An Analysis of the United Kingdom Crime Rate Indicators - Case Study Example

RUNNING HEAD: UK CRIME RATE INDICATORS An Analysis of UK Crime Rate Indicators The United Kingdom offers an open society where people of different ethnic origins and nationalities are living hand in hand in greater harmony. However, with the economic and social challenges emerging the crime levels are also increasing. The UK's Home Office is responsible for reporting country wide crime statistics and analysis on year-to-year basis with further comparisons to previous years. The information presented in these reports is supplied by two resources that include reporting from police across the country and British Crime Survey (BCS). The statistics computed by these resources present a contradicting indication of crime levels in the country and have been criticised by many for their limited scope and indifferences on certain issues which diminishes their legitimacy and accuracy as measurement. The current paper will look into these issues and finally draw conclusions with certain issues that should be incorporated to improve their quality and acceptance. An Analysis of UK Crime Rate Indicators Introduction: The United Kingdom offers an open society where people of different ethnic origins and nationalities are living together and are contributing to the overall country's economic and social setup. The society itself including the government aims to provide an environment where conformity and balance among cultural and social values can be achieved. However, with economic and social challenges arising disparities and evil emerges. This is important to understand as the crimes in the country are soaring and the authorities attempt to tackle the staggering crime levels. The current paper will discuss the current crime situation in the country as presented by Home Office in its yearly statistical bulletin. The yearly bulletin derives its data and subsequent analysis from two resources that include firstly, reporting from police stations across the country and secondly from British Crime Survey. The statistics computed by these resources present a contradicting indication of crime levels in the country and have been criticised by many for their limited scope and indifferences on certain issues which diminishes their legitimacy and accuracy as measurement. The current paper will look into these issues and finally draw conclusions with certain issues that should be incorporated to improve their quality and acceptance. The crime levels in the United Kingdom are considered to be at higher level as compared to other countries including United States, Australia, Middle East and few other European countries. The UK is listed among Ireland, Estonia, Denmark and Netherland which have crime victim rates at 30% higher than the European average. The survey carried out by Gallup Europe for UN crime prevention agency has marked the capital city of London as the "crime capital of Europe" with 32% of the resident admitting that they have been victim of 10 categories of offences ranging from assault to sexual harassment. Furthermore, the U.K. is estimated to have the highest burglary rate, hate crimes and risk of thefts from car compared to European counterparts (Guardian, 2007). But all this is presented differently by the government of the U.K and claims are made through its Crime Statistical Bulletin that crimes in the U.K. are reducing. Crime Statistical Bulletin is published every year which incorporates statistics and analysis of crimes under different defined categories. Through this report the U.K.'s Home Office attempts to measure and analyse crime statistics in view of estimating crime trends and reviewing its achievement in lieu of crime reduction and its impact on the individuals and society as all. The bulletin draws its statistics from two resources which include reporting from police records and an independent British Crime Survey (Home Office, 2008). The police records consist of figures collected and reported by regional police stations. These consolidated records on monthly basis include crimes which are reported to the police by the people in small geographic areas. The crimes are recorded under various defined categories of crime and information from all local boroughs and councils are consolidated. The National Crime Reporting Standard was introduced in 2002 to ensure better consistency of crime recording. It is considered to provide an important measure for understanding trends in well-reported crimes as well as less common but more serious crimes. Furthermore, it highlights the police's workload and achievement in curtailing crimes (Home Office, 2008). British Crime Survey aimed at providing information covering all level of crimes and public attitude to crime situation in the country. BCS was first carried out in 1982 with latest survey in 2007/08. The survey estimates the level of crimes in the country by gathering responses, perceptions, attitudes and experiences of crimes by carrying out interviews from representative sample of 50,000 participants aged 16 years and above. Home Office carries out this survey as an alternative to police records which is supposedly more direct and includes crimes which may not be reported to police for a number of reasons and without reporting of such crimes the government's analysis would remain incomplete (Home Office, 2008). The Home Office's crime statistical bulletin also provides other administrative data which is under reported in police records or is out