Official statistics on Crime and Deviance

This worksheet covers the explanations put forward by sociologists to understand why official statistics may not always be reliable in our understating of crime and deviance for A Level Sociology. It begins by outlining why crimes may go unrecorded and looks into victimisation and self-report studies to understand some crimes that are under reported. This is followed by a box for students to fill with a list of crimes that may be underrepresented in official statistics like white collar and green crimes. Finally another set of boxes are included for students to apply their knowledge of Marxism, labelling theory, functionalism and feminism, by outlining how these perspectives may approach official statistics.