ABSTRACT
Is crime increasing or decreasing? Does prison work? Are men more criminal than women? Does zero tolerance policing reduce crime? ese important questions all depend on production and deployment of statistical data. In fact, many of the most important questions in criminology have been, and still are, quantitative [Godfrey, Lawrence, and Williams, 2008:26]. e purpose of this chapter is to show that although these questions may seem straightforward, answering them is not just a challenge both empirically and methodologically [Maguire, 2002:322]; a straightforward answer is to a great extent impossible. In order to understand why a true measure of crime is “an absolutely unattainable chimera” [Reiner, 1996:203], at a time when crime statistics are produced and used more extensively than ever before, we need to approach crime statistics as a source of knowledge-for both criminologists and criminal justice practitioners-and as a tool of governance.
