British Crime Survey: Unreported Criminal Activities - Assignment Example

 Ability of British Crime Survey to access unreported Crime In this new era, number of unreported crimes is rising at a drastic rate. All crimes, which are happening in our society, are not reported or recorded by the police and these types of crimes are termed by criminologists and sociologists as the Dark Figure of Crime. The British Crime Survey (BCS) provides an insight to this huge amount of unreported crimes. (Browne, 2005) The main function of the British Crime Survey is to provide information on different types of unreported crimes, public attitudes and all sorts of issues related to it. Since last 25 years, BCS has established itself as an important source to access unreported crimes. It surveys the amount of crime in England and Wales through opinion of common people about criminal activism that they have witnessed in the last year. This source is considered as a very useful alternative to British police. (Newburn, 2007; “British Crime Survey, 2007-2008”, 2008) If we go through the survey by Lynne Featherstone on Unreported Crime (April 2004), we see: Among 2093 people, 1119 experienced a crime in the last year (54%) Among these, 421 or 38% did not report the crime to the police Further analysis says 215 did not do so because they did not think the police would take an action because they could not get hold of the police (51%) and 133 did not do so because they thought the crime concerned was not important enough (31%) Those who report about occurrence of crime, 224 were not satisfied with the police response (34%) and 324 were not satisfied with police follow up of the report (49%) (Featherstone, 2004) So, it is clear from this analysis that victims often do not response to report the occurrence of crime for various reasons and British Crime Survey is the only official source of information on unreported criminal activities. Common people of the society are directly asked about their experiences by the correspondents of BCS and it helps to open up various aspects, such as a certain part of criminal activities remain unnoticed due to the huge extent of crimes are reported to police. Without these surveys organized by BCS, this portion would have remained unnoticed forever in the eyes of administration. On several occasion, it has been observed that police has adopted various novel procedures and criterion to keep a record of crimes happened. The change of parameters is perfectly communicated to the citizens through the British Crime Survey. Surveys done by the BCS also helps in the identification of those people, who are at highest risk to be affected by crime and through this identification, it becomes easier to plan crime prevention programs in better ways. (Browne, 2005) There are three main procedures, through which the British Crime Survey gathers its information about unreported crimes, such as, people who are victims to criminal activities, the behavioral aspects of the miscreants in commission of crimes and the circumstances in which such criminal activities have occurred. Activism of the British Crime Survey is not only limited to collecting information about unreported crimes but it also pays attention to attitude of common people about crime. Surveys of the BCS also state how much the common citizens are scared about increasing criminal activities in the society and which measures should be adopted to avoid such situations. The BCS also focuses on attitude of the common people to Criminal Justice System or CJS, which includes police and courts. These surveys have proved to be exceptionally successful at estimating the extent of stalking, domestic, as well as sexual violence. These crimes were least reported to the police once we judge from the perspective of impact over common people, we will understand these criminal activities have affected the victims in most serious ways. Since the inception of the British Crime Survey, up to 2001, nine times this survey was conducted in England and Wales in the years, 1982, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001. Since April 2001 aftermath period, interviewing of citizens regarding unreported crimes was done continuously and the final report was submitted at the end of every financial years. According to the current estimation, almost 40,000 citizens have been brought under this interviewing process and the completely collected data is utilized to get access to unreported crimes. (National Statistics, 2008; Crime, 2008) The British Crime Survey uses two types of questionnaire for their survey purpose: the Victim form questionnaire and the Non Victim form questionnaire. Each non victim questionnaire includes the following points, such as, perception of local area, local crime rates, fear of crime, mobile phone theft, experiences of the police, attitudes to the CJS, crime prevention and security, witnessing crime, technology crime, the night-time economy and alcohol disorder, victimization screener questions, identity fraud, experiences of antisocial behavior, crime and disorder on public transport, crime and disorder in town centers and high streets and demographic information. The non-victim questionnaire helps to give a wider angle to crime and it becomes easy to receive reflection of general people regarding various crime related issues. (Davies, 2007) On the other hand, the victim form questionnaire consists of offence level data. Each respondent is asked to answer six different criminal incidents that they have experienced. Topics in these forms cover various aspects, including, details of offenders, nature and circumstances of the incident, emotional reactions, security measures costs and contact with the CJS and outcomes, if known. On basis of both these questionnaire, the British Crime Survey has come up with review of crime statistics, with the help of Statistics Commission, Crime Statistics: User Perspectives, September 2006, and Crime Statistics: An Independent Review by Professor Adrian Smith, November 2006. Both the reviews suggested that in order to restore public trust, the administration is required to introduce new changes in release and production of crime statistics. (Smith, 2006) These two reviews contain several recommendations that will be extremely helpful for the presentation of major crime categories, including already recorded crime figures. These reviews also focused on the aspects that are related to make the scope of the British Crime Survey, more feasible. According to