As an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Kent, I have been teaching a first-year course called ‘Critical Thinking’.
Most of my students are budding criminologists required to take the module in order to learn more about social research methods.
Time and time again, I have been asked why critical thinking is so important. Critical thinking not only teaches us to challenge the status quo, but it probes us to look further into how crime is defined and measured.
Defining ‘crime’ can be a nebulous task. What is or is not considered in administrative definitions of crime is often controversial and power-laden. In the most recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) report on crime in England and Wales, the ‘main crime types’ listed are fraud, theft, violence, computer misuse, criminal damage, robbery, knife or sharp instruments and homicide. Crimes of a sexual nature are classified under the heading ‘crime and crime-related experiences’.
This is significant to consider for two main reasons: First and foremost, omitting sexual violence from the list of main crime types allows the ONS to claim that crime, and more specifically – violence – has decreased over the past decade. In fact, the report mentions a gradual decrease in cases of violence, but an increase in cases of sexual assault since the end of 2014. Second, alluding to crimes such as stalking, harassment, domestic violence and sexual violence as ‘crime-related experiences’ detracts from the issues’ seriousness and denies victims/survivors the recognition they deserve.
Similar to defining crime, the way in which crime is measured can be controversial and even contested. For example, the aforementioned ONS report states that the Crime Survey for England and Wales (which most of the data is based on) does not include ‘victimless’ crimes such as drug possession. Notably, the data also appears to exclude structurally violent crimes, such as work-related deaths, meaning ‘perpetrator-less’ crimes are also left out of the report.
The significance underlying the ONS’ omission of ‘victimless’ and ‘perpetrator-less’ crimes lays in the fact that harm is still evident in both cases. In the latter, ‘structures’ may not be able to be arrested, sent to court, or put in prison – but they are capable of causing irreversible harms such as injury, death and strain on the NHS and welfare systems. Likewise, it is difficult to explain why ‘victimless’ crimes like drug possession did not make it into the report, given that a significant portion of the UK prison population is serving time for drug offenses.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that how prisons measure their populations needs to be carefully considered. While some may take an average over the course of a year, others may take a ‘snapshot’ of their population at the beginning or end of each year. As a result, caution must be used when comparing prison populations – if Prison A and Prison B show similar trends in their prison populations but measured them differently, the trends observed may not be as valid as they seem.
All of these factors are important to consider when thinking critically about crime and punishment. In order to understand what is really going on in our justice system – and society as a whole – even the most ‘trusted’ sources require a critical gaze, at times.
