The Incidence of Particular Types of Crimes in the UK - Term Paper Example

Crime Rate over the Past 30 Years In determining program impact on the incidence of particular types of crimes, according to Davies et al 1998, obtaining quantitative data using an experimental or strong quasi-experimental design would seem the most fruitful method to use. Crime increased markedly in England and Wales throughout the years of a Conservative government (1979-1997) and discourses on crime both then and since has been dominated by the need for ever tougher and punitive sanctions (Simmons et al 2003, p. 22)1. Britain have experienced sharp rises in registered crimes over the past three decades, with a maximum of about 7000 registered crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 1988 (p. 22). Since then, crime rates have been lessened in England and Wales. According to the Crime in England and Wales 2003/2004 annual report, violent crimes comprised 23% of all BCS crimes and 19% of police-recorded crime (Dodd et al, 2004, p. 11). The British Crime Survey (BCS) estimated 2,708,000 violent incidents occurred against adults in England and Wales (Dodd et al 2004, p. 67), which, overall, is a decrease of 36% in crime since 1995 (p. 67). However, in 2004 BCS report also noted that violent crime has stabilized (p. 67)). The police recorded 1,109,017 violent incidents, which is a 12% increase since 2002/2003, partly attributed to the implementation of the NCRS (p. 67), increases in the reporting of crime by the general public, increases in police activity, and improvements in recording crime (p. 69) Theft For more than a quarter of a century, from 1969 to 1996, burglary and theft accounted consistently for about half of all recordable offences in England and Wales. The peak was reached in 1992 when they made up 52 percent of recorded crime. By 2004-5 the four types of theft accounted collectively 30% of all crime, according to British Crime Survey report (Home Office 2007). The most Experienced Crime During the time period under study, there was a steady increase in robberies with two peaks followed by sharp declines occurring in 1996 and 2001-02, the latter of which may be partly attributed to the implantation of the NCRS. Ninety percent of the robberies were of personal property, while the balance was robberies of businesses (Dodd et al., 2004, p. 79). The BCS also recorded increases in the robbery rates between 1981 and its 2003-04 interviews, with a peak in 1999. Following this peak, rates declined significantly (-32%). In the Crime in England and Wales 2003-04 report, the conclusion was that for this time period, robbery numbers were too low to provide reliable estimates, although the report did note that there was a general decline for the last decade (p. 79). Clear-Up Rates One of the measures most frequently used by the police and evaluators is the clear-up rate. However, the meaning of ‘clear-up’ is far from clear. The standard conception of the clear-up rate is the proportion of offences recorded by the police that are ‘detected’ each year. For most crimes this ‘rate’ or, rather, the proportion of known offences detected, has been falling steadily over the past few decades. Variations in Clear-Up Rates If the clear-up rate is, however, to be used as a gauge of effectiveness, some consideration needs to be given to the number of incidents recorded, their seriousness and the number of officers employed over time. Thus it may be that the number of crimes cleared up per officer may increase at a time when the overall clear-up rate is declining. However, the main difficulty in using clear-up rates as a measure of effectives is that the term ‘clear-up’ can cover a number of processes and variations, including: 1) if a person has been charged, summonsed or cautioned for the offence; 2) if the offence has been admitted and has been or could be taken into consideration by the court; and 3) if there is sufficient evidence to charge a person but the case is not proceeded with (Bottomley and Coleman 1995). Thus crime can in fact be ‘cleared up’ without any direct police ‘detection’ work being undertaken, and there is a well-established and important distinction between ‘primary’ clear-ups resulting from direct police detection work and ‘secondary’ clear-ups in which offenders may be persuaded to have other variations ‘taken into consideration’ by the court (Walker 1992). National Crime Recording Standard National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) is the force that performed regular audits to Home Office instructions to measure the force conformity with the standard. It provides strict guidelines on when a crime should be recorded and when not, and a set of counting rules provides instruction on how many crimes are to be recorded. This required the police to adopt a ‘victim-led’ approach to crime recording, in which victims’ account of crimes were taken at face value. Previously the police had exercised considerable discretion in deciding whether and how to record crimes reported to them. The National Crime Recording Standard further inflated the count of crime and had a particular impact on the recording of violent crime. If the impact of the National Crime Recording Standard is estimated, there is only a very small increase recorded crime from 1997 to 2004, and decline since then. Victims of Violent Crimes Trends in overall crime largely track property crime. Violent crime, which is of the greatest public concern, has increased over the last quarter-century, according to police recorded and BCS measures. But the divergence between the BCS and the police figures for violent is especially marked in recent years, partly because it is in relation to violence that the changes and recording rules have had their greatest impact on police statistics (Reiner 2007, p. 67). The BCS statistics on violence chart a similar trend since 