Crime Measurement
Introduction
Crime refers to an illegal action punishable by any power or a state. It is essential to put into contemplation the occurrence of unlawful activities across the country to identify where they occur frequently. There are three chief techniques exercised by a forensic psychologist to measure crime.
Official statistics
The National Statistics Office is in charge of assembling a broad assortment of quantitative information on varying regions of consideration. It keeps the data on present offense surveys conducted on victims, on top of those documented by the department of police. They comprise of; sexual crime, drug crime, and property crime.
Advantages: handles and control major crimes, data stored can assist for future references.
Disadvantage: information collected and stored by police may be damaged. It is easy for an individual punished for a crime he/she did not commit.
Victim surveys
it refers to a study done face-to-face to acquire information; the victims get selected at random through “postcode lottery.” Therefore, some households will not get interviewed. Victims have the right to refuse or withdraw the interview. Children and adults get questioned about their crime experiences and responses used by police to identify groups that are at risk.
Advantage: this survey technique are online; therefore, it can reach as many folks as possible and cover vast areas in a country.
Disadvantage: the aspect of participants having the right to be interviewed or not may result in low turnouts for an interview during the survey. Participants can use lye as long as they are far from the interviewer.
Offenders’ surveys
These investigations configured to collect data directly from offenders, especially those in jail, to build up an understanding of the attitude and behaviors of offenders. A study conducted between the years 2003-3006, information collected from different regions together with self-reported felonious. By collecting data from a good number of young lawbreakers and comparing the results with those of previous years, they recognized a particular trend, youths between 14and 17 consumed drugs a lot.
Advantage: This kind of survey assists law punishers in recognizing prospective risk factors and building up methods to prevent an individual from becoming a criminal through treatment strategies targeted at specific age groups.
Disadvantages: in a personal interview, an individual may deceive the interviewer.