Criminology is the study of the causes of crime and the criminal element of society. The term deviance means a type of behaviour that goes against the norms, values and expectations of a social group or society. And the term Crime is a type of behaviour that breaks the law and can be punished by the legal system. They are different because all crime is class as deviant behaviour but not all deviance is criminal, a example of non criminal deviant behaviour can be anything from wearing your pyjamas in public to enjoying watchings others in pain. In this report it will cover what the definition of crime, deviance and what criminology is. It will also say how the police categorise crimes and report it, it will give examples of crime in this community …show more content…
Crimes of Violence is one of the more serious groups of crimes it involves things like murder, attempted murder, serious assault or cruelty to children. And finally crimes of dishonesty is things like thefts involving housebreaking or opening locked places, also theft of or from a motor vehicle and fraud is all grouped into this category. The police report crimes by dividing it into six different stages; stage one is incident reporting and recording, there is a few ways that incidents can be reported to the police for example victims, witnesses or other third parties could tell a police officers or they could phone the police control room. Stage two is deciding if a crime should be recorded, the HOCR (Home Office Counting Rules) needs two different parts to this stage, the first part is that offences against a person as circumstances reported amount to a crime that police determine based on their knowledge of the law. The Second part of this stage is when a crime is recorded for offences against the state, the points to influence proof that the evidence of offence must clearly be made out.Stage three is closing incident records, after the decision to record a crime the incident will likely be closed, any more information to be added should be recorded in the police force crimes system to keep all the information in one place and this also is to avoid duplication. Stage four is recording a crime, after the police have determined to record a crime, they then confirm the number of crimes to recored and what offences are committed, for example theft of a dog from a family home would as well as theft it would be breaking and entering. Stage five is closing crime records, records will be open whilst they are still investigating, collecting evidence and identifying a