Methodology
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Short Cuts - Police Recorded Statistics - Crime Victimisation Surveys - Gun Crime and Official Statistics - Who Benefits? - Conclusion

Gun crime is a difficult topic to research because it would be very difficult to engage in any participant observation as that would be very dangerous. So for statistics on gun crime we must use official statistics. There are two types of official statistics and these are:

Police Recorded Statistics

Police recorded statistics in England and Wales are used to estimate the crime rate and are based on the recording by the police of notifiable offences. Crime statistics are unreliable because only a small fraction of crimes are actually know to the police due to non reporting and non recording of crimes, this is the 'dark figure' of crime (Giddens, 2001, 216). Crimes reported to the police have been steadily increasing for over half a centaury, this is partly due to insurance etc, and people are now much more fearful of crime (Giddens, 2001, p217).

This is probably due to how much crime is advertised e.g.progrmas like crimes stoppers etc.
The main problems with police statistics are:

• Victims don’t report some crimes both through distrust of the police and fear.
• They reflect police bias (i.e. towards race and gender) and reflect public opinion towards certain crimes.
• They are shaped by efficiency and size of the police force.
• Bias in the treatment of offenders by the courts.

Crime Victimisation Surveys

Crime Victimisation Surveys try and reveal the proportion of the population that has been victimized by crime during a certain period to try and find the 'dark figure' of crime. Britain conducted its first crime victimisation survey in 1982 and is called the British Crime Survey (Giddens, 2001, 216).

This found that incomplete recording and reporting of crimes mean only about 30% of all crimes mentioned by victims ended up in police records. In America it is called The National Crime Victimisation Survey and started in 1973. In 1998 the British crime survey showed that slightly over half of all crimes reported to the police in England and Wales in 1997 were recorded (Giddens, 2001, p216).

Gun Crime and Official Statistics

Official statistics of any kind are limited and can only give a rough picture of the true situation. Because in England handgun ownership is illegal people are going to be less willing to admit to it. In America the main problem is America is renowned for being very secretive about its official statistics. As I have discussed in the race and ethnicity section in particular before the Stephen Lawrence inquiry led to changes in the police force.

Ethnic minorities and the police did not have a very good relationship and many people from ethnic communities did not trust the police in the UK or America so would often leave crimes unreported. In poorer neighbourhoods where gun crime is rife, fear is a factor that prevents people from reporting crimes to the police. If guns are involved then it usually means that the people involved are not afraid to use guns even to scare off witnesses. Another problem with official statistics and gun crime is that sometimes the guns used are toy guns or BB guns and many witnesses would not be able to tell the difference. "Unless the weapon is either fired or recovered after a crime, there is no way of knowing if it was a real or an imitation" (or whether it was loaded or unloaded)" (Home Office, 2002/2003). It is also difficult to classify the type of gun used or know what it was.

Who Benefits?

There are many reasons why different groups in society want to use official statistics to give very different pictures. For example the government in power will want the gun crime levels to appear low while the opposing government would want them to seem high so the government in power looks bad. The police will want statistics to look low but companies involved in crime protection need a fear of crime to sell us things. Also as far as newspapers are concerned crime sells papers and so do high crime statistics and a fear of gun crime.

Conclusion

As a sociologist what I must do is to go behind these statistics and understand the social processes that determine who commits gun crime, where and why.