Crime statistics are constructed through discursive practices, not neutral counting

Evidence

The police are seen as society’s first line of defense in protecting the liberty of the individual and the rights of private property, and as a bulwark against social anarchy. They are authorized to produce official measures of overall crime levels—the crime statistics—and to provide a rolling commentary on the relation between crime and wider social trends. Indeed, PTC starts with a discussion of the discursive practices involved in constructing a statistical measure for “mugging”—since at that time there was no such crime on the statute books to “record” statistically (and there still isn’t). But there are few “social facts” as persuasive as a line of numbers. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1048

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Shows how an official statistic can be manufactured for a crime that doesn’t exist on statute books, illustrating the social construction of statistical ‘facts’.
• SHARE: A good tidbit for anyone working on crime statistics or social measurement: ‘mugging’ as a category was constructed for statistical purposes before it existed legally.

Related

• Mugging was socially constructed as a crime before any statute defined it. (similarity 0.92)