Are official statistics a reliable source of information about crime in Britain? Official criminal statistics are defined as “Statistical data compiled by the police and the courts and routinely published by governments as indices of the extent of crime” (Munchie, 2001, p194). “The working class, the young males, and members of some ethnic minorities are all more likely to commit crimes than the middle class, the elderly, females and whites – according to official statistics”. (Haralambos and Holborn, 2004, p338). In assessing the question “Are official statistics a reliable source of information about crime in Britain?” several factors will be considered: including how the statistics are collected, the divide between males and females in crime statistics, the over representation of ethnic minorities and any problems in looking at the true extent of crime using statistics as an indicator for this.
Street crime has always received much more attention than corporate mostly due to the significant power differences between the criminals. The impact of such a disproportionate focus on street crime leads to the negative perceptions of minorities and lower-class individuals that only perpetuate the distortion of the true nature of crime in the United States. Both corporate and street crimes are but more mediums through which societal problems deriving from the class- and race- stratified nature of the United States can be seen. The heavily publicizing of street crime by the media are a few reasons why most Americans usually focus on street crime rather than on corporate crime. Other factors such as the exclusion of corporate crime in the United Crime Reports (UCR) published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that are based on data from local police agencies contribute to the less focus of corporate crime by Americans.
The bias that the media place on police statistics make it appear that the police force are more successful than they truly are, creating misleading statistics. This bias is formed as the police are a major source of crime stories and wish to portray themselves in a positive light and also due to the over exaggeration that the media places on crime. In some cases the media is seen as a cause of crime, as it has a negative effect on attitudes, values and behaviour. The media’s influence is seen to affect certain groups more than others, these groups are usually more susceptible to influence than others like the young, lower class and uneducated. The media influences these groups through many ways, such as imitation by creating a deviant role model encouraging “copycat” behaviour.
If the only reason to pull someone over depends on his or her race, this causes a discriminatory impact. Police departments begun to review data on stops and change police officers behaviors, arguments and attitudes towards the leading of stereotype based discriminatory treatment. (Racial profiling, 2012) This researcher frowns much upon racial profiling but with surveys conducted every day on who is likely to commit a crime, and what age, and what sex, and what minority group then people tend to lean towards these surveys proving that race is a huge part of crime involvement. In conclusion, criminal profiling works as an investigative tool to help solve crimes. Criminal profiling has come a long way and still needs a lot of improvement.
Assess Sociological Explanations for Gender Differences in Crime and Deviance Official crime statistics show that men much more likely to commit crimes than women and there is also a difference in the types of crimes each gender is more likely to commit – women committing shoplifting and men committing more violent crimes. There have been numerous different explanations for gender differences in crime including the chivalry thesis, sex role theory, control theory, and the liberation thesis. However, the official crime statistics are largely questioned by sociologists because it has been argued that they only show the criminal justice system’s view that men are more likely to commit the crimes and therefore they look more for male criminals rather than female ones. The chivalry thesis argue that these official statistics are unrepresentative due to the fact that most of the criminal justice agents – such as police officers, judges or magistrates – are men and they are more likely to treat women in a chivalrous way and therefore be more likely to convict men than women. The main idea of the chivalry thesis is this prospect that men are socialised to act in a way more chivalrous – or gentlemanly – toward women so they end up convicting men more than women.
How far would some sociologists agree that statistics of police recorded crime exaggerate crime levels among some ethnic groups? Crime is an illegal act which happens every day by many different types of people in forms of theft, assault, murder etc. Statistics were created by the government to give them an overall view of the crime rates within the country/area, the “official statistics” help the police and government to solve these crimes. An Ethnic group is a group of people with a certain type of ethnicity for example – Black, White, Asian etc. Official statistics show that a large number of ethnic minorities are more likely to be in prison and are also more involved in recorded crime, than a white person in comparison to their
Many organized crimes have evolved from illegal immigrants, not to mention the bridge that has enabled cross-border terrorism. Having participants on both sides of the border give better intelligence to form many terrorist attacks within this country. “International fraud, money laundering and other economic crimes (particularly carried out via the Internet) are a growing problem, and one that can be expected to spread.” (Cetron & Davies, 2008) The increasing levels of cross-national crimes will raise the amount it costs for an investigation. This makes fighting these crimes significantly more expensive. There is suspicion that these immigrants will start to impose hate crimes within this
Outline and assess feminist explanations of crime and deviance. Feminist views toward crime and deviance usually challenge the theories, concepts, methods and assumptions of most of the people already involved in the study of crime. They believe that in most condition men dominate the subject of crime and validate more on the male subject. Feminist essentially outline that most crime is caused by men as they appear to offend six or seven times more than a women and through figures such as self-report studies men are still the majority. Crime and deviance is an issue in society however due to women being socially controlled within the patriarchal society it means they are less like to commit crime and therefore have a lower rate.
Social Organized Crime Perspective CJA/384 March 26, 2012 Timothy Walsh Abstract Organized crime is on the rise and is almost unrecognizable, a fact that has made crime become as a social institution. This paper will concentrate on organized crime as a social institution and the empirical and speculative theories that are applicable when applied to organized crime and criminal behavior. Social Organized Crime Perspective Organized crime is the largest and most illicit social network in the world. Today’s organized crime has done away with the hierarchical structures of the past and has embraced local networking to solve problems and exploit opportunities. A social institution is an organization that has a particular purpose or goal used to refer to the positions, the roles, or the relations among individuals in a community persuading or influencing him or her to participate in achieving an objective.
Introduction Official crime statistics (OCS) are widely used and commonly accepted by the media and the public since it is published by different enforcement agencies. It is mainly generated by police at different stages in the criminal justice process including arrest, prosecution, conviction, imprisonment, and parole (Jupp, 1989). Therefore, most of us will perceive it as ‘hard facts’. However, it is just part of the truth. As OCS is social construct, different actors involved in constructing the figures to distort the reality of crime.