... Statistics an accurate measure of crime? And can we solely rely on these statistics to form judgements about our society? This essay will address these questions, investigating the reliability of the Official Statistics and identify changes and other sources of information. There have been a number of arguments into the reasons why the crime rate, or should we say the recording of crime, has significantly increased. Firstly the number people involved in the measurement of crime have significantly increased, and as Galliher points out, 'there is no doubt about it: more police, more judges and more prisons appear to have a nearly infinite capacity to increase the amount of officially recorded crime' (Galliher 1989, in Muncie 2001, p. 29). The identification of the control that the police have over the statistics lead to the argument by Taylor (1998). He identified that the rise in the Official Statistics between 1914 and 1960 ...

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