Dark figure of crime
Definition
The gap between the actual volume of crime and the amount recorded in official statistics. Crimes go unrecorded when victims do not report them, when police do not log reports, or when statistical definitions exclude certain acts. Victimisation surveys are the primary tool for estimating the dark figure.
Related terms
- Criminology
- The scientific study of crime, its causes and distribution across populations, the operation of criminal justice institutions, and strategies for prevention and...
- Penology
- The branch of criminology concerned with the theory and practice of punishment and imprisonment. It examines the aims of punishment (retribution, deterrence,...
- Victimisation survey
- A survey that asks a random population sample about crimes experienced in a reference period, regardless of whether those incidents were reported...
- Victimology
- The sub-field of criminology that studies crime victims: their characteristics, the victim-offender relationship, the impacts of victimisation, and the adequacy of legal...
- Burglary
- The offence of entering a building or structure without authorisation with intent to commit an offence inside. Distinguished from theft by the...
- CompStat
- A police management and accountability system first implemented by the New York City Police Department in 1994. CompStat uses regularly updated crime...
- Crime hotspot
- A small geographic area where crime incidents cluster at a rate significantly higher than surrounding areas over a defined time period. Hotspot...
- Crime prevention
- Strategies and interventions aimed at reducing the incidence or severity of crime before it occurs. Includes situational prevention (modifying environments to reduce...
- CSEW (Crime Survey for England and Wales)
- The principal victimisation survey in England and Wales, conducted by the Office for National Statistics since 1982. Interviews around 35,000 adults annually...
- Deviance
- Behaviour that violates social norms, whether or not it is also illegal. Criminology studies deviance as well as crime because the boundary...
- Displacement
- The relocation of crime following a prevention intervention. Can take five forms: territorial (to another place), temporal (to another time), target (to...
- Geographic information system (GIS)
- Software that stores, analyses, and visualises data tied to geographic coordinates. In crime analysis, GIS platforms such as ArcGIS or the open-source...
Explained in these topics
- Criminology, Law, and Forensic ScienceThe gap between the actual volume of crime and the amount recorded in official statistics. Crimes go unrecorded when victims do not report them, when police do...
- The Dark Figure of Crime and Crime MappingThe total volume of criminal offences that occur but do not appear in official statistics. Comprises crimes not reported to police, crimes reported but not rec...
- Property Crime and Economic OffendingThe volume of crime that is committed but never reported to police and therefore absent from official statistics. The dark figure is proportionally largest for...
- Victimisation and Self-Report SurveysThe portion of crime that is not recorded in official statistics because it was not reported to police, was reported but not recorded, or was not detected at a...
- Violent Crime as a Social PhenomenonThe gap between crimes that occur and crimes that appear in official records. Largest for sexual violence and intimate partner violence, where social stigma, f...
- What Is CriminologyThe gap between the total volume of crime that occurs and the amount that is reported to, recorded by, or detected by official agencies. Victimisation surveys...