The Crime Survey for England and Wales (previously called the British Crime Survey) [3] is a systematic victim study, currently carried out by Kantar Public (formally known as BMRB Ltd) on behalf of the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Curated by the UK Data Service, it can be accessed for research on their website: https://ukdataservice.ac.uk. The survey seeks to measure the amount of crime in England and Wales by asking around 50,000 people aged 16 and over (as of January 2009), living in private households, about the crimes they have experienced in the last year. From January 2009, 4,000 interviews were also conducted each year with children 10–15 years old, although the resulting statistics remain experimental. [4] The survey is comparable to the National Crime Victimization Survey conducted in the United States.
Initially the survey covered England, Wales and Scotland and was called the British Crime Survey but now the survey is restricted to England and Wales. The Scottish Government has commissioned a bespoke survey of victimisation in Scotland called the Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey (SCVS). As a result of this, the British Crime Survey was renamed the Crime Survey for England and Wales to reflect this. The British Crime Survey had been first carried out in 1982 and further surveys were carried out in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001. Since April 2001, BCS interviews had been carried out on a continuous basis and detailed results from that point are now reported by financial years. Headline measures are updated quarterly based on interviews conducted in the previous 12 months.
Since 1994 there has been a separate Northern Ireland Crime Survey, on a biennial basis from 2001, and continuously from January 2005. It is produced by the Statistics and Research Branch of the NIO. It is broadly comparable to the BCS in England and Wales. [5]
The Home Office asserts that the Crime Survey for England and Wales can provide a better reflection of the true level of crime than police statistics since it includes crimes that have not been reported to, or recorded by, the police. For example, due to widespread no criming, over one third of reports of violent crimes are not recorded by police. [6] The Home Office also claims that it measures crime more accurately than police statistics since it captures crimes that people may not bother to report because they think the crime was too trivial or the police could not do much about it. It also provides a better measure of trends over time since it has adopted a consistent methodology and is unaffected by changes in reporting or recording practices. [7]
In 2003/04 the number of robbery offences in England and Wales, for people aged 16 and over was around 283,000.
In 2004/05 the number of robbery offences in England and Wales, for people aged 16 and over was around 255,000.
The survey does not measure robbery offences among victims under 16 years.
Data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales can be downloaded for research and teaching use via the UK Data Service website. Datasets since 1982 are available under a standard End User Licence; in addition, certain data from the Crime Survey (1996 to present) are subject to more restrictive Special Licence or Secure Access conditions than the main survey. [8] There are also bespoke versions of the survey data available for teaching purposes.
Professor Ken Pease, former acting head of the Home Office's police research group, and Professor Graham Farrell of Loughborough University, estimated in 2007 that the survey was underreporting crime by about 3 million incidents per year due to its practice of arbitrarily capping the number of repeated incidents that could be reported in a given year at five. [9] If true the error means that violent crime might actually stand at 4.4 million incidents per year, an 82% increase over the 2.4 million previously thought. Since the five crimes per person cap has been consistent since the BCS began this might not affect the long-term trends, however it takes little account of crimes such as domestic violence, figures for which would allegedly be 140% higher without the cap. [10] The ONS responded by explaining that because victims of ongoing abuse often are unable to recall the detail and number of specific incidents it makes sense to record this crime as a series of repeat victimisation. These are only recorded in this manner if the incidents described were ‘the same thing, done under the same circumstances and probably by the same people’. [11]
The methodology was subsequently changed after consultation in 2016, resulting in the first results without the cap in early 2019. This removed the limit, and also recorded "[r]epeat victimisation [...] defined as the same thing, done under the same circumstances, probably by the same people, against the same victim". [12] The resulting change did not affect overall trends, or significantly increase the estimates except in violent offences which saw increases between 6% and 31%.
Lord de Mauley has said the BCS omits rape, assault, drug offences, fraud, forgery, crime against businesses and murder, while accepting that it "is accepted as a gold standard by most British academics and internationally". [13]
One criticism is that both the youth survey and the adult surveys do not distinguish between a) crimes not reported to the police because they thought the police would do nothing or b) crimes not reported to the police because the victim thought them too trivial. [14]
General:
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law or criminal law, or it may cause no loss of money, property, or legal right but still be an element of another civil or criminal wrong. The purpose of fraud may be monetary gain or other benefits, for example by obtaining a passport, travel document, or driver's license, or mortgage fraud, where the perpetrator may attempt to qualify for a mortgage by way of false statements.
Crime statistics refer to systematic, quantitative results about crime, as opposed to crime news or anecdotes. Notably, crime statistics can be the result of two rather different processes:
A violent crime, violent felony, crime of violence or crime of a violent nature is a crime in which an offender or perpetrator uses or threatens to use harmful force upon a victim. This entails both crimes in which the violent act is the objective, such as murder, assault, rape and assassination, as well as crimes in which violence is used as a method of coercion or show of force, such as robbery, extortion and terrorism. Violent crimes may, or may not, be committed with weapons. Depending on the jurisdiction, violent crimes may regarded with varying severities from homicide to harassment. There have been many theories regarding heat being the cause of an increase in violent crime. Theorists claim that violent crime is persistent during the summer due to the heat, further causing people to become aggressive and commit more violent crime.
