Understanding crime and deviance in society

There are three main ways to understand the levels of crime in society today:

• Official police recorded statistics
• The Crime Survey of England and Wales
• Self-report surveys

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As sociologists, we want to understand these measurements. Police recorded crime is based on police records and the British Crime Survey is based on interviews with representative sample of adults. It asks whether they have been victims of crimes during the previous year.



We want to understand the following:

1. How are the volume and trends of crime measured?
2. How are offenders identified?
3. How valid and reliable are data on crime and offenders?



The first thing to do is to look at the websites for these ways of measuring crime, then read the booklets to build up a picture of the inaccuracies and inadequacies of these ways of measuring, which in turn help us to understand crime and deviance in society!