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Explain the means by which crime is measured and how this affects the dark figure of crime.
Crime is a difficult concept to measure and even moreso to measure accurately. The unavailabilty of a definition of crime itself poses problematic when wanting to measure it. However there are various insights into how much crime is present in society. Although there are ways to measure it, they are not always accurate. Statitics and surveys try to find out not just how much crime there is but also how serious it is. This essay will describe these different methods and explain how they affect the amount of unreported and undetected offences referred to as the ‘Dark Figure’ of crime (Bottomley & Pease, 1986).
There are various ways in which we can record or measure crime. How to effectively employ measures of crime prevention are influenced greatly by the amount or extent of crime. “Official incidence reports, compiled and published as the Uniform Crime Reports and citizen-defined victimizations, compiled and published as the National Crime Surveys” (Cohen & Lichbach, 1982, p. 253). With these we have both official statistics used by the police and the justice system and then real victim surveys where by we see the amount of crime people haven’t officially reported. There are also many other day-to-day accounts, which can help narrow the scope of crime data. These include; hospital and insurance records for injuries or vehicle damages, incarceration rates, ministerial publishments and self-report surveys.
Mixtures of different crime measures form a general direction of the crime present within society. The department of corrections publishes a 2 yearly ‘Census of Prison Inmates’ which shows how many prisoners are in the system while th...
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...unclear as to how much crime exists in society but these measures employed together give a better picture.
In conclusion it is evident that the various methods used to measure crime, affect the Dark Figure. Through use of records, surveys and statistics prevalent levels of data are available in relation to crime. The main sources used to measure crime are the official crime or police statistics and victim and self- report surveys. Crime statistics are influenced by funding and therefore may leave out some areas of crime. Victim surveys may not record the amount of offences committed against one person while self-report surveys show the amount of crime that has already been undetected. When compared this data shows huge gaps between the amount of crime reported and some of the crime committed. The limitations of all these methods greatly influence the Dark Figure.
There are many views on crime and deviance and many theories to why they occur.
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.
Through the first chapter of this book the focus was primarily on the notion of controlling crime. The best way to describe crime policy used in this chapter is comparing it to a game of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’. This chapter also addresses the causes for decline in America’s
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
Throughout history, it has become very clear that the tough on crime model just does not work. As stated by Drago & Galbiati et al. In their article: Prison Conditions and Recidivism, although it is...
For decades, researchers have tried to determine why crime rates are stronger and why different crimes occur more often in different locations. Certain crimes are more prevalent in urban areas for several reasons (Steven D. Levitt, 1998, 61). Population, ethnicity, and inequality all contribute to the more popular urban. Determining why certain crimes occur more often than others is important in Criminal Justice so researchers can find a trend and the police can find a solution (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). The Uniform Crime Reports are a method in which the government collects data, and monitors criminal activity in the United States (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). They have both positive and negative attributes that have influenced
...e of Crime by Type of Community, Review of Social Economy, Vol. 43, Pages 245-259
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:
Many observers have drawn a simple correlation between these two trends. Putting more offenders in prison caused the reduction in crime. The Sentencing project has just completed a study that examines this issue in great detail and concludes that any such correlation is ambiguous at best. In examining the relationship between incarceration and crime in the 1990s the picture is complicated by the seven year period just prior to this, 1984-91. In this period, incarceration also rose substantially, at a rate of 65%. Yet crime rates increased during this time as well, by 17% nationally. Thus we see a continuous rise in incarceration for fourteen years, during which crime rose for seven years, then declined for seven years. This does not suggest that incarceration had no impact on crime, but any such connection is clearly influenced by other factors. A comparison with other nations is instructive in this rega...
There are different principles that makeup the crime control model. For example, guilt implied, legal controls minimal, system designed to aid police, and Crime fighting is key. However one fundamental principle that has been noted is that ‘the repression of criminal conduct is by far the most important function to be performed by the criminal processes’. (Packer, 1998, p. 4). This is very important, because it gives individuals a sense of safety. Without this claim the public trust within the criminal justice process would be very little. The general belief of the public is that those that are seen as a threat to society, as well as those that fails to conform to society norms and values should be separated from the rest of society, from individuals who choose to participate fully in society. Consequently, the crime control model pro...
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.
Weatherburn, D. (2011) ‘Uses and abuses of crime statistics’, Contemporary Issues in Crime and Justice, 153: 1-16
Crime is an extremely prominent part of American society. Recorded activity within the US saw 10,329,135 (1,246,248 violent crimes and 9,082,887 property crimes) crimes perpetrated with 62.5% of all violent crimes pertained to aggravated assault and 68.2% of all property crimes were considered larceny-theft in 2010. (FBI.2011) Despite the large number of crimes the United States also has the largest number of incarcerated citizens per capita in the world with nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners coming from the United States’ 5% of the world population. This is due to much harder punishments in the US than those that are given a shorter longer period of incarceration or merely fined in other countries.(Liptak 2008) Due to the prevalence of crime in the US, economists have used models to explain the behavior and ramifications of government actions and the motivations behind crime and its effect on society that psychologists and sociologists are usually unable to address.
Crime and criminalization can be ambiguous; crime is only crime until certain authorities deem the actions illegal. However, social inequalities can lead to increased crime rates, notions such as gender, age, race, and class influence crime and provide criminologist with the date to determine who is most likely to commit a crime and where.
Crime exists everywhere. It is exists in our country, in the big cities, the small towns, schools, and even in homes. Crime is defined as “any action that is a violation of law”. These violations may be pending, but in order to at least lower the crime rate, an understanding of why the crimes are committed must first be sought. There are many theories that are able to explain crimes, but three very important ones are rational choice theory, social disorganization theory and strain theory.