of scope of BCS. This includes information regarding white collar crimes in the financial sectors. Therefore, the bulletin draws its information from Association for Payment Clearing Services (APACS) which reports on the financial losses from plastic card fraud in the U.K (APACS, 2008) Weaknesses and Criticisms: The police records offer quantitative measures for recording crime levels. However, they have been criticised for a number of issues. Both The Independent (2000) and The Sunday Telegraph (2007) revealed that police failed to report 2.0 million crimes including burglary and theft every year partly as they bend rules to exaggerate their success. The police defended themselves by claiming to target resources to most serious and solvable crimes. The data on offences sent to Home Office by police centres across the country is criticised for only reporting crimes which are reported to them and ignores a large number of crimes which were not reported. Crimes are not reported because people are losing their trust in the integrity of police and there are also rising complains where crimes reported to police usually go unattended which indicates over-burden on police units or their reluctance to service less serious crimes. This raises concerns over the definition and categorisation of crimes. Another criticism came in view of Home Office ignoring crimes by Britons in foreign countries. In 2007 there had been 27,529 cases registered against British citizens in which 25 were convicted for rape cases. These registered crimes have been left out in Home Office's crime bulletin (APCO, 2007) which was undermined the attempts to strengthen people's trust in crime report and was blamed as 'catalogue of blunders' (Davis, 2007). All of these factors lead to a question that why police has not been able to keep up with rising population and crimes and this raises concerns regarding the government's failure. The Home Office incorporates another measure of crime levels in the UK through interview conducted by BCS. It has been argued that even BCS does not provide qualitative measure as it lacks focus on individual results. BCS is carried out by conducting interviews from 50,000 participants. The questionnaire used for carrying out the survey consists of a set of questions which are subject to ambiguity and irregular response. The sample of 20,000 was selected every four years for early BCS surveys however the most recent survey of 2007 was conducted from 50,000 people, which is still considered as insufficient representation of the entire population, and the sampling cycle has been annualised increase the frequency with which survey based estimates could be published (Lynn & Elliot, 2000) but this is still to be achieved. The participants of BCS survey are of age 16 and above which has completely ignored to include in its survey population under age of 16 years. The crimes committed against this group or committed by them do not have their due representation. The BCS does not take into account immigrants and those living in communal areas. This surely puts doubts regarding extend of the survey carried out by BCS which fails to incorporate crimes which need necessary attention. The BCS interview also lacks detailed explanation and is often misinterpreted by participants who may be hesitated by lengthy and descriptive questions. The BCS is only carried out in English with Welsh version available however it does not take account of the population which cannot communicate in English. BCS survey also completely fails to incorporate the serious wounding. As the survey is carried out to living respondents therefore the crimes which have been committed and resulted in death or crucial injury are omitted and therefore the scope of survey is limited. Moreover, the Home Office argues that both police records and BCS survey provide comparable statistics however this has been not the case as both defines and categorise crimes differently. For example, crime against vehicles is down by 14% according to BCS survey and only by 11% as per police records which leads to confusion regarding the use of proportioning techniques and Home Office claim over public's opinion regarding improved performance of police. Therefore, analysis carried out to estimate the crime levels are open to subjectivity and manipulation. Another argument has been made by Joseph (2007) against the standards and disclosures used for classifying and reporting of crimes. According to him the two reporting systems by police resources and BCS offer contradictory results. The need for producing reliable information thus becomes pertinent in view of the rising number of crimes making headlines in newspapers. Whereas the BCS survey relies on 50,000 respondents and their selection may be subjective and their response to questionnaire can be criticised for its correctness and genuineness. It is further argued that Ministers prefer BCS report and use this as a means for justifying the government's action as the figures suggested by this survey typically presents a broad positive trend in law enforcement as a whole. A political editor of Spectator, Fraser Nelson pointed out that the government has been manipulating the facts in the report indicating a major disparity in the report. The report suggested that from 1997-2008 that there are more police officers now against a growing population then in 1997. However, in another table the crimes per officer have increased in the same period which contradicts with the claims made by the government of