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Existing resources as data
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There are several ways in which existing resources can be used as valid research data by criminologists and victimologists. Typically, advice and guidance in criminological research texts would refer here to the use of secondary analysis of official statistics and we too discuss the use of crime data in criminological research.
Secondary analysis of official statistics
Secondary analysis is a form of investigation which is based on existing sources of data and can be distinguished from primary research and analysis where you would collect the data for yourself at first hand. Secondary data refers to any existing source of information which has been collected by someone other than you and with some purpose other than the current research question. There is a wide range of secondary sources potentially available, such as police or Crown Prosecution Service or youth justice data, institutional records, diaries and letters and other documentary and mediated resources. Pam Cox, Heather Shore and Barry Godfrey, in Chapter 8, dis- cuss doing historical analysis of crime, victims and justice. In Chapter 10, Nick Tilley, Graham Farrell and Andromachi Tseloni explore the use of secondary data to explain the crime drop in England and Wales since 1995.
The forms of data that are routinely used for criminological research are official statistics on crime. Crime in England and Wales has, since the early 2000s, been annually reported on in a complementary series that combines the reporting of police-recorded crime and the British Crime Survey (BCS)/Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). There remain three key stages in the crime-recording process:
1. Reporting a crime – someone reports a crime to the police or the police them- selves discover a crime. The police register these reports as a crime-related inci- dent and then decide whether or not it is a ‘notifiable’ (recorded crime) offence and whether to record it as a crime.
2. Recording a crime – the police decide to record the report or their discovery of a crime and need to determine how many crimes to record and what the offence type(s) is/are.
3. Detecting a crime – once a crime is recorded and investigated, and evidence is collected to link the crime to a suspect, it can be detected.
Thus, these ‘counting rules’ need to be thoroughly understood, together with how they have changed over time, as this affects comparisons and trends. Also, despite there being more consistency and better quality of crime recording over time, there is still the problem of ‘attrition’ and the mismatch between what people report and what is recorded by the police. The discrepancy in some areas and for some crimes remains worryingly disparate. Nevertheless, such statistics provide a good measure of trends in well-reported crimes. They are an important indicator of police work- load and can be used for local crime pattern analysis.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) is an important monitor of the extent of crime in England and Wales. It is used by the government to evaluate and develop crime-reduction policies as well as providing vital information about the changing levels of crime over the last 30 years. The survey measures crime by asking members of the public, such as you, about their experiences of crime over the last 12 months. In this way, the survey records all types of crime experienced by people, including those crimes that may not have been reported to the police. The value of the survey is its ability to find out about crimes which do not get reported to, or recorded by, the police. It has previously shown that only 4 in 10 crimes are actually reported to the police, so conducting the survey is very valuable in understanding all of the other crimes which go unreported. Typically, the Crime Survey records a higher number of crimes than police figures because it includes these unreported crimes. As well as measuring crime, the Crime Survey for England and Wales looks at:
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· identifying those most at risk of crime, which is used in designing crime- prevention programmes
· people’s attitudes to crime and the Criminal Justice System, including the police and the courts
· people’s experiences of anti-social behaviour and how this has affected their qual- ity of life.
In 2015/16, around 50, 000 households across England and Wales were invited to participate in the survey. In previous years, three quarters of the households invited to take part agreed to participate. Data from the CSEW and other large data sets can be used by researchers and teachers. In 2017, the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
announced a consultation on a proposal that, in the context of public sector financial constraints, the future level of funding for the CSEW would be reduced with effect from October 2017. Further to this, the ONS put forward a range of proposals to reduce the cost of the CSEW in 2017/18 and future years. See Box 1. 3 for a summary of the proposed changes.
BOX 1. 3 CHANGES TO THE CRIME SURVEY FOR ENGLAND AND WALES
ONS ConsultatIon 2017
The consultation asked for responses to the following questions:
· What are your views on the proposed cost savings?
· Of the proposed cost-saving options, which would you prefer ONS to adopt?
Option A: Reduce target response rate (to 69%)
Option B: Reduce sample size (by 1, 800 interviews)
Option C: Remove additional questions from CSEW to reduce survey to core questions required to produce quarterly crime estimates
The consultation proposes that all the following will be removed from the CSEW questionnaire from October 2017:
· all questions in the ‘Performance of the Criminal Justice System’ module, except- ing those related to the performance of the police
· all questions in the ‘Experiences of the Criminal Justice System’ module
· all questions in the ‘Attitudes to the Criminal Justice System’ module
· Questions relating to victims’ experiences of the court system and use of victim services from the ‘Victimization’ module.
Option D: Mixed approach – reduce target response rate (to 71%) and reduce sample size
Questions:
· What are your views on the proposed cost savings?
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· Of the proposed cost-saving options, which would you prefer ONS to adopt?
· Is there a particular reason for your stated preference?
· What impact would these potential options have on your use of CSEW data?
· Do you have any other comments?
Such large-scale data sets are invaluable sources and resources that enable researchers to confront real-life research. The consultation by the ONS described in Box 1. 3 received a total of 123 responses from academics, police forces and police and crime commissioners, local or regional government organisations, other govern- ment departments, charities and voluntary organisations. These responses were impactful in terms of influencing the outcome. Data collections such as the CSEW, the Young People and Crime Survey, and the Youth Lifestyles Survey constitute well- documented examples of real-life data collection and allow students as researchers to engage critically with methods and methodologies. They are rich sources of raw material for data analysis and can be used to engage in secondary analysis. They are sources of evidence that can be interrogated.
In Chapter 11, Lyria Bennett Moses and Janet Chan explore the emerging use of Big Data in criminology and criminal justice, and highlight some of the challenges and issues that Big Data bring to those wishing to undertake criminological research with and/or on it. They note that there are two main areas where Big Data has been used for researching crime and justice: first, the use of Big Data such as social media streams as data in criminological research; and, second, the use of Big Data for real-time
monitoring or to make predictions that can be used for law enforcement or criminal justice purposes, such as increasing situational awareness, preventing crime and enhancing efficiency. These categories obviously overlap, and research in the first category may be applied in the second.
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