OFFICIAL CRIME STATISTICS How much crime happens in Britain each year? Why can it be said that official statistics are socially constructed?

Connector  Study the crime map on the following link.   Answer the questions: 1. Which parts of London have the most and the least amount of crime? 2. What amount of crime is there in the Borough of Ealing? 3. What has been the trend in crime in Southall Green in the last 8 weeks? 4. What do you notice about crime rates in Southall Green between June and August ? 5. How do crime rates in Southall Green compare with the crime rate in the Borough of Ealing and nationally? 6. Are these statistics valid and why?

Connector answers 1. Central London has the highest crime rates, while parts of South and East London have the lowest rates of crime. 2. The Borough of Ealing has an average rate of crime. 3. Since July 2011, the crime rate in Southall Green has declined. 4. The crime rates for the summer months of 2010 and 2011 show that crime rate was lower in the summer 2011 in comparison to summer The crime rates in Southall Green are higher than the LB of E crime rates and even higher than national rates. 6. Not necessarily, it is possible that there is more police in Southall because it is a minority area, and as there is more police present there will be more arrests.

Objectives  All to be able to identify and describe an official source of data on the extent of crime in Britain.  Most to be able to examine how accurate the official crime statistics (OCS) are.  Some to be able to explain why OCS are said to be socially constructed.

Official crime statistics  Official crime statistics (OCS) are published every year by the government and tell us how many crimes have been recorded, the number of offences cleared up, the social characteristics of offenders (class, ethnicity, gender) and who the victims of crime are.  For a crime to be included in the OCS it must: 1) Be detected – someone must notice a crime has happened. 2) Be reported – someone must tell the police a crime has happened. 3) Be recorded – the police must do the paperwork on the crime that has been reported to them. 4) The suspect must be convicted – found guilty of the crime.  This process means there are many crimes committed that are not included in the OCS.

Task 1  Work in pairs.  Read the handout and use it to fill in the worksheet.  You have 10 min.

Extension 1. Why do people tend not to report these crimes?  A scratch along the side of the car.  Stolen wallet in a busy market place.  An Islamophobic attack.  Domestic abuse.  Drug dealing by their own brother from their shared bedroom.  Rape.  A Tesco employee stealing a packet of biscuits from the store in Hayes.

Task 2  Work on your own to fill in the gaps in the worksheet using these words: quantitative offenders ethnicity free incomplete picture undetected reported car theft vandalism record trivial

Task 2 solution  Official statistics on crime provide a wealth of quantitative data such as the number of offences recorded by the police, offences cleared up by them, sentencing patterns, the social characteristics of offenders and victims such as their age, ethnicity and gender.  For Sociologists, OCS are a free source of numerical data on crime. However, critics point out that such statistics must be treated with caution because they provide an incomplete picture of all crimes committed in Britain annually. This is because, firstly, they exclude undetected crimes – those crimes that the victim is unaware of. Secondly, even if a crime has been discovered, we cannot assume that it will be reported to the police. It seems, for example, that people are more likely to report car theft, but are less likely to report vandalism. Thirdly, even if the crime is reported to the police, this does not necessarily mean that they will record it. For example, the police may regard the offence as too trivial to follow up.

Task 3 - Exam question  Identify and explain one reason why the recorded rate of crime may not include all crimes committed. (5 marks)  One reason why the recorded rate of crime may not include all crimes committed is.... This is when....  However, this doesn’t always happen because..., e.g.....

Task 4  Work in pairs.  Study Items 1, 2 and 3 on the handout.  Discuss these questions: 1. Which local authority (LA) had the highest percentage of half days missed through unauthorised absence in the school year? 2. Which LA had the lowest percentage of half days missed through unauthorised absence? 3. Do you think that we can accept these statistics as facts and why/why not?

Unauthorised absence Local authority (LA) % of half days missed due to unauthorised absence Birmingham1.49 Greenwich2.78 Kensington and Chelsea 0.85 Kingston upon Hull4.18 Middlesbrough2.39 Rutland0.40 Somerset1.27 Southampton2.59 Southend-on-sea2.01 Trafford0.66  Clearly, unauthorised absence is more widespread in some parts of the country than others.  However, we should not take these statistics at face value.  Instead, we need to ask whether the statistics show a true picture of levels of unauthorised absence in different LAs.  In order to do this we need to look into how these statistics are collected.

Task 5  Work in groups of 3. Each group represents a different LA.  Imagine you are the school’s attendance officers and it is up to you to authorise, or not authorise, the absences of the students.  You will be given a set of cards, each of which is about an instance of school absence. 1. Read each card and decide if that absence from school should be authorised – was the student absent from school for a good enough reason - or unauthorised - the reason for the student’s absence from school is not good enough. 2. On the worksheet, put a tick in the second column if you will authorise the absence and a cross if you will not authorise the absence. 3. In the final column write a reason for your decision.

Task 6 1. Well, what did each LA decide - how many absences did you authorise? 2. Are there any cases in which you gave authorisation for an absence that isn’t really a good enough reason to be absent from school? What was it? Why was it authorised? 3. Are there any cases in which you didn’t authorise an absence for which there was a good reason? What was it? Why wasn’t it authorised? 4. How would this affect the unauthorised absence statistics for your school?

Review  On your own, answer these question into your book: 1. How does the work of attendance officers show that official statistics on school attendance are a social construct? 2. How can you link this with OCS and the claim that they are also a social construct?

Review – possible answers 1. Official statistics are an outcome of the choices and decisions made by the people involved in the events – students, parents and teachers. Therefore, if they decide to authorise an absence for which there is no real reason, e.g. a student pretending to be ill, the official statistics on school attendance will not be valid. 2. Similarly, if a police officer decides not to record a crime that has been reported to her/him, the crime will not be included in the OCS, thus not officially existing, when it has happened in actual life.