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A Comparison of National Crime Surveys

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The Plight of Crime Victims in Modern Society

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Abstract

In the past two decades a new method, the crime survey, has evolved to measure the total volume of crime independently from the records of the police, court, and correctional systems. Criminologists have long searched for a measure which could come close to describing the total volume of criminal behaviour. They realized that the closer the measurement of crime was to the actual commission of a criminal act, the fewer the filtering decisions that would affect that measure and the greater the volume of crime. They were especially concerned with the ‘dark figure’ of crimes which never became known to the police. The first crime statistics measured court activities. By the 1930s, these had been rejected as the basic crime statistic in favour of ‘crimes known to the police’. Until the mid-1960s, these police-recorded crimes were the most feasible measure, close to the criminal act. However, it was recognized that the police were never notified of many crimes, and that, in some jurisdictions, the police failed to act on some crimes of which they were notified (Block and Block, 1980).

Thanks go to Carl Steinmetz and Jan Van Dijk (Netherlands), Ake Lindblom (Sweden), Mike Hough and Pat Mayhew (England, Wales/Scotland), Menachim Amir and Shai Javetz (Israel), John Braithwaite (Australia), Dorothy Hepworth (Canada), and Wes Skogan for their help in preparation of this report.

I would also thank the Netherlands American Committee for International Exchange for the financial aid which first led me to study victimization across cultures.

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Authors
  1. Richard Block
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

    Ezzat A. Fattah Ph.D. (Professor of Criminology) (Professor of Criminology)

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© 1989 Ezzat A. Fattah

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Block, R. (1989). A Comparison of National Crime Surveys. In: Fattah, E.A. (eds) The Plight of Crime Victims in Modern Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20083-2_1

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