What is the difference between reported and recorded crime?

Reported crime is crime that victims or witnesses tell the police about. Recorded crime is the smaller amount that the police officially log as offences.

What is the crime rate?

The crime rate is the number of crimes for every 1,000 people in a population. Rates allow fair comparisons between areas with different population sizes.

A town of 80,000 people records 4,000 crimes in a year. What is its crime rate per 1,000 people?

The crime rate is 50 crimes per 1,000 people. The calculation is 4,000 ÷ 80,000 × 1,000 = 50.

What is the dark figure of crime?

The dark figure of crime is crime that is never reported to the police or never recorded by them. Official statistics therefore underestimate the true amount of crime.

AQA GCSE Sociology 8192

The Sociological Approach

Topic overview Key sociological concepts Sociological perspectives: consensus and conflict Durkheim, Marx and Weber How sociological knowledge develops

Families

Topic overview Functions of families Family forms and diversity Conjugal roles and the domestic division of labour Changing relationships within families Criticisms of families Divorce in Britain since 1945

Education

Topic overview Roles and functions of education Education, capitalism and the correspondence principle Class and gender differences in achievement Ethnicity, parental choice and school markets Processes within schools

Crime and Deviance

Topic overview Social construction of crime and deviance Formal and informal social control Explanations of criminal behaviour Patterns of crime and public debates Crime statistics and the dark figure

Social Stratification

Topic overview Functionalist theory of stratification Marx, Weber and socio-economic class Factors affecting life chances Poverty as a social issue Forms of power and authority Power relationships

Research Methods

Topic overview Research design, hypotheses and data analysis Sampling methods Questionnaires and interviews Observation and mixed methods Types of data and official statistics Reliability, validity, ethics and practical issues

Crime and Deviance

Crime statistics and the dark figure

3 things to know
Paper 2

Overview

Police recorded crime, reported and recorded crime, crime rates, the dark figure, the Crime Survey for England and Wales, self-report studies, and the perspectives on official statistics.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started

Numbers

What trend in crime has the CSEW shown since the mid-1990s?

Key term

Name three sources of data on crime in England and Wales.

Key term

What are official crime statistics, and how are they collected?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1
Name three sources of data on crime in England and Wales.
Model answer
Police recorded crime, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and self-report studies are three sources of data on crime.
2
What are official crime statistics, and how are they collected?
Model answer
Official crime statistics are figures on crime produced by government bodies. Police forces record offences using Home Office Counting Rules, and the ONS publishes the figures for England and Wales.
3
What is the difference between reported and recorded crime?
Model answer
Reported crime is crime that victims or witnesses tell the police about. Recorded crime is the smaller amount that the police officially log as offences.
4
What is the crime rate?
Model answer
The crime rate is the number of crimes for every 1,000 people in a population. Rates allow fair comparisons between areas with different population sizes.
5
A town of 80,000 people records 4,000 crimes in a year. What is its crime rate per 1,000 people?
Model answer
The crime rate is 50 crimes per 1,000 people. The calculation is 4,000 ÷ 80,000 × 1,000 = 50.
6
What is the dark figure of crime?
Model answer
The dark figure of crime is crime that is never reported to the police or never recorded by them. Official statistics therefore underestimate the true amount of crime.

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