| Both victimization studies and criminological studies have shown that only a small part of criminality is officially recognized. Police crime statistics, which to this day are widely used as reliable indicators of a region's crime problem, describes only a small portion of the total number of crimes actually committed and yields a distorted picture of the actual level of crime in society. Nevertheless this distorted picture serves as the basis of discussions in the mass media and in the political arena. In Germany as in other countries the Dark Figure is regarded as at least as large as reported crime, i.e., only every second crime comes to light as a complaint recorded by the police. On the basis of several victim studies and research on police reporting behavior, we will show that the Dark Figure is essentially larger than generally assumed. The filtering process in most nations consists of two levels: the reporting patterns of crime victims, and the registration patterns of the police. Up to now discussions of the Dark Figure have not fully considered the former, nor specifics of the latter, but recent data from eastern and western Europe provide a basis for objectively evaluating official statistics. Victimization studies provide important information about the public's behavior in bringing criminal complaints to the police. And by considering police crime statistics both before and after the collapse of communism in the eastern Europe insight can be gained as to how complaints and arrest figures are distorted by police organizations. |
Updated 05/20/2006