the suggestion made by both these reviews, the scope of British Crime Survey can be further extended if the surveys cover groups like, children under the age of 16, people who are staying at group residences and businesses. Responding to these reviews, the British Crime Survey has come up with an Action Plan in July 2007. In order to make this plan a complete success, the BCS has worked with its delivery partners, always keeping in mind the suggestions made by the independent reviews. (Shepherd, 1998) Commercial Victimization Survey: The Commercial Victimization Survey popularly known as CVS is a survey of criminal activism against small or medium retail and manufacturing business houses in England and Wales. The CVS mainly focuses on unreported crimes and it helps to find out those, who are at the highest risk of being affected by different types of crimes. The CVS is also used as an important source about perception of common men regarding increasing criminal activities, issues related to anti-social behavior and crime and its total effect on business. As the crime statistics maintained by police does not have any specific class, thus, CVS has helped to bring forth all those business related offences, which are mentioned in the statute. Examples of offences, which fall under the scope of Commercial Victimization Survey, include Robbery of Business Property or Fraudulent actions by any employee of a company. (Featherstone, 2004) Offending, Crime and Justice Survey: OCJS or Offending, Crime and Justice Survey is known as the representative of nation when it comes to unreported crimes. This is basically a self-report survey that attempts to churn out experience and attitude of young people towards criminal activities in England and Wales. This survey mainly focuses to extract the rate of criminal activism, drug- alcohol abuses and anti-social mentality among household population, especially among youngsters aged from 10-25. The OCJS survey also brings under its scope various types of commonly known offences, including assault, burglary, shoplifting, fraud and various forms of technology offences. The OCJS survey is the key to get an insight over changing forms of crime, including, self reported offences, repeated offences, criminal trends among people, trends of repeated drug and alcohol abuse, nature of the offence committed, role of the other offenders in the same event and relationship between victims and perpetrators. (Sutton, Hodgkinson and Levi, 2008; Shapland and Vagg, 1988;Nicholas, Kershaw and Walker, 2007) First survey of the OCJS was conducted almost among 12,000 citizens aged from 10 to 65, residing in different private households of England and Wales. The later surveys between 2004 and 2006 became more specific and focused over young people within the age of 10-25. In both these surveys, young citizens, ready for re-interviewing, were followed up and information gathered from them, were maintained accordingly. Data collected from all these people has helped the administration to come up with various novel ideas to battle against growing anti-social behavior among young section of the society. The OCJS has also widely helped the administration to keep a proper record of the unreported crimes in England and Wales. (Featherstone, 2004) So, from the above analysis it is quite clear that British Crime Survey (BCS) is highly capable to access unreported crime, from very domestic to wide socio-economic arena. Impact of the BCS helps administrative system to keep records of unreported crimes as well as form various novel methods to fight against changing forms of criminal activity in the society. It is also quite clear from the reviews and recent changes introduced to them, that in order to receive a deep insight on various aspects of unreported criminal activities it is important to gather opinion from all sections of the society as well as mass. The British Crime Survey is executing this task successfully. So it will not be an exaggeration if we say that since its inception, even after celebrating its silver jubilee, the British Crime Survey is still playing a great role to properly access the unreported crime and helping the administration to get easy access to it. REFERENCES 1. “British Crime Survey, 2007-2008”, 2008, Economic and Social Data Service, available at: http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=6066 (accessed on January 4, 2009) 2. Browne, K.2005. An Introduction to Sociology, Polity 3. Cree, V.E. 2000. Sociology for Social Workers and Probation Officers, Routledge 4. Crime, 2008, British Crime Survey and other surveys, available at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/bcs1.html (accessed on January 4, 2008) 5. Crime, 2008, Crime in England and Wales 2007/2008, available at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/crimeew0708.html (accessed on January 4, 2009) 6. Davies, J. 2007, Keeping Current: the British Crime Survey, Applied Psychology, Forensic Psychology, available at: http://www.psychblog.co.uk/keeping-current-the-british-crime-survey-356.html (accessed on January 9, 2009) 7. Featherstone, L. 2004, Unreported Crime, available at: http://209.85.175.132/search?q=cache:jL_QTEuJVC4J:www.glalibdems.org.uk/resources/sites/217.160.173.25-3e54d44dcb2780.65885247/Policing%2520London/A%2Breport%2Bon%2Bunreported%2Bcrime%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bcapital.pdf+Ability+of+British+Crime+Survey+to+access+unreported+Crime&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=in (accessed on January 4, 2009) 8. National Statistics, 2008, British Crime survey, available at: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ssd/surveys/british_crime_survey.asp (accessed on January 4, 2009) 9. Newburn, T. 2007. Criminology, Willan Publishing 10. Nicholas, S., Kershaw C. and A. Walker, 2007, British Crime Survey 2006/07, Home Office Statistical Bulletin, available at: http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/statistics/statistics066.htm (accessed on January 4, 2009) 11. Shapland, J. and J. Vagg, 1988, Policing by the Public, Taylor & Francis 12. Shepherd, J. 1998. Victims of violent crime, Accident and Emergency Nursing, volume 6, issue1, 15-27 13. Smith, A. 2006, Crime Statistics: An independent review, available at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/crime-statistics-independent-review-06.pdf (accessed on January 4, 2009) 14. Sutton, M., Hodgkinson, S. and M. Levi, 2008, HANDLING STOLEN GOODS, Internet Journal of Criminology Read More