Lesson 4.3.1.2

4.3.1.2 Social distribution of crime and deviance Quiz: AQA Sociology, Unit 3

20 questions

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Lesson 4.3.1.2, Social distribution of crime and deviance: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA Sociology (7192), Unit 3: Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. Which source of crime data is designed to capture crimes that are not reported to the police?

    • Prison population statistics, which record only the number of people held in custody on a particular date each year
    • The Crime Survey for England and Wales, a victimisation survey of households that asks about experiences of crime
    • Court conviction statistics, which record only the offences for which a defendant has been found guilty in a criminal court
    • Police recorded crime statistics, which list only the offences that officers have investigated and formally recorded each year

  2. Which group is most likely to be convicted of offences in official statistics?

    • Children under the age of ten, who are convicted more often than any other group, since the criminal age is set very low
    • Adults over the age of seventy, who are the most frequently convicted group in official statistics for all offences
    • Women, who make up the majority of convicted offenders in every category of crime, including violent and property offences
    • Men, who make up a far larger share of convicted offenders than women across most categories of crime

  3. What does the 'age-crime curve' describe?

    • Offending rises steadily with age, so that older people are the most likely to commit crime in every category of offence
    • Offending rises during adolescence, peaks in late teenage years or early adulthood, and then generally falls with age
    • Offending is constant at all ages, with the same proportion of each age group committing offences across the life course
    • Offending is highest in early childhood, and then falls to zero as children reach the age of criminal responsibility

  4. Which pattern is most consistently found in victimisation surveys of violent crime?

    • Victims of violent crime are distributed equally across all age and gender groups, with no measurable differences
    • Victims of violent crime are almost always children under the age of five, who are harmed mainly by strangers
    • Young men are more likely than other groups to be victims of violent crime, particularly in public places
    • Older women are more likely than any other group to be victims of violent crime, especially in their own homes

  5. What is 'white-collar crime' as defined by Sutherland?

    • Crime committed by people of high social status in the course of their occupation, such as fraud or corporate offences
    • Crime committed by people who use white paper to forge documents, which is a traditional form of crime in urban areas
    • Crime committed by office workers who steal stationery and small items from their employers during working hours each week
    • Crime committed only by people from ethnic minority backgrounds, who are more likely than others to be employed in offices

  6. Which argument explains why white-collar crime is often under-represented in official statistics?

    • Such offences are never committed, since people of high status do not engage in any criminal activity in their professional lives
    • Such offences are always recorded in full, since regulators publish every case as a matter of routine each year without exception
    • Such offences are excluded from the criminal law by definition, so they cannot appear in any statistics at all in any country
    • Such offences are often complex, hard to detect and dealt with through regulatory or civil processes rather than the criminal courts

  7. Which finding is consistently reported about ethnicity and stop and search by the police in England and Wales?

    • White people are stopped and searched at higher rates than all other groups, which reflects their higher involvement in crime
    • Black and minority ethnic people are stopped and searched at higher rates than white people relative to their population share
    • All ethnic groups are stopped and searched at identical rates, which shows that policing is entirely free from disproportionality
    • Stop and search is used only against people of mixed ethnic background, and is never applied to any single ethnic group

  8. Why should sociologists be cautious about interpreting ethnic differences in official crime statistics?

    • Because ethnicity has no connection with policing or recording practices, which are identical for every group in society
    • Because ethnic data are never collected by any official body, so no conclusions about ethnicity can ever be drawn from them
    • Because ethnic categories are identical across all data sources, so differences can always be taken as accurate measures
    • Because differences may reflect policing and recording practices as well as actual patterns of offending

  9. Which trend has been found in the Crime Survey for England and Wales since the mid-1990s?

    • A complete end to crime in England and Wales, with no survey-recorded victimisation at any point after the mid-1990s
    • A long-term fall in overall levels of crime, with a growing share of recorded offences made up of fraud and cybercrime
    • A steady rise in all categories of crime, so that the overall level has doubled every decade since the mid-1990s onward
    • A constant level of crime with no change in any category, because the CSEW measures only offences against property

  10. Which criticism is most often raised against using police recorded crime alone to measure the distribution of crime?

    • It is always a complete count of every offence, since police officers record every crime they witness or hear about
    • It records only crimes that are committed in rural areas, so urban crime is never included in the published statistics
    • It depends on public reporting and police decisions to record, so it may under-count some groups and some offences
    • It records only crimes committed by people aged over sixty, which excludes all younger offenders from the figures

  11. Which group is most likely to be a victim of property crime according to victimisation evidence?

    • Households in wealthy areas are always the most likely victims of burglary, since they contain more valuable possessions
    • Households in rural areas are the only group affected by property crime, since urban areas are protected by police patrols
    • Households in areas with higher levels of deprivation are more likely to experience burglary and vehicle crime than wealthier areas
    • Households of all types are equally likely to suffer property crime, so area and income make no difference to risk

  12. Which theoretical approach emphasises that crime is concentrated among the working class, especially young men in deprived areas?

