How useful are the official statistic as a source of information as offending behaviour?

... How useful are the official statistic as a source of information as offending behaviour? The official statistics are crimes recorded (under guidelines form the government) by the police, and the probation service (to an extent). "The crime contained in these volumes are of great significances, not only for those who study crime or work in the criminal justice system, but also for politicians, the mass media and the general public, for whom these are the major source of authorized information about the extent and trends in crime." (J.Moynihan. Understanding crime data: Haunted by the dark figure.) The official statistic are gathered from a number of different sources, these include; Criminal statistics (HMSO), Judicial statistics (HMSO), Probation statistics (home office), Prison statistics (HMSO). All of these are published by their respective departments yearly and when used together create the official statistics for Great Britain. Other countries have similar systems, for example Scotland has the Recorded

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