Which term refers to crimes not reported to the police and thus unknown to officials?

• A. Unreported crime
• B. Dark figure of crime
• C. Hidden crime
• D. Undetected crime

Answer: (B)

The main concept here is the dark figure of crime—the portion of criminal activity that never shows up in official statistics because those crimes are not reported to police or are not discovered. This term highlights the gap between what actually happens and what law enforcement records.

It’s the best answer because it specifically names the unseen or unreported crimes that officials don’t know about, which is exactly what this concept describes. While unreported crime describes crimes that aren’t told to the police, the established criminology term used to discuss the overall gap in data is the dark figure of crime. The other terms aren’t standard labels for this concept; they’re generic or less precise descriptions and don’t capture the data-collection gap as clearly.