Criminal Statistics and the Construction of Crime

This chapter explores a number of interrelated questions about ‘crime levels’, ‘crime patterns’, and ‘crime trends’ and how they are measured. These range from what may sound like (but are not) straightforward empirical and methodological questions, such as ‘how much crime is there?’, ‘how is it changing?’, and ‘how do we know?’, to more sociological and political questions about the relationships between, on the one hand, the kinds of crime data which are collected and published and, on the other, changing perceptions of the nature of ‘the crime problem’ and developments in criminal justice policy and the politics of crime control.