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Chapter 2
The social context of crime
Overview
• There are many sources of information about crime in society including the media, social media, the govern-
ment, family, friends and acquaintances. Personal experience as a victim of crime or even a perpetrator can
also contribute to our knowledge and beliefs. Nevertheless, misconceptions about crime and criminals are
common.
• Crime statistics have their shortcomings yet can provide some useful information. The Internet is a ready
and reliable resource for information on the most recent crime trends for many countries such as the United
States and the United Kingdom.
• There are many sources of information which make up crime statistics. Sample surveys with members of
the public and information recorded by the police are especially useful. Different types of statistical information may superficially appear incompatible because of the different types of data involved.
• Each method of data collection has its own advantages and disadvantages which need to be taken into
account when assessing findings based on them. The various approaches should be regarded as complementary and incompatibilities seen as part of the challenge of understanding crime data.
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• Crime statistics have to be interpreted and different researchers will interpret them differently. Consequently,
there are alternative interpretations possible for crime statistics, depending on one’s viewpoint.
• Extensive research has demonstrated that criminal behaviour is quite common – sufficiently so that it might
be described as normal. Of course, relatively trivial incidents of stealing form the bulk of this criminal activity. Nevertheless, there is evidence that half of men and nearly a third of women admit to committing at
least one crime such as burglary, theft, criminal damage, robbery, assault or selling drugs at some stage in
their lives.
• International comparisons tend to suggest considerable variation in levels of crime in different nations.
However, international trends in crime statistics do not indicate that levels of crime invariably increase over
time. For some crimes (homicide is a good example), the trends are downwards or flattening out in some
countries traditionally believed to be violent.
• Justice is administered differently and is based on different principles in different parts of the world. Even
where the systems are closely related (e.g. the United Kingdom and the United States) there may be crucial
differences in certain respects. It is important to avoid the assumption that the principles of forensic and
criminal psychology are universally applicable.
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Introduction
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Introduction
Our ideas about the world of crime come from a variety of
sources. Personal experience clearly must play some part,
but imagery of crime and the criminal justice system is
everywhere. For example, Howitt (1998c) found that the
largest proportions of UK media news stories concerned
crime and the criminal justice system. Characteristically,
almost by definition, the news is about relatively unusual,
new or sensational events. As such, it is not intended to be
indicative of the mundane reality of most crime. There is
no precise correspondence between media coverage of
crime and the more objective reality assessed from police
reports and victimisation studies, for example. Studies
demonstrating a lack of correspondence between the reality of crime and the contents of newspapers go back many
years (Croll, 1974; Davies, 1952; Roshier, 1971, 1973).
Compared to the reality, property crimes such as theft are
grossly under-represented in newspapers, yet these are the
very crimes that the general public is most likely to experience. Similarly, violent crime, including homicide, is disproportionately over-reported in the news media (Chermak,
1995). The situation is more extreme for movies and
television which are replete with stories of cops and crime.
In other words, to the extent that the media determine
people’s perceptions of crime, the risk is that they receive
a rather distorted view.
It is difficult to overstate the extent to which most crime
is relatively petty and mundane. It is intriguing that forensic and criminal psychology research dwells on the sensational and unusual much more than the typical. So much
more is known about serial killers than shoplifters. So just
what is the reality of crime? There is no research method
or source of information that will give us anything other
than an approximation to reality. Victim surveys are one
way of quantifying the types of crime experienced by the
public. In these, people are interviewed about their experiences of crime, perhaps in the previous six months or year.
Although it is believed that such victimisation studies
avoid some of the biases inherent in, say, police statistics
they nevertheless have biases of their own. It is easy to see
that statistics on crimes known to the police may be biased
since the police may be unaware of crimes not reported to
them. Victimisation surveys, on the other hand, have their
own problems. For example, they are dependent on drawing a representative sample of the population and they
cannot include crimes for which there is no victim. So
victimisation studies omit vandalism and they cannot
assess homicide since the victim is dead. Furthermore,
victimisation studies may include as crimes events that are
not strictly illegal. For these reasons and others, victimisation studies may not deal with so-called victimless crimes
such as drug offences, as well as crimes against busi-
nesses. For reasons of sensitivity, victimisation studies
may not include sexual offences routinely.