1981 to that of overall crime. Violence is measured as rising up to 1997, with an especially rapid increase in the early 1990s. Thereafter it has fallen back to the levels of the late 1980s, but with a flattening of the decrease since 2001 (and an increase in robbery since 2004-05) (p. 67). The police figures, however, show a sharp rise since 1998, attributable mainly to the variations (which added some minor violent offences, notably common assault, to the ‘notifiable’ category), and the NCRS introduced in 2002 which, by adopting a victim-oriented approach, made the recording of violent offences more likely (p. 69). Gender-Specific Offenders There has been less integration of a study of gender into that of crime per se, and there is some truth in the contention of poststructuralists that social history has tended to universalize the male experience (Walker 2003, p. 3). Numerous commentators have noted the so-called irony that women fear crime in public space more than men; yet young men are more likely to be victims of crime in public space, particularly with regards to those crimes reported to police (p. 3). It should be noted that the at-risk households identified by the BCS – led by single parents and/or people with disabilities, often in public housing estates – are often women led, Witzman (2008, p. 42) noted, as are the plurality of low-income urban households in most countries, including the US. There are 17 different offences in the category of sexual offenses, but for our discussion, total numbers of rape of a male, female, and the category comprising both with be addressed. Rape has steadily increased since 1978, and with the new recording standard implemented in 1995 whereby males are now counted as victims of rape, the increase since that time applied for both males (5%) and females (8%), with an overall increase of 7% for both genders (Dodd et al 2004, p. 78) Comparison with other countries A comparison of the trends of reported serious crime in England and the United States from 1984 through 2003-4 shows some variation in the rates of reported crimes in both countries. Although the overall rate of violent crime and property crime in the United States has decreased for both police-recorded crime and victim surveys (UCR violent crime down 33.4% and property crime down 23% from 1994 to 2003, and violent and property crime nearly cut in half in the same time period according to NCVS), England has shown increases in police-recorded violent crime while posting fluctuating rates for property crimes. British victim surveys have recorded decreases in both violent and property crime for the same time period. And although much has been stated concerning the effects the changes in definitions and counting practices have had on the crimes rates in England, one may note that the increases in violent crimes were already occurring before the implementation of new counting schemes, continuing a trend that had already existed in the 1980s. The use of Imprisonment in England & Wales Even with the decrease in most crime measures recently, historically the rates of crimes in England were consistently lower than jurisdictions in the United States. However, times are changing, and in 1996, English crime rates surpassed the U.S. rates for assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft (Langan & Farrington, 1996). With other crimes, once large disparities between countries have narrowed. An example is in the rates of criminal homicide. Whereas the rate in England was only 25% of the rate in the U.S. in 1999 (1.4 vs. 5.7 per 100,000 population), in 1992 the rate was 1.3 versus 9.3 per 100,000 which 14% of the U.S. rate. References: Bottomley, A. K. and Coleman, C. 1995. `The Police'. In M. A. Walker (ed.), Interpreting Crime Statistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dodd, T. Nicholas, S. Povey, D. and Walker, A. (July 2004). Crime in England and Wales 2003/2004, Home Office Statistical Bulletin, London: Home Office. Home Office (2007) Crime in England and Wales 2006-7, Statistical Bulletin 11/07, London: Home Office. J. Van Duk. (1993) More than a matter of security. Trends in Crime prevention in Europe, in F. Heidensohn & M. Farrel (eds.), Crimes in Europe, London: Routledge, pp. 26-54 Patrick A. Langan and David P. Farrington, Crime and Justice in the United States and England and Wales, 1981-96 (Washington: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998), iii Reiner, Robert (2007). Law and Order: An Honest Citizen's Guide to Crime and Control. Polity, pp. 67-69 Rock, P (2004) Constructing Victims’ Rights: The Home Office, New Labor and Victims, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Simmons, J., Legg, C. and Hosking, R. (2003). National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS): an analysis of the impact on recorded crime – Part 1: The national picture. Home Office On-line Report No. 31/03. London: Home Office. www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hosb1805.pdf VAN Duk, JJ.M. (1994), Opportunities of Crime: a Test of the Rational-interactionist Model (Report for the Symposium on Economics and Crime of the Permanent Committee for Crime Problems of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, November 28-31 Walker, Garthine (2003). Crime, Gender, and Social Order in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-5 Walklate, S. (2007) Imagining the Victim of Crime, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Whitzman, Carolyn (2008). The Handbook of Community Safety, Gender and Violence Prevention: Practical Planning Tools. Earthscan Walker J. (1992) Estimates of the cost of crime in Australia. In Palmer M. (1995) Crime in Australia, The first national outlook symposium: White Collar Crime, http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/outlook95/palmer.pdf, accessed October 30, 2008, last updated June 6th 1995. Read More