The 2017 edition of the Stephensons Crime Report is a social study which aims to better understand the everyday criminal habits of the adult UK population and to explore the extent of society's permissive attitude to so-called ‘everyday’ or ‘minor’ crimes.
The report, which collates data from an independently commissioned survey, explores our understanding of what constitutes criminal behaviour, how respondents view their own criminal habits and the attitudes which drive ordinary, 'law abiding' citizens to become habitual, petty law breakers.
The report has been commissioned by Stephensons’ Regulatory and Criminal Justice department, in conjunction with a leading polling agency, which is accredited by the British Polling Council.
Criminal law solicitor and partner, Sean Joyce, hopes that the results of the study will shift the perceptions around taking legal advice in relation to a criminal offence.
“We all witness crimes being committed on the roads, out and about, at home and even in the workplace. These acts might be committed by complete strangers, or even by friends and relatives", he said.
“Yet, the stigma attached to instructing a criminal solicitor still persists, because for all these instances where our laws are broken, we still consider ourselves – largely – to be a country of ‘law abiding citizens’.
“In commissioning this research, my team and I hoped that we could translate our own anecdotal evidence into hard statistics. We hoped to show the extent to which the average UK adult is a habitual, petty law breaker. Furthermore, we hoped to show that society has a much more permissive attitude to this law breaking than many of us will readily admit to."