There are numerous victimisation studies carried out in
a good many countries. One example is The Crime Survey
of England and Wales (previously known, rather inaccurately, as the British Crime Survey). The following figures
are taken from the Crime Survey of England and Wales
for 2015. The study was based on almost 35,000 adults
(Office for National Statistics, 2016). The commonest
crime reported by respondents in the survey was theft,
which accounted for 72 per cent of all crimes recorded in
the survey. Theft is a broad category and includes robbery,
domestic burglary, vehicle related theft and bicycle theft.
Violent victimisation was much less common and
accounted for 14 per cent of crimes. The remaining crimes
were instances of criminal damage which would include
malicious damage to a vehicle or stones thrown through
house windows, for example. Criminal damage (vandalism) amounted to 13 per cent of crimes. In other words, a
person is far more likely to be victimised through theft
than through violence. Overwhelmingly, non-violent
crime dominates. The figures for 2015 suggest that there
are 6.4 million crimes against households and resident
adults aged 16 years and above. The breakdown for the
different types of crime can be seen in Figure 2.1. As
already explained, as this was a victim study it does not
include crimes such as drug offences, shoplifting and
homicide. The survey involved adults of 16 years and
above. Related research suggested that there was an estimated 829,000 additional crimes against children 10 to
15 years of age.
We can contrast this victim survey with statistics on
crime recorded by the police. The police have a statutory
requirement to report to the government the numbers of
certain crimes known to them. One notable thing is that
such reports include a substantially wider variety of crimes
than included in the typical victimisation survey. We shall
consider statistics on crimes reported by the police in
England and Wales in 2015 (Office for National Statistics,
2016b), which can be compared with the victimisation
study reported above. These crimes known to the police are
classified under three separate headings: 1) victim-based
crimes such as violence and theft (76 per cent); 2) crimes
against society such as drug offences and public order
offences (10 per cent); and 3) fraud (14 per cent). Victimbased crime is the largest group (76 per cent) followed by
fraud (14 per cent) followed by crimes against society (10
per cent). The victim-based crimes category is obviously
the one most directly comparable with the crimes in the
victim survey. Theft is the biggest victim-based crime
group (40 per cent of all crimes). It includes burglary and
all other forms of theft. Violent offences accounted for
21 per cent of all offences. Criminal damage and arson
accounted for another 12 per cent. Very broadly speaking,
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The social context of crime
Robbery
Theft bicycle
Household theft
Burglary
Theft vehicle
Vandalism
Violence
Theft
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
Figure 2.1 Percentages of different types of crime in the Crime Survey of England and
Wales (2015)
these statistics support the broad trends found in the
victim survey – that theft is far more common than violent offences – though the trends are far less strong.
Sexual offences of all types were 2 per cent of all of the
offences recorded by the police. Figure 2.2 provides
more details.
Despite victim surveys and police-reported crimes
being dominated by non-violent offences especially
involving theft, it is the more sensational and lurid violent
crimes which get media attention. Suffice to say that both
the news and crime statistics are not objective accounts of
crime. The news media manufacture what they regard as
being newsworthy. It is also true to say that the criminal
statistics are, to varying degrees, created through complex
social processes. There is no ground-truth about the nature
and extent of crime, but victimisation surveys and police
statistics can be seen as ways of approximating it. So it is
important to understand just where statistical data comes
from and what factors influence the data in order not to
over interpret the statistical trends.
