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Sources of crime statistics
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The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are official data on crime in the United States that are published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Biderman, A. D. & Reiss, A. J,1967). The UCR reports all types of crimes such as rape, robbery both with and without violence, manslaughter etc. The reports also gives details on the number of arrests and characteristics of the person arrested such as colour, age, race etc. One of the major disadvantages of UCR is that its participation is voluntary and some law enforcements agencies fail to supply data making it difficult for the report to have conclusive and reliable data. The data only reports crimes recorded by the police. Many crime victims do not report their experience to law enforcers for
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We begin by stating the hypothesis. In stating the null hypothesis we state a value of the population that we consider to be true which is known as the null hypothesis. In hypothesis testing the presumption is that the claim we are testing is true. The decision is made by determining whether the assumption is true. The reason for testing the null hypothesis is because we think it could be wrong. We state what we believe is wrong about the null hypothesis in an alternate hypothesis (Ning- Zhong Shi, Jian Tao,2008) The alternative hypothesis contradicts the null hypothesis by stating that the real value of a population parameter is less than, greater than or unequal to the value stated in the null hypothesis. We then set the criteria for the decision, by stating the level of significance. This refers to the criteria upon which judgment is made. If the null hypothesis falls within the accepted level of significance then we accept the null hypothesis and reject the alternate. The third step is computing the test statistic that enables the researcher to determine the probability of obtaining sample outcomes if the null hypothesis is true. The test static is used to make the decision regarding the null hypothesis. The last step is making the decision. The value of the statistic guides on making the decision about the null hypothesis. Null hypothesis is accepted if the sample mean has a high probability of occurring when the null hypothesis is true. If the sample mean has a low probability of occurring when the null hypothesis is true, we reject the null
The UCR is the Uniformed Crime Rate is a record of crime reported to law enforcement agencies, only crimes that are reported to law agencies are included.
The UCR is a cooperative effort for nation-wide law enforcement agencies to report on national crime statistics. According to the FBI's "Summary of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program," every month, "18,000 city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies voluntarily report data on crimes brought to their attention" (as cited in "Uniform Crime Reports"). The UCR first began in the 1920s and 30s. By 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was made responsible for compiling the data, though the FBI does not and has never collected the crime statistic data itself. The UCR divides crimes into two major categories called Part I offenses and Part II offenses. Part I reports data on "violent and property crimes" ("Uniform Crime Reports"). The list of crimes included under the violent crime classification is "aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery" ("Uniform Crime Reports"). The list of crimes classified under property crimes
The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) is constructed by the FBI on statistics of crime in the U.S. The FBI consolidates the information it receives from law enforcement officials and integrates all the information into a data that measures crime. This information is compiled by over 18,000 different agencies, from the universities to federal agencies. The information they receive is placed into two different categories, part 1 and part 2 offenses. UCR also measure crime against only women and the NCVS measures against both male and female.
For this statistical inference, the question was whether the means were truly different or could they have been samples from the same population. To do draw a conclusion, we must first assume normal distribution. We must also set the null hypothesis to m1 - m2 = 0. And per this assignment we must set the a-level at .05 and the hypothesis alternative to m1 - m2 ¹ 0; thus requiring a two-tailed test.
UCR takes note of all crimes in the Criminal Code annually recorded by the ‘dark figure’ of policing, whereas GSS on Victimization only sources eight types of offences self-reported via phone interviews quinquennial for the past year. The loose ends of both surveys tie together to provide an accurate overall trend of crime rates in Canada. UCR and GSS on Victimization are equally important to the study of crime. They are able to compare crime rates by geographical regions, crime severity, and characteristics of victimization. Criminologists require this information obtained from the surveys to study the causes, effects, and social impact of crime and victimization, in order to determine how to predict, deter, and prohibit criminal activity. They provide a more robust measure of the extent and impact of criminal activity in Canadian society. Together they provide an accurate measurement of crime through police reports and self-reporting of broad social surveys, rather than alone since both are lacking in their own ways. As a difference in timing is a key characteristic in the differences in the polls. UCR is annually conducted, whereas GSS on Victimization is processed every five years for the forgoing 12
The two systems are a good representation of crime through statistics of race and the actual crime. Through NCVS, the FBI crime system NIBRS can conduct a trend analysis for the crimes and the victims that are affected by the crimes. This can also serve as a tool to higher more police to the areas that are affected more with crime. The article; The Relationship Between Crime Reporting and Police: Implications for the Use of Uniform Crime Reports, Steven Levit, discusses the problem with police reporting and how there is no standard for the reporting across the nation. Therefore people believe that the reports are not accurate due to how different police organizations conduct their investigations. In this article, the author discusses estimates for crime versus city. The author is working with Craig who introduced this way of thought and idea in 1987.
For decades now, including the years 1994 and 1995, the time of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, American law enforcement has used two major data sources to measure crime. First, there is the Uniform Crime Report or UCR. The UCR is compiled data from reported crimes, it is a very accurate system used for murder and those crimes that cannot go unnoticed. Next, we have The National Crime Victim Survey or NCVS which is a unanimous survey, better at accounting for the crimes that may not get reported, crimes such as rape or assault.
This measure of crime in America depends on reports to the police by victims of crimes. The UCR Program was developed by the FBI for the purpose of serving law enforcement as a tool for operational and administrative purposes (Steven D. Levitt, 1998, 61). The Uniform Crime Reports have both positive and negative aspects. The Uniformed Crime Reports are crucial to the determination of the amounts of crimes solved. This is important because it can help determine social tendencies pertaining to crime (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). These crime tendencies can lead to theories about crimes that are on the rise, or crimes that are
The 2002 crime figures for England and Wales comprised of two separate reports, brought together for the first time: (i) Crime statistics recorded by constabularies and (ii) The British Crime Survey (BCS), based on 33,000 interviews. The BCS is regarded as a more reliable measure of actual levels of crime because it includes experiences of crime that go unreported. The British crime survey of 2002 revealed:
Due to the fact that the Uniform Crime Report is released every year, allows for it to be readily available and updated for the media, researchers, students, and government organizations (Rosen, 1995). This is advantages to society because this information is readily available to the public which can be used for statistics or research.
The police records crime reported by the public in 43 police force areas and provides these data to the Home Office and for their Basic Command Units. These data provide a wealth of statistical information on recorded crime rates and possibly identify long-term trends in recorded crime rates. Due to such data collecting process, how crime being reported by the victims or witnesses and recorded by the police may affect the accuracy of such official statistics. Thus, however, the main drawbacks of this kind of statistics are excluding crimes that are not discovered, reported or recorded. Firstly, some criminal activities are not witnessed or discovered then not recorded officially by the police. According to Croall (1998), a crime being counted officially should be perceived and recognised by a member of the public, a victim or law enforcement officers. For example, white –collar crimes such as fraud or misuse of expense accounts may not be discovered easily. Therefore, crimes that are not be seen may be uncounted in the official crime
Davis, R. C., Lurigio, A. J., & Skogan, W. G. (1997). Victims of crime (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Null hypothesis (pg. 49) – a type of hypothesis in which there is no relationship between the measured variables, and offers no support to the original hypothesis. An example of a null hypothesis would be that there was no relationship between time played and the number of concussions sustained by players who had high playing times.
Report writing is very important in the police field. An officer must be able to accurately record information regarding those activities and present it to those who were not there while also doing their job well. A person 's guilt or innocence may rest on information present or absent in these records (Server).