Criminology The Realist View And Constructivist Perspective

Criminology is the study of crime, those who commit crime and also studies the criminal justice and penal systems. Crime is defined as the act of omission established with the laws of the nation in which it occurred in. However, deviance as Downes and Rock suggested may be considered as the behaviour which is banned or controlled and would more limey attract punishment or disapproval. Not all deviances are crimes it is merely behaviours which do not comply with the norms of societies. It is important to clarify what crime is and how it occurs in order to have accurate measurements of it. There are two opposing views on crime statistics: the realist view and constructivist perspective. The former view has a number of forms, pertinently; left realism and right realism. Basically, realist view sees the official records as an indicator of the state of crime in a society. On the contrary, the latter perspective is related to how officials and others perceive the process as well as how off icial statistics could be understood by the procedure agencies responsible carry out their work. Crime statistics give an indication of crime occurrences and there are two methods used in constructing crime rates: recorder crime statistics and the national crime victimisation surveys (British Crime Survey). This essay will critically analyse how accurate the measures of crime are with reference to the theories on crime. One of the official sources of crime data is collected routinely by law