There are many sources of information about crime and
the criminal justice system. We have dealt with victimisation surveys and police statistics above. Victimisation
surveys tend to produce the highest estimates of the rates
Possession weapon
Robbery
Misc. crimes against society
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Sex
Drugs
Public order
Vandalism arson
Fraud
Violence
Theft
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
Figure 2.2 Percentages of different types of crime in Police Reported Crime Statistics for
England (2015)
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Introduction
prosecution. Furthermore, there is probably a bias
against the more serious crimes since those who have
committed them may well have been arrested, prosecuted and sent to prison, with the result that they are
excluded from such surveys.
For obvious reasons, the rates of crime that are estimated from these different statistics vary. One would
rightly expect that surveys of victims produce substantially higher levels of crime in general than any of the
other statistical indices. A number of points are worth
mentioning before we move on to discussing what we
know about crime from such sources:
• Crime statistics are rarely simply wrong. The fact that
they are not always in agreement may indicate that each
provides a different perspective on criminal activity.
• Each type of statistics has its own value and may be
Figure 2.3 Different ways of estimating
levels of crime
of crime for obvious reasons – that is, victims report to the
researcher crimes which they have not reported to the
police. Unfortunately, victim surveys cannot give information about every type of crime – such as where the
crime is against a company rather than an individual, or
crimes for which there is no obvious victim (such as vandalism in a public park). Police-recorded crime has its own
biases in addition to reporting bias. For example, the
police may decide that a ‘crime’ that a member of the
public has reported is not actually a crime.
Other sources of information about crime and offenders
include the following:
• Court statistics: these codify the numbers and types of
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offences being processed in a given year and the outcomes of these different cases in terms of sentencing.
The obvious biases here are in terms of the factors that
lead to prosecution as opposed to no charge.
• Prison statistics: these provide breakdowns of the
numbers in prison at any one time (in terms of offence
categories, sentences, and so forth). Biases here may be
due to sentencing policies at the time. For example, a
concerted clampdown on burglary may lead to an
increase in the numbers of burglars in prison.
• General population offender surveys: these have
recently been developed in which members of a random sample of households are interviewed about the
crimes they have committed at any point in their lives
and/or recently (for example, in the previous year).
This is likely to include at least some crimes that would
be ignored by the police and other components of the
criminal justice system as being too trivial to warrant
more useful for a particular purpose than others. Even
though, say, crimes recorded by the police may be just
a small fraction of crimes committed, they may still be
very useful for examining changes in crime rates over
time. This is especially true if the biases in reporting
crimes to the police remain relatively constant over time.
Unfortunately, this is difficult to ascertain. So, for example, if we find more cases of child sexual abuse in the
2010s than in the 1960s, is this due to higher levels of
sexual abuse? The data are equally consistent with there
being an increased awareness of the danger of abuse
which makes people more vigilant and more prepared to
report crimes. The change may also reflect an increase in
retrospective (historical) prosecutions of previously
unreported abuse that happened many years earlier.
• Care is always needed in the interpretation of any sta-
tistics. For example, legal and other changes may result
in crimes being classified differently at different points
in time. A change in the definition of rape to include,
say, male rape may produce an increase in the number
of rapes. While it is common practice for statisticians
to signal changes in the basis on which the statistics are
compiled, it is much more difficult to adjust previous
years on the basis of such information unless the compilers do so. It may sometimes appear statistics have
been manipulated to gain political advantage, but it
may also reflect legal changes or genuine improvements to how the statistics are collected.
In short, while some will point to the inadequacies of
crime statistics as being flaws in those statistics, it is better
to regard crime statistics as being of limited usefulness in
limited circumstances. This makes them very similar to
much of the data that psychologists collect. That they are
the result of a complex social process makes it all the more
important to understand them; it is not an excuse for dismissing them as worthless. Often the problem is not the
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The social context of crime
nature of the data but how they should be interpreted. The
more familiar one is with a variety of different sorts of
crime statistics and just how particular crime statistics are
compiled, then the more adequate one’s interpretations are
likely to be.
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The extent of crime
We have already seen that it is not easy to specify the reality
of crime. Crime statistics do not present a single reality
unproblematically. There are very basic questions that need
to be asked, such as the point at which an event becomes
construed as a crime. What is it about a set of circumstances
that results in an eyewitness labelling events as a crime?