    • Left realism, which argues that relative deprivation, marginalisation and lack of control produce crime in working-class areas
    • Right realism, which argues that crime is a rational choice made by individuals who are unaffected by any social conditions
    • Positivist criminology, which argues that crime is caused by inherited physical features that appear in offenders across classes
    • Postmodern criminology, which argues that crime no longer has a social distribution because identities have become fragmented

  13. A researcher finds that women are more likely than men to be victims of domestic abuse but less likely to be convicted of violent offences. Which explanation best fits this pattern?

    • Domestic abuse is recorded in full by the police, and men are convicted of violence only because they commit more of it
    • Domestic abuse is often hidden and under-reported, and women are less often convicted of violence, which shapes official patterns
    • Domestic abuse is not a form of violence in law, so women's victimisation does not appear in any statistics at all
    • Domestic abuse is committed only by strangers, so women are victimised outside the home and recorded more accurately

  14. What does the term 'hidden crime' most directly refer to?

    • Offences committed using encrypted messages, which the police are legally forbidden from reading in any circumstances
    • Offences committed in secret societies, which are concealed from the general public by strict rules of membership
    • Offences committed by offenders who have been given new identities by the state as part of a witness protection scheme
    • Offences that occur but do not come to the attention of the authorities, so they are absent from official statistics

  15. Which claim about crime and social class is best supported by sociological research on official statistics?

    • Middle-class people are over-represented among those convicted of street crime, because they have more opportunities to offend
    • Working-class people are over-represented among those convicted of street crime, but offending is spread across the class structure
    • Class has no relationship with offending or with the official recording of crime in any country at any point in history
    • Working-class people commit all crime, while middle-class people never offend at any stage of their lives in any category

  16. Which feature of recent crime trends has led to concern about the adequacy of official data?

    • A sharp rise in the number of police officers, which has made all crime visible to officials in every neighbourhood
    • A fall in the number of households with internet access, which has reduced the scope for any online offending at all
    • A complete end to all recorded fraud, since online transactions are now monitored by banks and cannot be abused by offenders
    • Rising fraud and online offences, which are often not captured well by traditional police recording and household surveys

  17. A critic argues that official crime statistics mainly tell us about the work of the criminal justice system. Which point best supports this?

    • Recorded crime depends only on the number of offenders who confess to crimes in public, which is a fixed and reliable count
    • Recorded crime measures only the victims' feelings, since statistics are compiled from interviews about fear of crime alone
    • Recorded crime depends on what is reported, detected and recorded, so it partly measures institutional activity
    • Recorded crime is unrelated to policing, since every offence is recorded automatically by a central computer without any human decisions

  18. What is 'repeat victimisation'?

    • The same crime being reported to the police by several different members of the public who all witnessed one event
    • The same people or places being victimised more than once within a set period, so a small number account for many offences
    • The same offender being convicted of identical offences in several separate court cases over a single calendar year
    • The same police officer investigating several reported crimes in one area during the same shift and reporting period

  19. Which limitation is most relevant to the reliability of victimisation survey data on sensitive offences?

    • Respondents answer only in writing, which prevents any memory error or reluctance to describe victimisation experiences
    • Respondents always disclose every offence in full detail, since anonymity guarantees complete honesty about all experiences
    • Respondents are never asked about sensitive offences, so the survey cannot be affected by any reluctance to disclose them
    • Respondents may forget, exaggerate or be reluctant to disclose victimisation, especially for offences such as sexual assault

  20. What is 'victimology' in the study of crime?

    • The study of the economic costs of prisons, comparing spending on custody with the expense of community sentences each year
    • The study of victims of crime, including their experiences, risks of victimisation and the responses of the justice system to them
    • The study of the history of police forces, tracing their development from local watch systems to national organisations
    • The study of the psychological profiles of murderers, focusing on childhood experiences and the causes of violent behaviour

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