Victim surveys are another way of measuring crime. A victim survey is an anonymous survey of individuals asking for details of crimes committed against them, even if they didn’t report it to the police. It is carried out on a yearly basis. They include figures for reported and unreported crimes, which makes them more representative than police crime figures. They also use a large sample size and have a high response rate. The most significant victim survey in Britain is the Crime Survey for England & Wales, which interviews a sample of the population and asks them about their experiences of being a victim of crime over the previous year. Answers are confidential and can’t be passed onto the police. The survey results are applied to the entirety …show more content…
The crime survey showed that burglary was 7%, while police recorded crime showed burglary as 12% of all crimes reported (2008). Victim surveys and police figures do reveal the same patterns and trends. Crime rose in the 1980s and early 2990s. Since 2002, there’s been a small drop in crime. This year in the Crime Survey there has been a 16% decrease since the previous year, and it is the lowest estimate since the survey began in 1981. However, there are problems with victim surveys, one of these being that they only interview a small number of the population, which means that it doesn’t really show a representation of crime of everyone in England and Wales. Also, the Crime Survey doesn’t look at all crime such as crime against businesses. It also doesn’t look at those living in group residencies such as care homes and prisons. The sociologist Jock Young questioned the validity of victim surveys by saying that everyone has their own definition of crime, so one person would view something as a crime while another person would not. Another point he raised is that some people are more willing to reveal their experiences of crime than others. Young states that victim surveys do have a place in research, but says they do not give us a true, full picture of