There is undoubtedly a point at which an eyewitness will
decide whether or not to report events to the police as a
crime. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics (2003) indicated
that 27 per cent of known violent crimes are reported by
eyewitnesses. So how an eyewitness construes events is
extremely important in determining whether what has been
witnessed is reported to the police. In their research into
bystanders’ reactions to crimes, Langsdale and Greenberg
(2006) showed participants a video of a conversation
between a man and a woman which lasted just ten seconds
before the man either walked or ran away. In other versions
of the video there was a 30-second delay before the man
walked or ran away. Simple differences like these affected
whether the events were perceived as a crime. If the man ran
away after ten seconds then the witness was more likely to
see the events as a robbery than if it took 30 seconds before
he ran away. If he walked away then the amount of time
involved made no difference to the perception of the events
as a robbery. In real-life situations, this may be the difference
between a crime being reported to the police or not.
Trends in criminal statistics may change with the passage of time, and what may be the case in one country may
not be the case in different country. There is plenty of
information available on the Internet about crime statistics. Much of it is published by governments, but other
organisations do so too: a good search engine and wellchosen search terms should readily find suitable sites.
(‘Crime statistics’ and ‘criminal statistics’ are obvious
examples of productive search terms.) Some governments
publish extensive material, which is probably as up to date
as any publicly available information since it is far quicker
to update web material than books or pamphlets. As with
any material on the Internet, it is important to always carefully assess the adequacy of the source and try to anticipate the sort of spin that may have been put on what the
statistics mean or just what statistics are presented. This
applies to all sources of information; it is not simply a
consideration when using the Internet as a source.
The term ‘crime index’ is commonly used in relation to
criminal statistics. This is merely a composite measure of
the number of crimes, based, usually, on the more serious
types. For example, in the US a violent crime index might
be a composite of murder and non-negligent manslaughter,
forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. A property
offences index might include burglary, larceny theft, motorvehicle theft and arson. Other countries may have their own
variants on this, more appropriate to the major crime categories in those countries. These indices provide a very
broad picture of crime trends. The sub-components of the
index may actually show rather different trends. For example,
rape may be increasing but since motor-vehicle theft is
decreasing much faster, the overall trend is downward.
Governments spend substantial amounts of money on
collecting various statistics about crime and the criminal
justice system. They do not do so simply to inform the
public. These statistics are obviously relevant to planning
for the criminal justice system. Furthermore, the crime
statistics may be used as evidence about the success or
otherwise of policy initiatives. There are many reasons
why crime is important to governments but an important
one is the huge economic costs of crime and the criminal
justice system. The economic cost of crime in the US is
given in headline statistics by Ostermann and Matejkowki
(2014). These estimates include:
• The US Criminal Justice System costs more than
$200,000 million every year
• Crime victims suffer $876,000,000 in lost workdays.
• The average cost of a criminal career is $1,500,000.
• Preventing a high-risk juvenile from starting a criminal
career is worth about $2,000,000 in savings.
• The national cost of crime exceeds $1.7 trillion when
all costs are incorporated. This includes things like the
cost of burglar alarms and other crime reduction commodities, the lost productive activity when individuals
are involved in crime, and the transfer of assets from
the victim to the offender.
These are extraordinary amounts of money and in themselves justify the search for solutions to crime and expenditure on crime reduction measures.
The extent of criminality
One of the classic ideas of criminology and sociology is that
of white-collar or middle-class crime (Payne, 2013). The
concept of white-collar crime was introduced by Edwin
Sutherland (1949) to indicate the nature and extent of crime
among the middle classes rather than it being primarily a
working-class phenomenon. Sutherland defined white-collar
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The extent of criminality
crime as a crime perpetrated by ‘a person of respectability
and high social status in the course of his occupation’
(Sutherland, 1949, p. 9). Although white-collar crime can
be serious crimes such as fraud or embezzlement from a
company, it can also include activities such as ‘borrowing’
stationery from the office or using the office telephone for
private calls. This sort of petty crime is often regarded as
acceptable or normal by perpetrators, but it is nonetheless
crime. Similarly, tax evasion is seen as almost morally justified and hence not truly a crime by some people.
