British Crime Survey

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The British Crime Survey or BCS is a systematic victim study, currently carried out by BMRB Social Research on behalf of the Home Office. The BCS seeks to measure the amount of crime in England and Wales by asking around 50,000 people aged 16 and over, living in private households, about the crimes they have experienced in the last year. The survey is comparable to the National Crime Victimization Survey conducted in the United States.

The British Crime Survey was first carried out in 1982 and further surveys were carried out in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001. Since April 2001, BCS interviews have been carried out on a continuous basis and detailed results from that point are now reported by financial years. Headline measures are updated quarterly based on interviews conducted in the previous 12 months.

Initially the survey covered England, Wales and Scotland but now the survey is restricted to England and Wales. The Scottish Executive have commissioned a bespoke survey of victimisation in Scotland called the Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey (SCVS).

The value of the BCS is that it can provide a better reflection of the true level of crime than police statistics since it includes crimes that have not been reported to, or recorded by, the police. The BCS estimates that only around half of all crime it measures is captured on police recorded crimes largely because people do not bother to report crimes because they think the crime was too trivial or the police couldn't do much about it. The BCS also provides a better measure of trends over time since it has adopted a consistent methodology and is unaffected by changes in reporting or recording practices.

1 Example of statistics gathered by the BCS
2 Home office statistics
3 Further reading
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Example of statistics gathered by the BCS

In 2003/04 the number of robbery offences in England and Wales was for people aged 16 and over was around 283,000.

In 2004/05 the number of robbery offences in England and Wales, for people aged 16 and over was around 255,000

The BCS does not measure robbery offences among victims under 16 years.

[edit] Home office statistics

Violent crime accounted for 14% of all recorded crime yet over the past five years violent crime has fallen by 22%, domestic burglary is down by 39%, and vehicle crime is down by 26%.

In 1997, there were over 1.6 million domestic burglaries in England and Wales. Burglary is the crime most commonly referred to Victim Support, with nearly half a million victims of burglary being offered help each year

[edit] Further reading

Stephen Moore, Investigating crime and deviance, ISBN 0-00-322439-2
Crime age decreases every year
Van Dijk, J.J.M. at al. (2005) The Burden of Crime in the EU. Research Report: A Comparative Analysis of the European Crime and Safety Survey (EU ICS) 2005 accessed at [1] April 3, 2007