Chapter 4: Counting Crime

Question 1

What are the 3 Types of Criminal Justice Statistics

Answer 1

1. Crime and Criminals
2. Criminal justice System and its Response to Crime
3. Perceptions of Crime and Criminal Justice

Question 2

What are some issues to be addressed with the way the Criminal Justice System records are formed into statistics?

Answer 2

The Criminal Justice System keeps Administrative Records, which is just raw data on individual cases. To make good statistics, we need to find the commonalities, and be able to use the data to answer larger questions. What do you want to know? What will you do with that info once you know it? Issues:

1. Unit of Count: What are we counting? Incidences? Cases? Criminals? Inmates?
2. Levels of Aggregation: How do we combine the data? By municipality, city, or province? (Typically, city is best. The more general the data, the less accurate it becomes)
3. Definitions: Define what is being counted - What is an inmate? Someone in remand? Someone on house arrest?
4. Data Elements: What specific info should be collected
5. Counting Procedures: How do we count our units? By person? By incident?

Question 3

What is the major challenge for the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics when it comes to collecting statistics

Answer 3

Agreeing on priorities - Which needs should we address first?

Question 4

Discuss the Process of counting Crime and their issues

Answer 4

1. Canadian Uniform Crime Reports (UCR): Uniform, Comparable, National Statistics….
   Better than the states, because we’re national and not provincial, and we have better coverage in our police departments
   Issue 1: Two separate versions: The Aggregate survey, which collects summary data, and the incident-based survey, which collects more specific information
   Issue 2: Seriousness rule - Only the most serious crime are recorded. UCR categorizes them by violent, property, and other criminal code incidences. Violent will overrule non-violent, then it goes by length of sentence. Additionally, violent acts are reported individually, while anything else is typically lumped together
2. Victimization Surveys: This gives a count of how many people have been a victim of crime
   Issues: Under 30% of crime actually gets reported, only 5% of Sexual assaults get reported. Crime involving financial loss was pretty well reported, due to a desire for recompense
   *Typical victim of crime: young, single, socially active, part-time working male
3. Self-Report Studies: We ask you how many and what crimes you have committed in the last year. Could for examining trends!
   Issue 1: Those are more marginalized will self-report less
   Issue 2: Those who are typically law-abiding will usually report more fully
   Issue 3: People are usually biased about the severity of their crimes

Question 5

What’s the issue with Cyber Crime?

Answer 5

It’s not really included in the Crime Data! Companies don’t really report it, they just create policies to account for it. So while it seems like crime is experiencing a downward trend, the rise in cybercrime more than makes up for it

Question 6

Discuss Court Surveys

Answer 6

A census of criminal charges provided by the court

1. Unit of Count: One unit = one case/person. Many crimes may be included therein
2. Serious Offence Scale: Guilty > Guilty of lesser of offences > Acquitted > Stay of Proceeding > Withdrawn > Non-Criminally Responsible > Other > Transfer of Court

Question 7

What is the difference between court surveys and the UCR?

Answer 7

UCR: Divides Violent offences by # of victims, and non-violent by number of incidences.
They also include youth statistics, and Their data starts at the laying of the charge rather than simply the court’s verdict.