique is extremely beneficial for the reason that it helps in revealing much about the criminals who aren’t processed or caught by the police. Particularly, it makes possible to discover about such ‘hidden lawbreakers’ ages, social class, gender and even their location. It’s also the most efficient means to find out regarding the victimless crimes like unlawful drug use. Moreover, the self-report studies are formulated to allow applicants to disclose information regarding their breaches of the law (Loveday, 2000). The key supposition is that the privacy of the person as well as the assurance of secrecy provided by the academic credentials encourages people to precisely highlight their illegal acts. However, the technique has faced some criticisms that the respondents might lie, overstate, disremember and underrepresent their illegal acts; interpretational and definitional issues; trustworthiness and lastly, validity of the data. Additionally, self-report study is considered to be a technique for assessing crimes encompassing the distribution of a comprehensive questionnaire to a group of individuals, asking them if they have done an offense during a specific time period (Loveday, 2000). Self-report study has proved to be a resourceful technique for criminologists to decide and discover the social traits of the offenders. Further, the paragraphs below now mirror the advantages and disadvantages related with the use of self-report studies.

There are a number of advantages with respect to the self-report studies technique. Firstly, Self-reported surveys about criminal offending enable criminologists to gather information for them without relying on the governmental sources (Matthews and Young, 1986). Secondly, such researches take in asking individuals to reveal their criminal and illegitimate participation in face-to-face interviews and anonymous questionnaires. Thirdly, the biggest strength of this technique is the fact that investigators could link a range of features of candidates with their confessed crimes which surpass the demographics of race, age and gender (Loveday, 2000). Fourthly, self-reported crime measures put forward largely correct facts with some kinds of anti-social crimes and disclose that almost everybody has committed some kind of unlawful activity at some point during their life.

Moving ahead, apart from the above mentioned advantages of self-report studies technique there also are few drawbacks which should also be taken into consideration (Titus et. al., 1995).  First of all, the biggest problem is that of validity i.e. the respondents might lie or overstate and even in case if they don’t intentionally seek to misinform they might simply be wrong. Second, self-report studies involve the issue of representativeness since it’s simple to study them and the majority of self-report researches are based on young individuals and students (Loveday, 2000). For instance, there exist no such researches or surveys related to professional criminals, drug traffickers etc. Moreover, the third problem associated with this technique is the issue of relevance (Matthews and Young, 1986). Since the issue of representativeness, most of the offences discovered tend to be insignificant. However, the only data that is available regarding who commits illegal activities, excluding the official statistics of individuals who have been imprisoned, arises from self-report surveys and also they have been widely utilized to discover issues like drug use and crime.

Taking a step ahead, it has frequently stated that the survey measuring techniques limit the understanding of offenses such as serious assault and motor vehicle theft. The reasons being the fact that not all crimes are recorded, especially in case of assault when victim feel social disgrace in filling the complaint, there are not much surveys and data related to such crimes and there are chances of the data or information provided to be unreliable and incomplete. Therefore, it’s hard to trust the available data which are employed to illustrate criminal behavior. Further, it’s recommended that such data and statistics should be regarded as a reference; else one might reach at invalid conclusions (Skogan, 1990).

The sources of and over crime data can vary due to several valid reasons and on different levels. The ultimate choice regarding the source of data to be used should be an informed decision made on the basis of the understanding regarding the purpose of data source and the methodology that is behind that source. The ABS relies on the ABS Quality Framework to select the data source based on the fitness of purpose (Allen, 2002). Both the Police record crime data and the victimisation survey data help in informing the users about the nature and extent of the crime victimisation. Data from the victimisation surveys can be used for contextualizing the information obtained by the crime data in police record (Statistics Canada, 1997). The victimization surveys or the administrative data alone cannot supply complete information about crime and each one has its particular importance in addressing specific issues. A number of methodical factors are expected to contribute towards the differences that exist in survey results. After understanding the nature of measures used in crime measurement, it depends on the user to decide which measure of crime would be most suitable for their purpose.

Conclusion

To conclude, there is no doubt in the actuality that the level and rate of crimes worldwide, particularly in Australia has been increasing with passing times. There exists the need to review and measure the crimes by making use of techniques discussed above namely; official statistics, victim surveys and self-report studies. These techniques have a number of advantages but at the same time one should also not overlook the drawbacks associated with these crime measuring methods for effective results.

References:

Allen, B 2002, Qualifying Quality – Issues of Presentation and Education. Presented at the International Symposium on Data Quality, Quebec, Canada, 16-19 October 2001.

Brookman, F. (2005) Understanding Homicide, London: Sage.

Clear, T. R. and Frost, N. A. (2007) Informing Public Policy, Criminology & Public Policy, Vol. 6, pp. 633-640.

Davis, R., Lurigio, A. and Skogan, W. (1997)Victims of Crime, New York: Sage.

Dugan, L. (1999) The Effect of Criminal Victimization on a Household’s Moving Decision, Criminology, Vol. 37, pp. 903-930.

Lauritsen, J. L. (2005) Social and Scientific Influences on the Measurement of Criminal Victimization, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 21, pp. 245-266.

Loveday, B. (2000) Managing Crime: Police Use of Crime Data as an Indicator of Effectiveness, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, Vol. 28, No.  3, pp. 215–37.

Matthews, R. and Young, J. (1986) Confronting Crime, London: Sage.

Skogan, W G 1990, ‘The Polls – A Review: The National Crime Survey Redesign’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol 54: pp. 256-272.

Statistics Canada 1997, An Overview of the Differences between Police-Reported and Victim-Reported Crime.

Titus, R., Heinzelmann, F. and Boyle, J. M. (1995) The Anatomy of Fraud: Report of a Nationwide Survey, National Institute of Justice Journal, Vol. 22, pp. 28-34.

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