It is probable that everyone has committed what may be
described as a trivial crime at some point in their lives: the
extent of criminality in the general population is remarkably high. Taking the stringent criterion of imprisonment,
in the United States the chance of a person going to prison
during their lifetime is nearly 7 per cent according to estimates (Bureau of Justice, 2004). The odds are much worse
for some groups, which may reflect biases in the criminal
justice system:
• The figure is 11 per cent for men but only 2 per cent for
women.
• A black person has a 19 per cent chance compared with
3 per cent for white people.
• The figure for black men is 32 per cent as opposed to 6
per cent for white men. That is, nearly one in three
black men will spend time in prison.
• Over 64 per cent of jailed persons were of racial or
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ethnic minority origin in 2001.
More recently, Western and Pettit (2010) have pointed out
that the risk of being imprisoned in the US is affected by
generational factors, racial factors and school dropout.
They compared men born in the 1940s (1945–9) with men
born in the 1970s (1975–9). The key variable was whether
the men had received a prison sentence by the time they
were about 30 years of age. Table 2.1 clearly demonstrates
that the younger generation had a much greater risk of
imprisonment than the older one by substantial margins. It
is also obvious from the table that black men were substantially more likely to serve a prison term than white
men. Furthermore, dropping out from high school led to a
greater likelihood of imprisonment. Putting all of these
factors together, two-thirds of black high school dropouts
in the younger generation received prison sentences compared to less than a third of white high school dropouts.
The extent of potential criminality can also be seen
from other studies of youngsters. For example, Wilson
(1980) took samples of 10–17-year-olds living in deprived
housing estates in inner city or suburban settings. Evidence
concerning their criminality was obtained directly from
police records of convictions and cautions:
• 20 per cent of the boys had a record of crime. Theft and
burglary were the commonest offences.
• This should be contrasted with self-reported misbehav-
iour. Crime is much more common in terms of selfreported offences rather than criminal convictions – over
40 per cent had shoplifted, 67 per cent had drawn graffiti in the street and so forth.
The British Crime and Justice Survey (Budd, Sharp and
Mayhew, 2005) extended our knowledge of self-reported
rates of crime. A national sample of the general household
population in the age range of 10–65 years was asked in
detail about the offences of burglary, vehicle-related
thefts, other thefts, criminal damage, robbery, assaults and
selling drugs. Over 50 per cent of men and 30 per cent of
women said they had committed at least one of these core
crimes in their lives. Given that other types of offences,
such as sexual ones, were omitted from the survey, it is
likely that the figure for people who had ever committed a
serious offence could be higher. Of course, some of these
crimes would have been less serious since they involved
property of low value or involved assaults that did not lead
to injury. About 20 per cent of the population had committed a serious offence at some stage and this usually
involved assault with injury. The survey also assessed the
numbers who had committed an offence in the last year.
These figures are naturally smaller than the equivalent
lifetime percentages. Six per cent of people had committed a property crime in the last year and 5 per cent had
committed a violent offence. For juvenile offenders, the
majority of offences were violent in nature though generally these did not involve injury. For people above the age
of 25 years, the majority of offences were to do with
Table 2.1 Generational and racial trends in the likelihood of imprisonment in the USA
by the age of 30–34 years
All white
All black
White high school
dropouts
Black high school
dropouts
1945–9 Cohort
1%
1975–9 Cohort
5%
10%
4%
15%
27%
28%
68%
Source: Pettit, Sykes and Western (2009)
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The social context of crime
property. Drug offences were commoner than property
offences and much more common than violent offences in
the 18–25-year-old age group.
There is a long history of self-reported offending studies in criminology dating back to a hundred years ago.
