The measurement of crime and the importance of its contributions to contemporary criminology

Abstract

For Criminology the measurement of crime is important because it allows to test criminological theories, the study of the correlates of the crime, the knowledge of the victims and the design of the criminal policy. The question that arises is which of the instruments used for the measurement of crime, oficial statistics, victimization surveys and self-report studies, is the most appropriate to know the crime rates and evolution of crime in our country. In Spain the oficial statistics are the ones that offer us data that we can work with because they have been performed periodically, while victimization surveys and self-report studies have been scarce. Among the oficial statistics, the best statistics on crimes are police statistics, published in the Yearbook of the Ministry of the Interior, against information provided by other oficial statistics, such as those of the Office of the Prosecutor and those of the Council General of the Judiciary, because they collect the first information on the commission of criminal acts and contain less bias.