Due to vague nature and definition of crime, measuring crime happens to be a difficult process. Though law enforcement agents and criminologists have two main ways to get a measurement, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) they still do not know exactly how much crime is committed annually. One of the main reasons that we never know how much crime is committed is the definition of crime and how it can differ from state to state. Because crime is so broad of a concept there is not exactly a specific list of what constitutes a crime. All 50 states in the United States have differing laws on what constitutes a crime and what punishment is given. For example, lately marijuana is being legalized in …show more content…
The UCR comes from the FBI, which is a collection of reports of crimes coming from reports filed by the Police at the time of the crime. The first problem that appears thus far is that police do not always fill out the paperwork and all of the information that goes to the UCR comes from the police. The UCR only looks at specific crimes like homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and car theft to name a few. Since the UCR only collects data from specific crimes, many crimes go unnoticed by all. This is an issue because it results in an underestimated amount of annual crime in the US. Related to the UCR, the NCVS is a more recent addition to measuring crime. This report collects its data by calling the population of the US asking if people were ever victims of a crime. This report creates a more accurate picture of crime in our nation because it solves the problem of under-reporting in general. As we all know, crime goes unreported to the police every day, but with NCVS even the ones that are not recorded are still mentioned. However the NCVS does not solve the problem complelty, because it is a survey and with any survey problems with validity arise. There is an issue of people lieing or choosing not to say that they have been victimized. Another is the public may not know what constitutes an actual crime or the crime that is mentioned is not inside …show more content…
Criminologists use both the UCR and NCVS to look at the crime picture together to get the most accurate view that they can. They use both because of the gaps in one report, the other report attempts to fill in. For example the NCVS does not include homicide but the UCR does. Instead of looking at the NCVS we have to look at the UCR to see an estimate of
Crime data is a resource being used to help understand who the victims are, their age, race, what type of crime they have committed. The more information someone has about crime the more prepared they can be to deal with the victim, evaluate programs that help prevent crime. There are several official sources used UCR, NCVS, NIBRS that are used. There are pros and cons to each source and the following information will include some of the positive and some of the negatives points of each report. This is not inclusive by any means, there are many different various pros and cons of each report.
Fear = === Victims might be afraid of the offenders and the consequences if they report the crime/s. An example is if a woman was being beaten up by her husband. She might not report this to the police, as she will be.
Uniform Crime Report data has many pros, but also many cons that come with it. There are many ways of which the Uniform Crime Report can be superior to, but also inferior to victimization and self-report data studies. According to Balkan (2015), the Uniform Crime Report shows crimes reported to police departments across the nation and is a report produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There are two offense categories in the report: part one and part two offenses. Part one offenses would be your more serious crimes such as homicides, rape, aggravated assaults, and so on. Part two offenses would be more of the property crimes such as fraud, simple assaults, and drug abuse. The Uniform Crime Report does an excellent job presenting the numbers in terms of the part one offenses, however, there are some cons that come with the Uniform Crime
In contemporary society, there are various methodologies for collecting data (Linden 2012). That being said, there are pros and cons to each that are based on reliability and validity; where reliability is consistency of the statistics, and validity is a measure of how accurate the results are in accordance with the research topic. This ties in with how this paper will explore the Uniform Crime Report system (UCR); a measure of crime that is used the most. UCR statistics reflect the crimes that are reported to the police throughout the country. victimization and self-report surveys, which are statistics that reinforce the findings revealed by the UCR, will also be explored. Lastly, the issue of media coverage of crime news will be examined.
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
These reports are sponsored by the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Even though the Uniform Crime Reports represent a significant amount of crime in the United States, it is not completely accurate. The reports do not distinguish between attempted crimes and completed crimes and are based on reports made by citizens to the police (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). Some victims do not always make reports and even if they do they are not always accurate.
Crime in this country is an everyday thing. Some people believe that crime is unnecessary. That people do it out of ignorance and that it really can be prevented. Honestly, since we live in a country where there is poverty, people living in the streets, or with people barely getting by, there will always be crime. Whether the crime is robbing food, money, or even hurting the people you love, your family. You will soon read about how being a criminal starts or even stops, where it begins, with whom it begins with and why crime seems to be the only way out sometimes for the poor.
