Deconstructing The Crime Problem
ASSESSMENT ONE
Deconstructing the Crime Problem
DSS_4_DCP 12/13
Débora Rodrigues Ferreira Baptista
Forensic Science with Criminology – First Year
As we can see in the figure above, the CSEW (Crime Survey for England and Wales) estimate is much higher than the police recorded crime values. This is due to the fact that most crimes do not come to the attention of the police, usually because people do not report them for various reasons, such as distrust in the police, deliberate desire of hiding the criminal act or shame and fear. Some people just think “someone broke into my house but didn’t take anything; the police has a lot to worry about so I’ll just make sure that I lock every door and window next time”. Others are victims/criminals that suffered a crime and know that reporting it means they are attracting attention to their own criminal acts. Besides this, from the small percentage of crimes that are indeed reported, some of them are not recorded. This is what induces us to the misleading values of the police recorded crime. This is why the CSEW helps to get a wider picture of the real values of crime. Even missing some people from the community and excluding some crimes like murder, the CSEW is able to show us a much more accurate estimate of the number of crimes. Another thing that pops up in the graph is that the counts do not vary always similarly: from 1992 to 1995 the CSEW goes up while the police recorded crime goes down. There is also an explanation for this: the possibility that during this period of time people have lost some trust they had in the police.
The figure above indicates that overall crime has decreased between the year ending March 2012 and the year ending March 2013. Violence against the person has decreased by 4% as so has criminal damage and arson by 15%, vehicle offences by 7% and robbery by 13%. On the other hand theft from the person has increased by 9% and sexual
Deconstructing the Crime Problem
DSS_4_DCP 12/13
Débora Rodrigues Ferreira Baptista
Forensic Science with Criminology – First Year
As we can see in the figure above, the CSEW (Crime Survey for England and Wales) estimate is much higher than the police recorded crime values. This is due to the fact that most crimes do not come to the attention of the police, usually because people do not report them for various reasons, such as distrust in the police, deliberate desire of hiding the criminal act or shame and fear. Some people just think “someone broke into my house but didn’t take anything; the police has a lot to worry about so I’ll just make sure that I lock every door and window next time”. Others are victims/criminals that suffered a crime and know that reporting it means they are attracting attention to their own criminal acts. Besides this, from the small percentage of crimes that are indeed reported, some of them are not recorded. This is what induces us to the misleading values of the police recorded crime. This is why the CSEW helps to get a wider picture of the real values of crime. Even missing some people from the community and excluding some crimes like murder, the CSEW is able to show us a much more accurate estimate of the number of crimes. Another thing that pops up in the graph is that the counts do not vary always similarly: from 1992 to 1995 the CSEW goes up while the police recorded crime goes down. There is also an explanation for this: the possibility that during this period of time people have lost some trust they had in the police.
The figure above indicates that overall crime has decreased between the year ending March 2012 and the year ending March 2013. Violence against the person has decreased by 4% as so has criminal damage and arson by 15%, vehicle offences by 7% and robbery by 13%. On the other hand theft from the person has increased by 9% and sexual