ABSTRACT

The topic of this chapter is the use of national statistics on crime and criminal justice in comparative research. National statistics are produced and published by governments and this is why they are the ‘official statistics’. The main aims of the chapter are to describe what these official statistics tell us and to discuss the role they play in comparative research. The argument advanced here is that these statistics are a rich, even indispensable, resource for comparative research but that we must be cautious about their use. As will be seen, the cautions mostly arise from the fact that these statistics were never created as research tools, but evolved in the 19th century as government instruments, intended to measure the characteristics of and ultimately to control populations. This has given rise to a voluminous literature on the problems associated with their use both in a national context and – as the interest in what happens in other countries has become more pronounced – a comparative one as well. The general tone of this literature is highly sceptical. In this view, the national statistics are, at the best, a very imprecise source of information about patterns of crime and criminal justice and, at the worst, so hedged round with problems of interpretation as to make them of very limited use indeed.