ABSTRACT
The geography of crime is ultimately dependent upon the validity of measures of crime, and especially upon police statistics. The role of the police in the creation of official statistics is thus a key issue which must be confronted by any geographer who wishes to explain the spatial distribution of crime. A 'community policing' has been attacked as no more than an information-gathering exercise, whereby an outside agency 'con' the community into providing it with details which will ultimately be used against it and its interests. Wilson argues that under-recording will also be relatively common in inner-city, transient areas, where the 'watchman style' of policing priorities emphasizes 'order-maintenance' rather than 'law-enforcement' practices. Thus, the simple linear relationship between socio-economic status/reputation of an area and the extent to which the police use their discretion is rejected for a more complex set of relationships.
