Reviewing Violence By The Dark Figure Of Crime Criminology Essay

Our society is becoming more and more violent, in recent years ‘dark figure’ of crime has become a big issue. Today we hear more of criminal, offences often for no particular reason what so ever. We are living in the world of crime. ‘Dark figure’ of crime affects all towns, cities and countries. Crimes are made every day, but not every crime is reported and recorded that is why the ‘dark figure’ is in our vocabulary today. In this essay I would like to look into the main reasons why crime goes unreported, what are the most unreported crimes, how its effects our society and what is the best way try to deal with that.

The huge amount of crime in our society gets known when it is reported to the police, through public response to victim surveys and studies of offenders who admit committing crime, and when transmitted to other agencies, such as hospital accident wards, battered women’s refuge centres and similar ones. Crimes go unreported because nobody realizes that the crime was done of that they done a crime that is so miner that the victim don’t care. Other reasons why they have not been reported are because the victim knows the criminal and promised not to tell.

It was no need to record crimes until late nineteenth century in Britain, because the crimes at this time were very low, the punishment system was different from our days. The law and punishment system changed. The First time crimes were recorded in nineteenth century by British Crime Survey.

It is a lot of reasons why crimes goes unreported. ‘Newburn (2009) carried out the main points why people do not report matters to the police including: ‘the victim considers it too trivial; the victims feels the police will not be able to do anything about it; the victim is too scared to report it; the matter is too embarrassing or the victim would prefer to deal with the matter in another way’. Rape is the most unreported crime in our society, because the women’s are embarrassing or too ashamed to report the matter, feel unsafe and scared and so the vicious cycle continuous. If for example women was raped by her porter she might be frighten to go to the police. Most of the women’s feel embarrassing of the questions they have to answer many times in the police station while they give evidence, they are stressed and do not want get the flashbacks because they are asking the full details many times. The big per cent of Teenage girls are especially at risk for date rape. 38% of all rape cases reported the victim’s range in ages fourteen to seventeen. This to me is a high percentage for such a small age range. If we look how many children are abused by their parents it is quit shocking, because it is under report. Kids sexually abused by their parents cannot report crime to the police, because they are too young to understand that are frighten and scared of their parents, thinks that police don’t believe them or are embarrassed of what happened. Children sexual abused crimes are underreport in our days if we look into statistics we can see that 72 per cent of sexually abused children did not tell anyone about their abused at the time. 27 per cent of children told to somebody later. 31 per cent still had not told anyone their sexual abuse by adults.

Slak J (2009) in his article ‘The most violent country in Europe : Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.’ stated ‘Official crime figures shows that in the United Kingdom there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, The United States has a violence rate of 466 crime per 100,000 residents and South Africa 1,609’. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article It is a many types of violent crime: domestic violence, mugging, stranger violence, aqvouitance violence. Domestic violence includes many types of abuse from family members and relatives including psychical, psychological, sexual, financial, emotional, cultural based abuses. For example if someone making feel scared or intimidated, from pushing and bullying to more serious injuries and extremes that can cause death, forced marriage or taking away financial independence for example by not allowing to work or monitoring how spend money. Most forms of domestic violence are criminal offences these includes : putting somebody in a fair of violence, harassment, threatening to kill, attempting to choke and most of the people did not know that or know and do not want to report it by thinking police is not going to make no differences or give a support. Crimes of violence, on the other hand, are statistically assessed against the overall number of adults in England and Wales . In this case,people who are illegal immigrants and who do not appear in official registers are not included. The table published by the Home Office also contains a definitional bias. One of the most serious violence crimes is homicide. Data recorded by British Survey shows that police recorded 648 incidents of homicide a 17 per cent decrease on the 748 recorded in 2007/2008 and the lowest recorded number in the last twenty years. The number of murders recorded by the police also decreased by seven per cent from 621 in 2007/08 to 575 in 2008/09. Home office statistics shows that here has not been change in the number of violent crimes between 2006/ 2007 and 2008/2009. It was 903,993 offences of violence against the person recorded by the police 2008/09 and it is six per cent less than 2006/07 and it is the lowers figure since 2003/04. Other issues stem from how the data is collected. Surveys conducted by household, for instance, don’t include the victimization of homeless people (Kershaw et al., 2000). Furthermore, crimes in which offenders and victims are consenting parties (for example drug dealing) are largely unreported (Kershaw et al., 2000; Maguire, 1997).

Majority of people who one way or the other was victims of the crimes either domestic violence abuse or other thinks that is the best way keep everything to yourself and it is not going to happened again. But and the end of the day if someone attacks in your own home – weather is someone you share house with, your family member or your partner people cannot suffering in the silence.

Crime affects the whole person and can impact upon the victim’s health, quality of life and finances. Many need help to cope with their emotions, but the report argues that specialist services for victims are not enough. If people get enough support from the police and other organizations which are supporting victims of crime in our society crimes will be reported more than it is in nowadays. Victims of crime and their families need effective support and understanding in all spheres of life such as education, housing, employment, healthcare and financial services. All public services must recognise their shared responsibility for helping people to cope with crime.