According to Romli Atmasasmita, crime statistics or moral statistics introduced by Quetelet is a form of observation about crime by using figures that find the existence of regularities in the development of crime. The crime that arises and develops in society and every certain crime happening in society constantly re-occurs. The meaning of crime statistics is not just figures, but it refers to a deep meaning that crime can be predicted.
The method of crime statistics is one of the widely used and considered methods or tools in criminology research as quantitative data. This method works to observe and read up a crime in a specific period, as well as to develop the crime with various related factors in the same period, so that there are dynamic materials for researching correlations between various factors related to crime through crime statistics that can be relatively described accurately. The meaning of crime statistics for criminology is very important, not only as a method and crime data, but it also acts importantly to generate what people assume of the reality of crime as a social construction of crime.
When studying crime with a statistical approach, we cannot escape the ideas of a Belgian statistician and teacher of literature in Brussels, Adolphe Quetelet who managed to make statistics a science as well as create the basics of practical statistics. Quetelet utilized the crime data in France for the first time to prove that crime, just like other social crimes, is not the symptoms of an individual’s act, but acting as a massive phenomenon, so that the crime statistics become a better method than other methods to study massive crime. It happens since in discovering regularities, tendencies and even social laws, Quetelet concludes in this observation that crime can be eradicated by improving the people’s lives.
Another expert who has also an important role in the development of crime statistics is G. Von Mayr who authored a book entitled ‘Statistik Der Gerichten Polizeiim Konigreiche Bayern Und In Einigen Andern landern’. In this book, he describes that there are parallels in the development between the level of theft with the price of wheat. For every 5 cents in the price of wheat in 1835-1961 in Bavaria, the number of thefts increased by 1 in 100,000 residents. In its development, it turns out that this development is inversely proportional to economic development and the level of crime.
Well, the crime statistics are the figures showing the number of crimes recorded at a certain time and place. These crime statistics are created based on recorded crimes, both officially and recorded by the researchers themselves. The official crime statistics can be obtained from the Police, Prosecutors, Courts and Correctional Institutions. Meanwhile, the crime data produced by the researchers themselves that they obtained from the field is only a sample of all crimes which occurred and the number of crimes that occurred is never known. Of course, these statistics here are called research crime statistics or Statistical Information Produced by Research.
Both official crime statistics and research crime statistics have only recorded data, while unknown or unrecorded figures are unpredictable. These unknown parts of crime are called dark figures. Therefore, one of the disadvantages of criminal statistics is that they are incomplete. However, the crime statistics can indeed never record all the crimes that exist. If the statistics are used for investigation of criminal etiology, it is not necessary to complete the materials, but the origin of the materials is representative, meaning whether or not the known comparison and unknown comparison can be said to be constant (pars pro toto).
The official crime statistics are obtained from three consecutive general sources or bureaus, including:
1) Police. This institution is most closely related to a variety of violations that definitely occurred during the period of systematic and periodic recording. In addition to recording the crimes, the police commonly record the perpetrator’s age, nation and sex, which are part of the police statistics.
2) Courts. The courts generally create statistics concerning matters regarding the number of violations prosecuted, the number of convicted and the procedure used in administering the sentence, the number not convicted and the reasons for the trial procedure liberating these problems and who was responsible.
3) Correctional Institutions. According to some reports, in America, adult criminals are incarcerated in state prisons with a few exceptions. While minor criminals are commonly provided the facilities in the county corrections. Of course, the statistics regarding the prisoners are rarely found in the circumstances that can be used, because they do not have reliable written figures or reliable estimates of the number of prisoners in each state.
The existence of crime statistics is intended to generalize data on perpetrators of crimes and types of crimes in the figures that are received from official institutions such as the police, prosecutors, courts, correctional institutions and many others. The data is obtained based on their records, classified, tabulated and analyzed for the purposes of establishing relationships between classification and tabulated factors and then published regularly. The purpose of creating crime statistics is to obtain an overview/ data regarding the crime occurring in the community, such as the number of crimes, the frequency of crimes as well as the dissemination of perpetrators and crimes. According to this data, the government then uses it to arrange policies of crime prevention. With the use of the data, of course, the government can easily measure the rise and the fall of crime in a certain period in a region or country.
The effort to study crime with a statistical approach is such a great way as an effort in looking for the appropriate patterns and also predicting the criminal behaviour which leads to the goals of criminology in the future, i.e., acting as a means to help criminal law in predicting crime and efforts to overcome it.
A bookworm and researcher especially related to law and citizenship education. I spend time every day in front of the internet and the campus library.