Overall, there is a low rate of crime in Canada. Under the Canadian constitution, the power to establish criminal law and rules of investigation is vested in the federal Parliament. The provinces share responsibility for law enforcement, and while the power to prosecute criminal offences is assigned to the federal government, responsibility for prosecutions is delegated to the provinces for most types of criminal offences. Laws and sentencing guidelines are uniform throughout the country, but provinces vary in their level of enforcement.
Crime in Australia is managed by various law enforcement bodies, the federal and state-based criminal justice systems and state-based correctional services.
Crime in Western Australia is tackled by the Western Australia Police and the Western Australian legal system.
Crime in Sweden is defined by the Swedish Penal Code and in other Swedish laws and statutory instruments.
Dorset Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Dorset in the south-west of England, which includes the largely rural area covered by Dorset Council, and the urban conurbation of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.
A victim study is a survey, such as the British Crime Survey, that asks a sample of people which crimes have been committed against them over a fixed period of time and whether or not they have been reported to the police. Victim studies may be carried out at a national or local level.
Crime in the United Kingdom describes acts of violent crime and non-violent crime that take place within the United Kingdom. Courts and police systems are separated into three sections, based on the different judicial systems of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Crime in the United States has been recorded since the early 1600s. Crime rates have varied over time, with a sharp rise after 1900 and reaching a broad bulging peak between the 1970s and early 1990s. After 1992, crime rates began to fall year by year and has since declined significantly. This trend lasted until 2015, where crime rates began to rise slightly. This reversed in 2018 and 2019, but violent crime increased significantly again in 2020. Despite the increase in violent crime, particularly murders, between 2020 and 2021, the quantity of overall crime is still far below the peak of crime seen in the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s, as other crimes such as rape, property crime and robbery continued to decline. The aggregate cost of crime in the United States remains high, with an estimated value of $4.9 trillion reported in 2021.
Victimisation is the process of being victimised or becoming a victim. The field that studies the process, rates, incidence, effects, and prevalence of victimisation is called victimology.
Crime in New Zealand encompasses criminal law, crime statistics, the nature and characteristics of crime, sentencing, punishment, and public perceptions of crime. New Zealand criminal law has its origins in English criminal law, which was codified into statute by the New Zealand parliament in 1893. Although New Zealand remains a common law jurisdiction, all criminal offences and their penalties are codified in New Zealand statutes.
Figures on crime in London are based primarily on two sets of statistics: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and police recorded crime data. Greater London is generally served by three police forces; the Metropolitan Police which is responsible for policing the vast majority of the capital, the City of London Police which is responsible for The Square Mile of the City of London, and the British Transport Police which polices the national rail network and the London Underground. A fourth police force in London, the Ministry of Defence Police, do not generally become involved with policing the general public. London also has a number of small constabularies for policing parks. Within the Home Office crime statistic publications Greater London is referred to as the London Region.
Crime statistics in the United Kingdom refers to the data collected in the United Kingdom, and that collected by the individual areas, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which operate separate judicial systems. It covers data related to crime in the United Kingdom. As with crime statistics elsewhere, they are broadly divided into victim studies and police statistics. More recently, third-party reporting is used to quantify specific under-reported issues, for example, hate crime.
A disability hate crime is a form of hate crime involving the use of violence against people with disabilities. The reason for these hate crimes are often due to the prejudice an individual or individuals have against that disability. It is viewed politically as an extreme of ableism, or disablism, and this is carried through and projected into criminal acts against the person with a disability. This phenomenon can take many forms, from verbal abuse and intimidatory behaviour to vandalism, assault, or even murder. Of these forms, the most common hate experiences are viewed through verbal abuse and harassment. Disability hate crimes may take the form of one-off incidents, or may represent systematic abuse which continues over periods of weeks, months, or even years. Parking places, wheelchair spaces, and other distinguished areas for those with disabilities to utilize, have become a target for enforcers of disability hate crime. These accommodations are somehow seen as an exclusion to the rest of the population, giving them a negative connotation and a reason for these violent encounters. The reasoning for disability hate incidents has had a continuous pattern all too familiar. Many of those with disabilities fall victim to these violent situations because they are seen as "scroungers", people that are falsely portraying their disabilities as a way to receive benefits, physical barriers, or simply as "easy targets".
The relationship between race and crime in the United Kingdom is the subject of academic studies, government surveys, media coverage, and public concern. Under the Criminal Justice Act 1991, section 95, the government collects annual statistics based on race and crime.
Crime in Spain is combated by Spain's law enforcement agencies.
Domestic violence in the United Kingdom is a criminal offence. Domestic violence or abuse can be physical, psychological, sexual, financial or emotional. In UK laws and legislation, the term "domestic abuse" is commonly used to encompass various forms of domestic violence.
In England and Wales, the principle of the National Crime Recording Standard is to direct how statistics about notifiable offences are collected by police forces. An important distinction is made between notifiable offence recording and police incident reporting. The National Crime Recording Standard is about how statistics about notifiable offences are recorded. The National Standard for Incident Recording direct how information and statistics about police non-crime incidents are recorded. The Government has delegated the task of inspecting a police forces compliance with the National Crime Recording Standard to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Rescue Service (HMICFS), previously called Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.
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