Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

It is very noticeable that this article starts with statistics on which crimes have gone up. Good news rarely wins an audience for the media, and often people only reaad the first part of a news article. It could be argued that this kind of tactic influences the formation of moral panics and moral crusades in society.

It’s important to remember that the Home Office Statistics are a statement of crime that was reported to and recorded by the police - it is commonly acknowledged that not all crimes are reported to the police and that some crimes are more likely to be reported than others (e.g. people tend to report car theft because they need a crime number in order to make an insurance claim). The types of crimes reported also change over time, as do crime recording procedures.

The British Crime Survey is a victim survey and is often seen as a more reliable and valid than statistics on recorded crime as it surveys a representative sample of the population and asks them about their expereinces of crime over the previous year. However, even this has its drawbacks and leads us to the question of whether crime statistics are really social constructions.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Robberies up 6% but crime stable
This article looks at young people’s experiences of crime, the lack of quantitative research into it and the conflicting findings of those research projects that have been carried out.
BBC NEWS | UK | The hidden victims of crime?