Exploring General Trends and Current Patterns in Crime: An Analysis

General and Current Trends in Crime

The Scottish centre for crime and justice research SCCJR (2016, p.1), states that, ‘there is no one ‘cause’ of crime. Crime is a highly complex phenomenon that changes across cultures and across time. Activities that are legal in one country (e.g. alcohol consumption in the UK) are sometimes illegal in others (e.g. strict Muslim countries). As cultures change over time, behaviours that once were not criminalised may become criminalised (and then decriminalised again – e.g. alcohol prohibition in the USA)’.

The SCCJR (2016, p.1) further states that, ‘as a result, ‘there is no simple answer to the question ‘what is crime?’ and therefore no single answer to ‘what causes crime?’ Different types of crime often have their own distinct causes and while certain crimes are on the increase some are on the decline’.

A contemporary explanation of crime and the identification of current trends would be addressed in this essay.

Punch et al (2013, p.567) state that, ‘crime may be described as an act that breaks criminal law, it can be followed by criminal proceedings and formal punishment’. In essence any transgression of the laws of the land by anyone, if caught would attract criminal proceedings, where guilt has to be proven before any punishment e.g. suspended or custodial sentence can be applied by a judge. 

Non- criminal crimes include motor traffic offences, which could attract police cautions or spot fines and penalty points on driving licenses e.g. violation speed limits in speed controlled zones. Therefore crime can be described as one of the mechanisms that makes society function as a society of diverse peoples.

Deviance on the other hand is any behaviour that is different from what the society regards as normal. Punch et al (2013, p.567), ’thus deviant behaviour could be unconsciously good or brave behaviour as well as unacceptable behaviour such as theft or vandalism. It could be eccentric or bizarre behaviour such as talking to oneself or to no one in public places’.

Giddens and Sutton (2015 p.938-950) discusses general trends in crime which includes, crimes against women, youth and crime, white collar crime (e.g. tax evasion, trade description offences, weights and measures offences and food and drug offences), cybercrime, human trafficking, corporate crime and crime against homosexuals. 

Haralambos, et al (2013, p. 580), equally adds e-piracy, fraud and financial, state crime, and personal harm to the list of current trends in crime. 

Cybercrime, also called computer crime, the use of a computer as an instrument to further illegal ends, such as committing fraud, trafficking in child pornography and intellectual property, stealing identities or violating privacy. Cybercrime, especially through the internet, has grown in importance as the computer has become central to commerce, entertainment, and government’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019).

E-Piracy / Cyber Crime

According to Dennis (2019, p1), ‘Cybercrime ranges across a spectrum of activities. At one end are crimes that involve fundamental breaches of personal or corporate privacy, such as assaults on the integrity of information held in digital depositories and the use of illegally obtained digital information to blackmail a firm or individual. Also at this end of the spectrum is the growing crime of identity theft. Midway along the spectrum lie transaction-based crimes such as fraud, trafficking in child pornography, digital piracy, money laundering, and counterfeiting. These are specific crimes with specific victims, but the criminal hides in the relative anonymity provided by the Internet’.

Dennis (2019, p1) further states that, ‘Another part of this type of crime involves individuals within corporations or government bureaucracies deliberately altering data for either profit or political objectives. At the other end of the spectrum are those crimes that involve attempts to disrupt the actual workings of the Internet. These range from spam, hacking, and denial of service attacks against specific sites to acts of cyber terrorism that is, the use of the Internet to cause public disturbances and even death. Cyberterrorism focuses upon the use of the Internet by nonstate actors to affect a nation’s economic and technological infrastructure. Since the September 11 attacks of 2001, public awareness of the threat of cyber terrorism has grown dramatically’.

According to Davenport (2019), ‘the number of domestic abuse offences recorded by the police in London has rocketed by per cent in the last seven years, according to statistics released today. Figures also show there were 29 domestic homicides in the capital in 2018 – up from nine the previous year...the report highlighted the rise in sex offences in London, saying recorded rape offences at the end of March 2018 had risen by 134 percent compared to the same period ending March 2012, with an increase of more than 4,000 offences.  

According to Pitts ( 2015), ‘between the 1980s and the first decade of the 21st century, those people most vulnerable to criminal victimisation and those most likely to victimise them were progressively thrown together in Britain’s poorest neighbourhoods. One of the consequences of this economic and social polarisation has been that while overall recorded crime, has been dropping steadily since the 1990s, crime in areas of acute social deprivation has, in many cases, become far more serious. (Bullock and Tilley, 2003; Pitts, 2008)’.

Pitts (2015) further states that, ‘crime and disorder in the poorest neighbourhoods in England has become distinctive in several ways. It is youthful, because the population is a young one and, in consequence, both victims and perpetrators tend to be children and young people (Pitts and Hope, 1997).It is implosive: likely to be perpetrated by and against local residents. It is repetitive: the same people are victimised again and again (Lea and Young, 1988, Wilson, 1987; Bourgeois, 1995; Palmer and Pitts, 2006; Pitts, 2008a; 2008b; Matthews and Pitts, 2007; Palmer, 2009). It is symmetrical, in that victims and offenders tend to be similar in terms of age, ethnicity and social class’.

Pitts (2015) further explains that, ‘it (i.e. crime and disorder) is also disproportionately violent and this violence tends to be intra – and inter-neighbourhood, and largely, intra-racial, tending to take place on the street and in and around schools. More recently it has involved the use of firearms (Pitts, 2007; 2008a; 2008b). It is also under-reported: victims and perpetrators in the poorest neighbourhoods tend to know one another and the threat of reprisal or local loyalties often prevents them from reporting victimisation (Young and Matthews, 1992)’. 

Pitts (2015) concludes that, ‘it (i.e. crime and disorder) is ‘embedded’. Youth offending in these neighbourhoods tends to intensify because, being denied the usual pathways to adulthood, local adolescents fail to ‘grow out of crime’ and so adolescent peer groups are more likely to transmogrify into youth ‘gangs’, the age range of which may well expand, linking pre-teens with offenders in their 20s and 30s. And from the mid-to late 1980s, many of the more serious manifestations of youth crime in these neighbourhoods were related to the burgeoning markets in class A drugs (Auld and Dorn et al, 1986; Pearson, 1988)’.

Conclusion

Crime and crime stories appears to be popular in human society and dominates pages of newspapers, magazines, news and social media as well as fictional books e.g. even the first crime of murder was recorded in the first published book i.e. the Bible and therefore would continue to be popular.

However, there is more the government can do proactively to arrest the issues of crime and disorder from the very beginning of a child’s life including, frequent home visiting by health professionals to women during pregnancy; parenting education programmes encourage parents to notice what their children are doing; be consistent with discipline and rewarding good behaviour.

Furthermore, the government needs to invest more in peer influence strategies like youth work, to offer young people advice on how to resist pressure from friends to engage in antisocial behaviour ranging from under-age drinking and smoking to drug abuse and other crimes;  classroom management and other training can help teachers to communicate clear instructions and expectations, to notice and reward children for socially desirable behaviour and to be consistent in their use of discipline; anti-bullying initiatives in schools, playground monitoring and supervision may also need to be improved in order to nip the arising latter issues in the bud.