225-T3 - Controversies over Counting Crime Flashcards
Four considerations in the quality of crimes statistics
- coverage
- reliability
- validity
- methodology
What is the crime funnel?
a figure representing the limitations of police-reports crime rate statistics, where the totality of crimes taking place funnel down into a fraction of all incidences of c given crime
theory without facts is…
ideology
facts without theory is…
implicit ideology
statistics without theory is…
numerology
three types of things criminal justice statistics describe
- about crime and criminals
- about criminal justice system (CJS) and its response to crime
- about perceptions of crime and criminal justice
What are some types of raw data found in the criminal justice system? (4)
- police reports and records
- court decisions
- admin records of prisons and penitentiaries
- decisions or parole and probation officials
Canadian Centre to Justice Statistics (CCJS)
Finds raw data of the Canadian Criminal Justice System and publishes them.
* its data on CJS inputs are good
* its data on criminal incidents, arrests, charges, convictions, and dispositions have improved
Difference between criminal records and statistics
- records: concerned with individal cases - used to help practitioners make decisions about these individual cases
- statistics: aggregated, the common patterns of many individual cases - used to plan: planning and evaluation, policy and program development, and theory building and testing
What methodological topics must be considered to change records into usable statistics? (5)
- units of count
- level of aggregation
- definitions
- data elements (what information is collected)
- counting procedure
dark figure of crime
AKA “hidden figure of crime”
* crime that remains unreported, unrecorded, and largely unknown
Methodologies in counting crime and describing crime patterns and trends (3 + 1 less dominant)
- official (police-reported) statistics
- victimization surveys
- self-report studies
*
also includes corrections data information*, but this is not one of the three major methodologies
Give an example of an act that contributes to the dark figure of crime
e.g. if you choose not to report a burglary to the police, that data point does not get recording in police-reported crime statistics
Canadian Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
incidents of crime that are reported by police systems
Factors on the quality of official/UCR statistics
- corrections data is reliable and valid
- crimes known to the police are always biased (inconsistencies in reporting and recording of crimes to law enforcement)
- UCR is an extensive form of crime stats collection
Two types of Uniform Crime Reports
- UCR aggregate (UCR 1.0) Survey
- UCR Incident-Based (UCR 2.0) Survey
UCR Aggregate Survey (UCR 1.0)
collects summary data for 100 separate criminal offences
UCR Incident-Based Survey (UCR 2.0)
collects more detailed information on each incident, victims, and accused
The seriousness rule
only the most serious crime is scored in an incident with multiple crimes
consequences of seriousness rule
- total crime count is deflated
- serious crimes are disproportionally represented in total crimes
- not enought qualitative data about crimes are recorded to further judge which crimes are serious (higher frequencies = more of a problem)
gross counts of crime
total crime in a community
Crime rate is expressed as a number of criminal incidents for every ________________ Canadians
100 000
Why use crime rate in presenting official crime statistices?
- allows for comparisons over time
- not influenced by population size
Crime Severity Index (CSI)
measures the incidence of severe crimes within a given area
how is CSI calculated?
each offence is given a weight (more serious = greater weight = greated impact on severity index
victimization survey
a collection method of crime statistics
* asks a sample of people whether they have been a victim of a crime
* can include details like the nature and consequences of crime, whether it has been reported, the response of criminal justice responses, and perceptions on crime and CJS, and feelings of safety
limitations of victimization surveys
- not all crimes are captured, such as consensual crimes or when people are unaware that they have been victimized (e.g. SA victims)
- may lack reliability (depends on people’s memory, truthfulness, etc)
- may be skewed (e.g. well-educated respondents are more likely to talk to interviewers
consensual crimes
in which all parties part of the crime consent to the enactment of the crime
* does not include parties who cannot consent (animals, PWD, mentally ill, under duress, intoxicated, unconscious)
T/F: when incidents prduced financial loss, repoting to police was less likely
FALSE
T/F: victimization not only completely shows the “dark figure” of crime, but that many more canadians are victimized in comparison to official statistics.
half-false: “dark figure” is not completely revealed
T/F: all crimes are equally considered by police
FALSE
T/F: some categories of victimes are more likyle to report their victimization
TRUE
T/F: Some categories of offenders (for example, family members) are less likely to be reported.
TRUE
Self-Report Studies
reports of poeple who have commited crimes
* usually administered on a specific population (e.g. college students)
benefits of self-report studies
- can shed light on police data and victimization surveys
- can contribute to research/theories of crime, esp. relationship between social class and crime
limitations of self-report studies
- law-abiding people are more likely to report their occadional infractions (not serious crimes)
- tendency to report only less-serious crimes
- some populations are more likely to underreport criminal behaviour
- difficult to survey serious, chronic offenders
what factors can influence the future of crime and crime stats
- new tech
- development of police info systems and crime classification systems
- combination with other statistical data (e.g.census, other social survey data)