The Uniform Crime Report, which was developed in the 1930s, is commonly used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a record of crimes committed all across the United States. These crimes, which fall under two categories, Part I and Part II offenses, are reported by local police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation each year. Part I offenses are considered to be the more serious of crimes recognized by society. Such examples of this are homicide, forcible rape, robbery, arson, motor vehicle theft, etc. Part II offenses are those that are considered less serious, such as fraud, simple assault, drug abuse, gambling, stolen property, embezzlement, etc. Part I crimes can also be subdivided into what are known as violent crimes and property crimes. (Barkan, 2012). However, there are both some positive and negative aspects of this type of crime measurement. The following paper will explore the small amount of pros and numerous cons associated with the Uniform Crime Report.
When the victim does not fit the ideal victim attributes which society has familiarised themselves with, it can cause complications and confusion. Experts have noticed there is already a significant presence of victim blaming, especially for cases involving both genders. The fear of being blamed and rejected by the public is prominent in all victims. Victim blaming proclaims the victim also played a role in the crime by allowing the crime to occur through their actions (Kilmartin and Allison, 2017, p.21). Agarin (2014, p.173) underlines the problem of victim blaming is due to the mass of social problems and misconceptions within society. The offender can have “an edge in court of public opinion” if victim blaming exists, resulting in the prevention of the case accomplishing an effective deduction in court (Humphries, 2009, p.27). Thus, victims will become more reluctant to report offences because of their decrease in trust in the police and criminal justice system, leading to the dark figure of
In the criminal justice field, there has been created a number of methods for measuring crime, and with those different methods come different forms of data. In the United States, there are three methods that are available to be utilized: the Uniform Crime Report (Referred to as the UCR), the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
We hear a lot about the crime rates going up and down from the media and they tend to expand on specific types of criminal behavior that might be of interest to the public. When politicians are running for office we are told that the crime rates are down due to the tough crime policies that they have been implemented. Citizens seek crime rates for assistance in determining if the area they reside in is safe. Some people wish to get a general idea of the crime rates for a specific neighborhood where they are thinking of purchasing a house. But what is never explained is where do the crime statistics come from and were there any factors that could have had an effect on their reliability. Crime statistics, which are created from what is reported to the police, are often unreliable. There are several influential factors that can make crime statistics both increase and decrease at any time. Most police departments, but not all, use Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) to submit their statistics to the state. Attempting to compare two police agency's crime statistics is almost impossible because not all police agencies use the UCR program for classifying crimes. UCR is a national data reporting policy that is maintained by the state and regulated by the FBI. This policy requires police agencies to report their monthly statistics by following a hierarchy scale for classifying the criminal offenses. A hierarchy scale is a list of crimes in a specific order of importance used to pick out the highest crime when there are multiple crimes committed in one incident. An example: a citizen contacts the police and makes a report of a burglary, a rape and a larceny all occurring in one incident. A...
The crimes that are tracked in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) for the United States are divided into two categories, Violent Crime, and Property crime. According to the UCR report for the United States the crime that happens the most, in the year 2012, would fall under the Property crime category, specifically larceny theft, with a rate of 2,859.2. The data does show that from 1993 to 2012 the rates off all the crime that the UCR records have been in a decline. In 1993 the rates of Violent crimes where 747.1 and Property crime at 4740.0, in 2012 however the rates for Violent crimes was 386.9 and Property crimes rates at 2,859.2. The information used by the UCR to create this data was collected by the FBI, from participating law enforcement
When measuring crime, it can be broken down into three different reliable sources of data that is used for analysis: official police records, self-reporting surveys and victim surveys. Each form of data has its own value for quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Official police records has serious limitations on what is included and can be subject to misleading or fraudulent numbers (Mosher, Miethe & Hart, 2011). Victim surveys and self-reporting surveys can lead to more accurate representations of crimes that are unreported to law enforcement (Mosher, Miethe & Hart, 2011). Despite the issues with official police data, I still believe it is a valuable tool and is the most important data source when evaluating crime.
The UCR2 allows for more detailed crime analysis, the most helpful being that it goes into more depth on the incidents that are reported to police. The UCR2 now, “adds detailed information on individual criminal incidents including victim, accused persons and incident characteristics” (Boyd, 2015). Moreover, UCR2 allows up to four different types of offences committed in one incident, to be reflected in the report, which better shows the different types of offences that occur, whereas in the UCR only the most severe crime was reflected, for example if there was a theft followed by a homicide then the homicide would most likely only be reported. Finally, the category of violent crimes and property crimes was broadened and new crimes were included in these two categories.