reduction in crime. Suggestions: Due to the lack of comparability and contradiction in the statistics provided by police records and BCS recommendations have been put forward to increase society's confidence in crime reporting. The U.K. crime reporting has been criticised for its misrepresentation and misuse by the ministers to cover up the poor performance of law enforcement and justice systems regarding control of crimes in the country and their inability to curtail the 'fear of crime' in the society. As we have discussed that BCS is based on responses from selected representatives the scope of such data gathering should be extended to a larger group to improve the content of crime analysis and people's trust in the report. This extent of BCS could also be improved by continuously distributing sample evenly over the year as this would overcome seasonal effects in the survey estimates. Furthermore, BCS being criticised for ignoring population under age of 16 years in its data collection which have been heavily pointed out as it leaves out crimes against people under age of 16 year thus making the survey limited. It is recommended to include populations currently not covered by the BCS. Similarly, experiences and responses of people living in the communal establishments are also ignored for more two decades. The Home Office vowed to test the feasibility of extending the survey to people under 16 but this would require better understanding and careful development of questionnaires which would deal with their attitude and response in the most efficient and effective manner. The police records often lack information regarding crimes which are not reported or measured properly by the system. It is therefore important the Home Office develops means of measurement which would overcome this issue. The delay in timing or loss of information is another issue which requires improvement. For this purpose National Management Information System (NMIS) is initiated by the Home Office for streamlining the information. This would allow availability and access to detailed, cost effective and timely information which would help to understand and interpret police statistics and reduce involvement from highly criticised bureaucracy (Smith, 2006). The methodologies used by BCS and police records for defining and categorising crimes have been criticised for their differences. To allow comparisons and better understanding it is therefore imperative that uniformity is achieved which would prevent manipulation and misinterpretation for hidden objectives. The BCS should also consider offering multi-lingual questionnaire which would help to extend the interviewing process to immigrants who may be at higher risk of facing crime and may also lack capability to communicate in English. The Home Office is also developing framework for Assessment of Policing and Community Safety (APACS) to work jointly with partner organisations including Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, Communities and Local Government, Local Government Association, Audit Commission and the National Policing Improvement Agency. The aim of APACS would be performance management of monitoring and developing services by police and overall improve the community safety. This would place greater scrutiny on the entire system however the independence and integrity would still be subjective and debatable as ministers in the current government have been blamed for their manipulative actions to represent false image of crime levels. Therefore, independent reviews are much more in demand to remove such ambiguity in the reporting system. Conclusions: The aim of the above paper is to draw certain conclusions as the current UK's government has not been able to gain people's trust as it assertions over crime reduction. The 2007-08 report indicates 'victimisation rates' reduced from 24% to 22% (Johnston, 2008) however the media and analysts have suggested this claim based on 'damned lies and figures' (Pollard, 2008). The fear of crimes is ever growing as Britain becomes a nation with most CCTVs and number of people facing crimes is still soaring. The Home Office seeks to promote independence and assurance in its reporting however this is a long way from achieving objectivity. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies are difficult to achieve however transparency in the reporting system could be achieved by integrating a comparative categorisation and extending of population sampling. The government should also tackle the situation by allowing independent data collection and analysis which could authenticate the reasoning for claims by it. References Benetto, J. (1 August 2000). Police fail to report 1.4m crimes. The Independent UK. Retrieved on 1 Oct 2008 from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/police-fail-to-report-14m-crimes-710742.html Travis, A. & Traynor, I. (6 Feb 2007). Britain named as one of Europe's crime hotspots. Guardian. Retrieved on 1 Oct 2008 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/feb/06/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation Home Office UK. (May 2008).British Crime Survey: options for extending the coverage to children and people living in communal establishments. Research Report 6. BBC News. (10 January 2007). Commons clash over foreign crimes. Retrieved on 1 Oct 2008 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6247283.stm Home Office UK. (2008). British Crime Survey and other surveys. 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