| Police arrests are an important basis for measuring crime in society. The main factors influencing such statistics is the reporting behavior of victims or witnesses, and the recording behavior of the police. Especially minor crimes are not often reported by victims, or if reported, police incentive to record such crimes is not high because their clearance rates are low, i.e., these cases are rarely solved. Crime surveys offer a possibility of measuring crime independently. While absolute responses to crime surveys are not exactly comparable to police data, the number of crimes indicated by victims as reported to the police offer a comparable data source. The results of national as well as local studies in germany have shown that the number of minor crimes indicated as reported to the police is about ten times higher than the number of actually recorded crimes. Reasons for this discrepancy, such as methods of victim reporting, and police procedure are discussed in the paper. |
Updated 05/20/2006