Not all crimes are reported

Sep 24, 2018 Letters

Dear Mr.Editor.

I refer to your editorial on today’s date caption “CRIME WORSE THAN WE THINK”. I agree with your analysis based on the foregoing. How accurate are the OfficIal Crime statistics? Crime statistics are released by the Guyana Police Force to show the amount of crime that has been committed. They are gathered from records that are kept at police stations through out the country.
There are reasons why persons are suspicious about the accuracy of crime statistics. We must recognise that crime statistics have many uses. They are used to track patterns and rising and falling levels of crime over a particular period. They also show areas of high crime which will assist the police in the deployment of personnel.
Finally crime statistics are used by academics, criminologists, psychologists and sociologists.
One argument against crime statistics on its accuracy is that they are a record of crime, which are recorded by the police , rather than of crimes reported to the police.. For example vandalism , stealing of fruits off a neighbour tree may not be taken serious enough to be recorded as a crime.
Another type of crime which falls into the above category is domestic violence due to the fact persons find it pointless because the police are reluctant to pursue because of the believe that couples will resolve the matter.
Many people feel that based on the individual who is reporting the crime that the crime be recorded. For example, if a known drug addict reported a matter to the police his report will not be taken seriously and he will be chased out of the station.
On the other hand if a person with some social standing reports a crime the police are more likely to record the matter and investigate.
The public perception of the police could be a contributory factor why crime is not reported. Complainants believe that it is a waste of time to report a matter to the police because the person who commits the crime have influence within society and the police might not investigate the complaint.
Domestic and sexual abuse are cases that might not be reported because of the stigma and many times financial settlements are made.
Since the police are the ones who are collecting the statistics there might be pressure from the top of the police department to massage the numbers and if there is no pressure from the top the police the fact that the police are the ones collecting crime statistics is going to lead to a certain amount of selection bias.
In my view crime statistics produced by the police are not accurate, but whatever other method is used, all of them have flaws so it’s my opinion that the police techniques and standards should be improve when it comes to recording crime.
Morris Springer

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