Measuring Crime

This large (30-odd slide) PowerPoint Presentation was (I’m guessing) put together by Dave Bown as part of the WJEC textbook project (I think he wrote / co-wrote the online A2 eBook).

It’s an interesting and wide-ranging resource that introduces a number of different topics related to the practice and problem of measuring crime. These include:

• Crime trends
• Different ways to measure crime
• Reported and Recorded crime
• Criminal characteristics
• Dark figure of crime
• Perspectives on crime statistics (Functionalist, Marxist, Interactionist, Realist, Feminist)
• Underreporting and Under-recording crime
• Victim and Self-Report studies
• Risk Society
• Fear of Crime

I’m also guessing the Presentation was created around 6 or 7 years ago because it refers to the 2010 Specification – not itself a problem because the material it covers generally appears on some, if not necessarily all, recent Sociology Specifications. It does mean, however, that the data to which is refers (around 2004-2005) is probably best seen as historical rather than contemporary.

This isn’t necessarily a huge drawback, however, given how easy it is to both find contemporaneous UK crime statistics and edit PowerPoint to incorporate the new material into a Presentation.

For example, I’ve added a new slide after Slide 4 (Crime Trend in the UK Over Time) that updates both the title (Crime Trend in England and Wales Over Time) – Scotland has a slightly different legal system – and the content. Where the former shows the trend from 1880 – 2000 the latter goes from 1981 – 2016 (co-incidentally around the same time as the start of the British Crime Surveys).