CHAPTER 4 Flashcards
What are the two most pressing concerns in crime statistics and data collection?
Reliability: Are the methods strong enough that anyone following the procedures would produce the same counts?
Validity: Do the statistics collected count what they purport to count
Describe coverage and methodology as concerns over counting crime
Coverage: How can we obtain reliable and valid data on the scope and nature of crime?
Methodology: Do the methods used to count crime hold up under critical analysis
Describe the idea of crime being a funnel
Police cannot record unreported crime or crime of which they are unaware
funnel diagram example : Only 1% of all break and enters were actually sentenced to custody. from reports to convicts to custody, the percentage gets smaller and smaller
Shows that the further into the CJS you go, the more obvious it becomes that you are collecting statistics on how the CJS operates rather than a measure of the actual scope and nature of crime
Theories and facts are mutually dependent.
Theory without facts is ______
Facts without theory is _______
Statistics without theory is ______
Ideology
Implicit ideology
numerology
What are the three broad types of criminal justice statistics?
- Statistics about crime and criminals
- Statistics about the CJS and its response to crime
- Statistics about perceptions of crime and criminal justice
What are some examples of raw data that the CJS produces?
Police reports and records, court decisions, administrative records of prisons and penitentiaries, decisions of parole and probation officials
What is the difference between records and statistics?
Records = concerned with individual cases (ex. an offender) > can help practitioners make decisions about these individual cases
Statistics = aggregated and concerned with what’s common among many individual cases > they provide information about larger questions: planning and evaluation, policy and program development, etc.
What are the five methodological issues that we need to consider when changing records into usable statistics?
- Units of count - what is being counted (ex. suspects, offences, charges, victims which is often ignored)
- Level of aggregation - how to combine data (the more you combine data from diff sources, the more questionable result)
- Definitions - how to define what is being counted (ex. depending on how you define a criminal, you can inflate or deflate the statistic)
- Data element - what info is to be collected (often data collection differs between police departments)
- counting procedure - how to count units and elements
What is the CCJS and when was it founded? Which of its data is good and which has improved?
Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics > Founded in 1981 to collect national data on crime and justice
Its data on CJS inputs (resources, expenditure) are good
Its data on criminal incidents, arrests, charges, convictions, and dispositions have improved
What is the major problem of crime statistics and why its problematic?
The dark figure of crime > tons of crime that remains unreported, unrecorded, or just unknown
What are the three dominant ways to count crime or describe crime patterns and trends?
- Official (police-reported) statistics
- Victimization surveys
- Self-report studies
What is UCR and what is its goal?
Uniform Crime Reports
Goal is to provide uniform and comparable national statistics
What are the two versions of UCR?
UCR Aggregate (UCR1.0)
*since 1962
Survey: collects summary data for 100 separate criminal offences
UCR Incident-Based (UCR2.0) *since the mid 80s
Survey: collects more detailed information on each incident, victims, and accused
What is the Seriousness Rule in UCR statistics and what are the implications of this rule?
Rule > only the most serious crime is scored in an incident involving several crimes
*used with UCR1.0 but not with UCR2.0 because that one allows up to 4 violations per incident, permitting the identification of lesser offences
Implications:
- deflates the total crime count
- inflates serious crimes as a percentage of the total
- not enough qualitative data about crimes are recorded to use a sophisticated scale of seriousness
Why are gross counts of crime misleading?
It doesn’t differentiate between serious (indictable) and less serious (summary) offences
List some concerns of UCR Official Statistics
- crime categories are too general
- it’s not always clear what is being counted (criminal code, federal or provincial statutes, or bylaws?)
- is a particular crime increasing, or is it a reflection of changing social norms and police charging policies (ex. is domestic violence increasing or is it a product of society being more against this crime?)
Describe how UCR official statistics may actually be telling us more about police activities
- “official violations” statistics are often a product of police policy decisions
- crime statistics are influenced by police discretion regarding what crimes are serious enough to attend to, record, and pursue
- the ways police apply crime recording and scoring procedures reflect the policing style and policy of the particular police department
The UCR aggregate crime rate is expressed as a number of criminal incidents for every ________ Canadians. Why is the use of a rate helpful?
100 000
> allows for comparisons between jurisdictions or over time
> is not influenced by differences in population size between jurisdictions, or changes in population size in one jurisdiction
Describe what issue the Crime Severity Index addresses and how it’s calculated.
*available from 1998
Addresses the matter of the crime rate being driven by high volumes of less serious offences
Calculated by assigning each offence a weight derived from sentences given by the criminal courts
> the more serious the average sentence, the greater the weight
> therefore, more serious offences have a greater impact on the severity index
What is a victimization survey and what are some things victims may be asked to describe?
A victimization survey asks a sample of people, via questionnaire survey, whether they have been a crime victim
May be asked to describe…
- nature and consequences of their victimization
- whether it was reported to police and if not why
- the CJS response
- the perceptions of, and attitudes toward, crime and the CJS, and their feelings of safety
What are some limitations of victimization surveys?
- Not all crimes are captured (ex. murders or victimless crimes) - or crimes that keep victims unaware of victimization + there are a limited set of crimes that are included
- Survey data may lack reliability - depends on people’s memory, truthfulness, etc.
- Survey data may be skewed - well-educated respondents are more likely to talk to interviewers and give full accounts of their victimization
- Very costly
- Some people may not know if an offence is criminal or not
What are some lessons that have been learned from victimization surveys?
