NCJ Number
179044
Journal
Policing Volume: 22 Issue: 3 Dated: 1999 Pages: 252-263
Editor(s)
Lawrence F. Travis III
Date Published
1999
Length
12 pages
Annotation
A national survey of crime-recording by police in China in the late 1980s and early 1990s found significant underrepresentation of crime in the police-produced statistics and identified the police as the source of the errors.
Abstract
The survey involved police agencies at two local levels: the neighborhood police stations (the grassroots agencies of China's police force) and public security bureaus at county/urban district levels, to which the neighborhood police stations report. The survey was designed to collect the following information: the number of crimes initially known or reported to the neighborhood police; the number of crimes that the neighborhood police reported to their county/district bureaus of public security; and the number of crimes that the county/district bureaus retained in their crime records. The survey found that of all crime incidents reported to and verified by the police in 1985, only 32.6 percent were actually entered into the official crime statistics. The recording rates were 19.4 percent and 30.6 percent in 1987 and 1988 respectively. Thus, local police failed to report to their superior agencies approximately 70 to 80 percent of the crimes known to them in the years examined. Underreporting occurred at both agency levels examined. Although these findings are similar to those in other countries, the causes of the under-recording in China may be different. This article addresses two major social factors associated with Chinese police's decision in recording crimes. One focuses on the influence of the political ideology and the evaluation system; the other concerns the impact of the social and economic transition on the police. 1 table, 4 notes, 24 references, and appended definitions of the six major criminal offenses used in the survey