Farrington (2001) reviews a number of American and
British studies and provides evidence of their validity and
Zauberman (2009) concentrates on European work. They
make an interesting contrast with victimisation studies
and, especially, police crime statistics.
There is a further approach that warrants attention in
this context: the field of experiments into honesty/dishonesty carried out by psychologists. Carefully staged situations, of a variety of sorts, have been contrived in order to
investigate dishonesty. The origins of this were in the
classic studies of Hartshorne and May (1928) who investigated aspects of dishonesty such as lying, cheating and
stealing in pubescent children. Among their measures was
the failure or not of children to return a coin they had been
given. This and later research is reviewed in Farrington
(1979). A range of other ways of assessing stealing has
been developed. For example, some researchers have
deliberately ‘lost’ money in the street to see whether the
finder attempts to return the cash or merely just keeps it.
Farrington and Kidd (1977) lost envelopes in the street
containing varying amounts of money:
• With no money enclosed, 95 per cent of the envelopes
were returned to the address in the enclosed letter.
• With £1 in cash enclosed, 75 per cent were returned.
• With £5 in cash enclosed, then 55 per cent were
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returned.
This is a notably high rate of dishonesty given that, in the
United Kingdom, to keep money knowing that one is
depriving its rightful owner of it constitutes theft. Many of
these studies were carried out to investigate the effects of
different environmental circumstances on the rates of honesty. They also indicate the baseline rates of dishonest
behaviour in fairly general samples of the population.
None of this should be too surprising given what we know
about the illegal downloading of music from the Internet
(music piracy). Wingrove, Korpas and Weisz (2011)
showed that young people’s attitudes to illegally downloading were very different from their attitudes to stealing
a CD from a music shop – despite the fact that the illegal
download and the CD might contain exactly the same
music tracks. This goes some way to understanding why
so many disregard the law on piracy.
Of course, there is an important implication for forensic
and criminal psychology in all of this. That is, in many
ways, the study of criminal behaviour is the study of the
behaviour of normal people – a high proportion admit to
having committed some sort of crime in their lives, no
matter how trivial. That does not imply that there are no
abnormal psychological features in any criminal, merely
that much crime has to be explained in terms of normal
behaviour.
Crime rates compared
internationally
The rates of crime in different parts of the world are
important sources of information. The International Crime
Victimisation Survey (2001) compared countries in different parts of the world including Australia, Austria,
Belgium, Canada, England and Wales, Finland, France,
Germany (the West prior to reunification), Italy, Malta,
the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway,
Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United
States. The crimes surveyed ranged from property offences
against cars, such as theft of the car, damage to the car and
theft from the car, on the less serious side, to sexual
offences and assault and threat. To survey national populations in such diverse locations is, manifestly, logistically
complex. Indeed, sampling in economically developing
countries was very much confined to cities as a consequence. The surveys were not all conducted at exactly the
same time in the different nations, so it is really only possible to describe the data as being collected in the 1990s.
Since forensic and criminal psychologists are most likely
to work in developed nations, the data for industrialised
countries are the most pertinent. It should be stressed that
this was a victimisation survey, not a collation of, for
example, crimes known to the police. The information was
obtained directly from the public, thus avoiding the sorts
of reporting bias that can affect the numbers of crimes
known to the police, but not avoiding the biases inherent
in surveys (refusals to take part, for instance). The survey
reported prevalence rates as opposed to incidence rates.
The meanings of prevalence and incidence rates are as
follows:
• Prevalence rates are simply the rates of people who
report having been a victim of crime or a particular sort
of crime in a particular time period. If they have been
robbed twice, for example, this is not recorded in
prevalence figures. So prevalence rates give the number
of victims of a particular type of crime rather than the
numbers of a particular type of crime.
• Incidence rates reflect the frequency of being victim-
ised and, as such, would provide better estimates of the
numbers of crimes committed annually.
In brief, the difference is between the number of a particular
type of crime per person in the population (incidence) and
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