ACR101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Victoria Police, Official Statistics, Donald Rumsfeld
ACR101 Week 2
Measuring Crime
Lecture Objectives
Learning Objectives
Understand the reasons why crime is often difficult to measure, including such key
concepts as under-reporting, system activity, and changing social attitudes;
Understand the institutional and political pressures which sometimes ‘muddy the
waters’ when measuring crime;
Be aware of different approaches to measuring crime, including police-recorded data
and survey-based research, and some of the strengths and weaknesses of these
approaches;
Understand how generalised rates of offending or victimisation may conceal major local
variations
Begin to reflect on how crime statistics are reported in the media, and what impacts this
may have on public policy.
Crime is extremely difficult to measure. Crime is also politically sensitive: there is great
pressure on governments and police services to show that crime is ‘down’. This sensitivity
merely adds to the difficulty. However it is enormously important that society develop ways
to measure crime as accurately and meaningfully as possible. Billions of dollars are spent
each year in Australia alone on ‘crime prevention’ – but there is a great risk of wasting
scarce resources unless we know when, where and among what groups of people the crime
we wish to prevent is occurring. This is particularly true when, as we learned in the previous
topic, it is far from easy to define what a crime is in the first place.
This topic introduces what your text calls the ‘very tricky business’ of measuring crime
(Marmo et al. 2012, 32). Such measuring can be done, and there are a number of different
approaches, each with strengths and weaknesses. However, underlying all discussion in the
Topic should be an awareness that when measuring crime there will always be what Donald
Rumsfeld famously called ‘known unknowns’, things that we know we don’t know. Unlike
Mr Rumsfeld, however, the knowledge of our incomplete knowledge should inspire the
student of criminology to be cautious in reading too much from crime data.
Why measure crime?
oTo measure performance of criminal justice agencies;
oTo evaluate crime prevention programs;
oTo resource police and prisons adequately;
oTo inform community about crime related risk;
oTo identify the likelihood of becoming a victim or an offender;
oTo help develop theories of crime, and evaluate their accuracy.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Understand the reasons why crime is often difficult to measure, including such key concepts as under-reporting, system activity, and changing social attitudes; Understand the institutional and political pressures which sometimes muddy the waters" when measuring crime; Be aware of different approaches to measuring crime, including police-recorded data and survey-based research, and some of the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches; Understand how generalised rates of offending or victimisation may conceal major local variations. Begin to reflect on how crime statistics are reported in the media, and what impacts this may have on public policy. Crime is also politically sensitive: there is great pressure on governments and police services to show that crime is down". However it is enormously important that society develop ways to measure crime as accurately and meaningfully as possible. This is particularly true when, as we learned in the previous topic, it is far from easy to define what a crime is in the first place.
