The Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) is crime that is recorded through surveys that are completed in order to see the publics experience with crime in the last 12 months. Overall, 40,000 households are chosen to take part in this survey at random and would usually take place in the house. However, due to Covid, this meant that these surveys had to be done over the phone instead of at the individual’s house. The individual is asked their experience with crime, their attitude towards crime-related issues, their perception of crime and anti-social behaviour. The CSEW has been measuring crime since 1981 and any interviews and answers have always been kept strictly confidential, this means that the participants’ information is not passed on to external sources. The data collected is published alongside police recorded crime, the official statistics, this allows the data to be compared by the public. There are multiple advantages to the usage of the CSEW, one of them being that the organisation that produces this data is not associated with any political parties. This means that data is collected no matter who the prime minister is, or which political party is in charge, the CSEW is not subject to any bias. The lack of bias means that the data is objective and therefore it can not be contradicted by anyone. Another strength would be that it is more likely to be more accurate than official statistics. The CSEW is more likely to include details of unreported crime that was not recorded by the authorities. For example, through 2006/7, official statistics suggested a 2% decrease in crime, whilst the CSEW suggested a 3% increase in crime. This is a strength as it highlights the true figures of crime that are often not revealed by the Home Office statistics, revealing how underreported crime is. The last advantage of the use of the CSEW is that it is highly ethical, the chosen respondents are given the choice to participate in the survey, meaning no one is being forced to take part. The interviews are also anonymous and confidential, so the respondents are unidentifiable through the results of the survey. Alongside this, the raw information of the survey is then destroyed right after the statistics are produced so it cannot be traced back to anyone. This can increase the honesty of the public regarding reporting crimes and different cases, so it is less likely that fear stops a victim from reporting crime. On the other hand, there are limitations to the usage of the CSEW, one of these is that once the 40,000 households are randomly chosen, if anyone declines to take part, it is not possible to replace the household with another address. This means that it can be more difficult to get valid results as it is possible large amounts of households may reject the offer to do the survey. This can cause the results may be seen as being less reliable and trustworthy due to possible missing data. Another weakness was that the CSEW largely relies on the respondents on having a strong and accurate recall of any crimes that they were possibly a victim of. This may result in the telescoping effect, when a victim recalls an event inaccurately, within the past year, when in reality it was more than a year ago. This means that the CSEW can contain inaccurate data and cause distrust in the public’s perception of the survey's results. The last limitation to the CSEW was that the interviews were conducted in the household of the respondent, prior to Covid. The interviewers may not get the true picture of crime, which can vary, depending on the way the interviewer appears to the person. An example of this is that a female participant may not feel comfortable telling the interviewer that they were a victim of a crime, such as sexual assault. This means that the CSEW can not be seen as trustworthy as it is not seen to be achieving its true purpose. The CSEW can be seen as reliable as same set of questions are asked by trained interviewers, producing, most likely, reliable results. However, it may also not be reliable as it is possible that different interviewers can get different answers to a question from the same person. For example, a female and male interviewer can ask female interviewee about sexual assault and might get varied results. The CSEW can also be seen as being valid since it uncovers unreported crime, revealing the dark figure. A survey showed that approximately 40% of people didn’t report crimes they were victims of. On the other hand, it can be seen to not be valid as it relies on both the memory and willingness to be honest of the participants. Though this can vary if a victim is unaware, they are actually a victim of any type of crime, such as domestic violence. The CSEW could be seen as ethical since any of the chosen households are not obligated to participate, and the interviews are both anonymous and confidential. In contrast, it may be unethical as it could bring back unwanted psychological trauma back to a victim of a traumatic crime and can cause harm to the participant as a result. Finally, the CSEW can be seen as purposeful as it covers different information about a variety of crimes that people have suffered from, big or small. Furthermore, these types of findings can be used in crime reduction programmes in order to identify groups that are most at risk of being victims or offenders.
