6.6.5: The Trouble with Official Statistics

 6.6.5: The Trouble with Official Statistics 

We must be cautious when it comes to official crime statistics. 

According to official statistics, working-class boys are more delinquent than middle-class boys.

 Yet, as we have seen, who actually gets arrested for what is influenced by social class, a point that has far-reaching implications. 

As symbolic interactionists point out, the police follow a symbolic system as they enforce the law.

Ideas of “typical criminals” and “typical good citizens” permeate their work.

 The more a suspect matches their stereotypes of a lawbreaker (which they call “criminal profiles”), the more likely that person is to be arrested.

 Police discretion, the decision whether to arrest someone or even to ignore a matter, is a routine part of police work. 

Official crime statistics reflect these and many other biases. 

Crime statistics do not have an objective, independent existence.

 They are not like oranges that you pick out in a grocery store. 

Rather, they are a human creation. 

If the police enforce laws strictly, crime statistics go up.

 Loosen the enforcement, and crime statistics go down. 

New York City provides a remarkable example. 

To keep their crime statistics low, the police keep some crime victims waiting in the police station for hours. 

Some victims give up and leave, and the crimes don’t enter official records.

 In other cases, the police listen to crime victims but make no written record of the crime (Baker and Goldstein 2011). 

Various forms of underreporting probably occur in most police departments. 

191 As a personal example, someone took my mailbox (rural, located on the street). 

When I called and reported the theft, a police officer arrived promptly. 

He was incredibly friendly. He looked around and spotted the mailbox in the ditch. 

He retrieved it and then personally restored it to its post. 

He even used his tools to screw it back on.

 He then said, “I’m chalking this one up to the wind.” I didn’t object. 

I knew what he was doing. 

No crime to report, no paperwork for him, and the area has one less incident to go into the crime statistics.