Knowledge of the Unknown

Abstract

Undetected and unreported crime are among the most pressing challenges of crime statistics. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, victim surveys and self-report surveys have helped to paint a clearer picture of the social reality of crime, and in modern criminology such tools are now state of the art. Yet despite the current boom in survey-based methods, the history of this quest to define the “reality of crime” remains largely obscure. Its roots extend much further back to an age well before the “dark figure” of crime became, at least in part, a measurable entity. This paper explores the historical context behind an emerging awareness of undiscovered crime at the turn to the 19th century. The knowledge that knowledge was deficient emerged out of practices of criminal investigation. It is considered here in the light of a perception in German territories on the threshold to a modern administration that itinerant thieves and vagabonds posed a very real danger. The paper examines methods adopted to probe uncharted realms, thereby stabilizing the veracity of this “knowledge of the unknown”.