3b - discussion cards

Question 1

Measuring Youth Crime

Answer 1

• Data on youth crime varies by source
• Official stats social constructions of youth crime problem; starts with presumption there is one; Inherently political
• Data can be viewed as “political” depending on the agenda of the agency
• Concepts must be defined: what are we measuring? Do we measure height in inches, feet, or centimetres?

Question 2

Social Control Agencies and Stats

Answer 2

produce their own reports about certain aspects of youth crime; interpreted by them. The nature of the data, while standardized depends somewhat on subjective aspects of these agencies. Consider Police service blitzing youth violence in the downtown core of a community. Perhaps the stats for assault will be higher for a period of time than in other communities — so then when they put out the rates during the month of may, this could be due to a lot of things (not worse crime but more officers in an area)

Question 3

Sources of Youth Crime Data

Answer 3

• Media: fuels moral panics
• Police: Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR); biggest fault is it records what comes to attention of police. Also a UCR2 that gives a bit more on relationship between victim/offender.
• Court statistics
• Self-report surveys
• Victimization surveys

* Criticism: Individual sources do not give an accurate portrayal of youth offending:
Note the Crime Funnel Effeect

Question 4

Police Statistics

Answer 4

• Canadian police data compiled in standardized way using system known as Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)
• Recent changes to system resulted in the UCR2, which captures offence, offender, and victim info on 200 offence categories
• Crime Severity Index – adds weighting to offence based on average court sentence. Tries to get averages. Also allows for comparison on another dimension. How much crime is taking place at any time, but are they more or less on average (than what has taken place at another time/place).

Question 5

Court Statistics

Answer 5

• Kept by individual courts; do not measure youth crime, just the ones dealt with by courts.
• These are normally not open to public scrutiny
• The Centre for Justice Statistics (& dept. of Justice) compiles youth court data and publishes summaries for country on a yearly basis
• Problematic to make comparisons across years given provincial differences

Question 6

Self-Report Surveys

Answer 6

• A survey where the person reports on their own criminal behaviour
• Have been used in high schools
• Indicate higher levels of youth crime than official statistics reflect

Question 7

Victimization Surveys

Answer 7

• asks individuals if they have been victims of various categories of crime
• demonstrate that crimes are generally underreported
• clearance rates — outline whether criminal incidents are processed as charged offences
• property and personal offences differ in reporting and clearance rates

Question 8

Profiling Youth Crime (frequency/severity)

Answer 8

• property crime is the most common of all youth offending behaviour
• violent offences are less common; however, they attract the most attention
• sexual assault cases are rare but are a concern
• Murder is rare among youth but also receives attention.

​A Big Factor

• administrative offences: include such cases as failing to appear in court or failing to comply with bail conditions
• can result in custody
• make up almost a quarter of youth court cases

Question 9

Measurement Issues

Answer 9

• Violent crime debate; violent youth crime problem? Most youth crime is non-violent; violent crime is rare and yet we still ask. Violent Crime is believe to be higher than it actually based on media and how stats interpreted. *Stats don’t interpret themselves, we do.
• Zero-tolerance policies: policies related to sanctions for violating conduct rules. Used most often in schools. May lead to more crimes being reported to the police

Validity and Reliability

• validity: how well you are measuring what you propose to measure
• reliability: extent to which research results can be replicated
• Statistics are subject to police self discretion, political and social pressure, interpretation, recording, etc.

​​Other Measurement Issues

• Lying: People can malinger re: involvement or degree of victimization
• Recalling crime: Subjects may not properly recall victimization involvement
• Telescoping: people have problems with time line of victimization. Events happened more recently than they did
• All create problems in gaining an accurate picture of crime

Question 10

Which Source of Information is “Best”?

Answer 10

• Most sources are not complete pictures of the youth crime problem
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: Official statistics may contribute to crime problems

Question 11

Crimes changed between the JDA, YOA, and YCJA

Answer 11

• We can examine crime rates as related to historic policies
• Higher crime rates under the YOA are likely the result of changes in legislation rather than increases in offending among youth
• The YCJA has resulted in increased diversion and lower charge rates
• Measures of severity add a new interpretive layer to statistics

Question 12

Conclusions

Answer 12

• Information sources all have some methodological flaws.
• Statistics do not interpret themselves.
• Any claims of youth crime being “out of control” are unfounded

Question 13

Consider

Answer 13

• How might administrative offences criminalize youth more than necessary and create more harm than good?
  
  • Net-widening: the effects of providing alternatives to incarceration or diversion programs to direct offenders away from court. Results in a greater number of individuals being controlled by the criminal justice system; many fear trial who likely would be found innocent and agree to diversion programs.
• What impact does information about youth crime severity have on a community?
  
  • Consider political agendas & lifestyle choices (lifestyle of seniors ) by members of the community
  • Causes inflated notions of fear and heightened perception that youth crime is prevalent