- many more canadians are victimized than is revealed by official statistics
- some people still do not report due to fear (esp. victims of sexual or domestic abuse)
- when incidents produced financial loss, reporting was more likely
- some crimes are more likely to come to police attention than others (ex. murder and auto theft)
- some categories of victims and offenders are more/less likely to report and more/less likely to be reported (ex. family members)
Which age group experiences the highest amount of victimization?
Age 20-24
What is the most common type of self-report study?
Those administered among a specific population (ex. secondary school students)
> asked about whether they have committed a crime, the nature of the crime, and when
What are some benefits of self-report surveys?
> overcome some of the weaknesses of police data and victimization surveys
> contribute to research and theories on the causes of crime and delinquency, esp. the relationship between social class and crime
> people are willing to report crimes in self-report surveys > adds validity and reliability
> useful in answering questions related to understanding the causes and correlates of crime
What are some limitations of self-report surveys?
> those who are typically law abiding are more likely to report their occasional infractions compared to more serious and chronic offenders
> respondents tend to report minor infractions and downplay more serious infractions
> some demographic groups are more apt to underreport criminal behaviour (lower class and black males in the US are more likely to underreport their own criminal behaviour)
> it is often difficult to survey serious, chronic offenders
> problems with sampling (ex. the most deviant students are the least likely to be at school for the survey)
Which source of data is the most reliable and valid?
Corrections data > tells us about the CJS, not about crime
Police-reported crime rates in Canada have _______ since the year of 1991
declined
In 2004 and 2006, what was the ratio of women who self-reported sexual assault on a victim survey and males who were convicted of sexual assault?
300:1
What was the general trend of crime during the pandemic. Which kind of crimes differed from this trend?
In April of 2020 there were 18% fewer criminal incidents compared to April 2019
*Cyber related crime and domestic violence increased
What is the trend of homicide rates from 1986-2020
Overall, remains pretty consistent but is slowly declining
What is the trend of Impaired driving rates in Canada from 1986-2020
Gone down from almost 600 to 200
What good can come from official crime statistics?
> can tell us how our CJS works: see what police prioritize and look at characteristics of those processed
> they do work for some crimes (homicide and vehicle thieft) - most reported crimes
> we’re aware of which ones are most inaccurate
> they can be validated against other statistics like victim surveys, insurance agency data, etc.
How often are victimization surveys conducted in Canada, US, and England?
Canada - every 5 years as part of the General Social Survey
US and England - every year
How does the Kinsey report show a bad example of a study?
Kinsey report studied sexual habits of Americans but it was very badly done –> studied prison inmates and generalized it to all of america –> found that heterosexual males had 75% more sexual partners than heterosexual females –> in reality, men were just more likely to exaggerate their numbers and admit their numbers
Describe the trend of reliability and validity of statistics as you go further into the CJS
The farther you go in the system, the more accurate and reliable the count will be, but it will be a decreasingly valid representation of all criminal behaviour
How does the “Law of the hammer” relate to crim stats
law > when you give a small child a hammer, they discover that everything needs pounding
social scientists have often been accused of letting their methods or the most readily available statistics dictate their theories
Describe the polarization of criminologists when it comes to official crime statistics
- Some heading back to the conservative past views and want to use the official records as an indicator of crime and want to explain crime for the purpose of controlling it
- Others see crime statistics as a part of the government’s control mechanism and as a reflection of more fundamental structural inequalities
What did sociologist Ned Polsky argue about crime statistics
He said that our understanding of crime would never be significantly advanced if we rely on statistical data
What is a big challenge for the CCJS to agree on
Challenge to agree on whose needs should be met (criminologists, researchers, policymakers) - they all use stats for different reasons
Statistics do not provide _____, they tell us where ____________
Answers
Problems may exist
Describe Canada’s incarceration rate compared to most Western European nations and the US
- much higher rate than most Western European nations
- much lower rate than the US > US = 6x higher than Canada
In the UCR1.0, describe the MSO (most serious offence) classification system
- classifies incidents according to the most serious offence which is always violence - and then sorts them according to the maximum sentence (+robbery is considered a violent offence)
- Violent offences are counted by the number of victims in the incident ; nonviolent ones are counted by the number of separate incidents
Define what constitutes “actual incidents” reported by the police
Crimes that are reported to the police = “reported” incident
But if the report is unfounded, it is subtracted from the number of reported incidents > this will equal the number of actual incidents
(total reported incidents - unfounded incidents)
Describe Cybercrime’s impact on crime statistics
- Creates huge new opportunities for people to commit crimes
- Difficult to detect and often not reported
- Far more people have been hacked or been victimized by identity theft than have been victims of burglary, robbery, or car theft
**The growth of cybercrimes outweighs the drop in offline crimes
What is predictive policing?
- A computer program analyzes crime data and predicts where certain types of crime are likely to occur
- Officers using this data and their own knowledge to deploy to particular places
2014 survey - Of all the incidents identified, how many were reported to the police?
What are the biggest reasons for people not reporting crimes?
Just under 1/3
- crime was minor and not worth taking the time to report it
- police wouldn’t have considered the incident important enough
- lack of evidence
2014 survey: what percent of those who had been sexually assaulted did not report the incident to the police?
95%
> fear of revenge when they knew their assaulter
Women experience violent victimization at a rate _____ higher than men
20% (most will come from sexual assaults)
What type of person is the most at risk of criminal victimization?
Young, single male who is not employed full-time and is living an active social life (more evenings spent outside the home = greater risk)
What are the biggest reasons for reporting crime victimization?
- victim’s duty
- to arrest and punish the offender
- to stop the incident or receive protection
Official data are likely to include _________ offences, and self-report data are more likely to include _______
more serious
more minor infractions
