Counting Crime Flashcards
What are 5 different ways to measure crime?
- Official data
- Self-report surveys
- Victimization surveys
- Observational accounts
- In-depth interviews
What were the top 5 convictions in Canada during the period from 1882-1892?
-#1 conviction: drunkenness
-#2 conviction: breaches of by-laws/minor offences
-#3 conviction: offences against the person
-#4 conviction: offences against property
-#5 conviction: breaches of liquor laws
Of those convicted in early Canada…
“___%” of them constituted as males
“____-___”yr olds constituted 68%
Labourer class constituted “~___%”
“_______” constituted 17-24%
Immoderate “_______” constituted 40%
91%
16-40 yr olds
50%
‘Illiterates’
Drinkers
\
Crime had increased by “___%” from 1881-1891
But what did the author note?
15%
-less completeness in making reports in early period
-increased vigilance of the police over period
-increased urban population = easier to detect crime
-enlargement of crimes- new laws added over period
The most common measures of crime are the official statistics collected primarily by the various elements of the “_______ _______ ______”
What are the 3 kinds of statistics?
Criminal Justice System
- Police statistics:
- “how many ppl arrested? How many charged?” - Judicial statistics:
- in court - Correctional statistics:
- w/in the prisons
What were the top 6 police-reported crimes in Canada in 2022?
- Theft of $5,000 or under (excluding vehicles)
- Mischief
- Assault 1
- Fraud
- Shoplifting $5,000 or less
- Break and enter
What are the 3 forms of assault?
- Assault one:
- least violent
- ex. Spitting/pushing - Assault two:
- somewhat violent
- ex. Punched/weapon - Assault three:
- violent
- ex. Multiple punches
Crime rate is measured by level of crime in society based on “_____-_______” data
You do this by calculating by dividing the “______” of crime by the population “_____” and multiplying it by 1,000 (have to do this per capita)
Give an example of this calculation…
Police-reported
Amount; size
e.g., in 2016, there were 611 homicides nationally and the population of Canada was 35,151,728
2016 Homicide Rate = 1.738 per 100,000
The CJS produces an enormous amount of raw data…
What is included in this?
Includes:
Police reports and records
Court decisions
Administrative records of prisons and penitentiaries
Decisions of parole and probation officials
The Canadian Centre for justice statistics have developed…
- Uniform Crime Report Survey (UCR) (1962)
- Uniform Crime Report Survey revised (UCR2) (1988)
What are these?
Uniform Crime Report Survey (UCR) (1962):
-aggregate count based on reports from >1200 police detachments in Canada
-represents crimes substantiated through police investigation
-seriousness rule-based
Uniform Crime Report Survey revised (UCR2)(1988)
-allows for collection of more detailed (incident specific) information
What is the problem with the Uniform Crime Report Survey (UCR) (1962)?
If someone breaks in, assaults you, vandalizes things and steals (mischief)…
= they will take the MOST SERIOUS CRIME out of all the ones that have occurred
= hence the meaning of the “seriousness rule-based”
The limitation with the UCR is the seriousness rule…
What 3 limitations does this cause?
- Deflates total crime count
- Inflates serious crime count
-
Crime categories grouped
e.g., theft/attempted thef
What is the police reported crime severity index (PRCSI) and how does it work?
What is the crime severity index (CSI) and how does it work?
PRCS:
- introduced in 2009
- tracks changes in the severity of police reported crime
CSI:
- assigns a weight to different crimes so that our crime rate is not unduly influenced by less serious crimes
What are unofficial sources of crime data?
Give 3 examples…
Crime data not collected by official criminal justice agencies
Usually to elucidate existing official data and verify the validity of official sources
- Victimization data
- Self-report data
- Observational methods
What is the Canadian urban victimization survey (CUVS)?
What are the 2 questions they ask?
Introduced in 1981
Sample of people are asked via a questionnaire survey whether they have been a crime victim
Victims can be asked to describe:
1. Their victimization (including how they were personally affected)
2. Whether it was reported to police (and if not, why?) the criminal justice response
There are 460,000 sexual assaults in Canada each year…
Out of every 1000 sexual assaults:
“___” are reported to the police
“___” are reported as a crime
“___” have charges laid
“___” are prosecuted
“_____” ASSAILANTS WALK FREE
These numbers represent “the crime funnel”
33
29
12
6
3
997
What are 2 benefits of victimization surveys?
- Useful in identifying categories of people most at risk of victimization
-ex. people living in public housing, Toronto Study - Reveal that some crimes are seriously underreported
ex. sexual assault
What is the ‘typical victim’ (based on 2009 survey) ?
Young, single, male, not employed full-time and living an active social life
The number of evenings spent outside the home is one of the best predictors of whether a person has been victimized or not
What are 2 limitations of victimization surveys?
-
Not all crimes are captured(ex. murders):
-crimes related to drug use are generally not captured
-crimes that keep victims unaware of victimization cannot be captured accurately - Survey data maylack reliability:
-depend on people’s memory, recall, truthfulness
-reluctance to discuss some crimes (e.g., domestic violence)
-relying upon landline/internet excludes many people highest risk
What are 2 benefits of self-report surveys?
- Self-report studies sought to overcome some of the weaknesses of police data
- Contribute to research and theories on the causes of crime and delinquency
- especially the relationship between social class and crime
What are 3 limitations of self-report surveys?
- Misrepresentation – especially illicit activity
- Those who are typically law abiding are more likely to report their occasional infractions compared to more serious and chronic offenders
- Often difficult to survey serious, chronic offenders
Neil Polsky advocated for “_________” studies and called for criminologists/sociologists to ABANDON the focus on “_________”
What was Daniel Wolf’s study in the rebels?
Observational
Statistics
Daniel Wolf went undercover in a biker gang called “the rebels”
Stayed for 3 years..
• Then wrote a book about them
• Functioned in a deviant way
• They were not afraid to use violence
• Sex, drugs etc…
• How women were perceived within the group (some passed around, some not)
= provided an insider view
What are 3 limitations of observational studies?
- Researcher may be put in dangerous situation
-
Lack of generalizability
- hard to extrapolate to other groups -
Ethics
- need ethics approval
- have to look at the ”potential harm of those studied” & Q: “is it worth it”?
NOTE: in Daniel’s study the ethics board would NOT approve him to do this study…
So he had to do it on his own WILL
REASON: worried that he would cause harm to those that he was studying
The use of in-depth interviews was useful in the book “Too Few to Count”…
What was the experiment?
13 women in maximum security
Sociologists went in and interviewed them
Start to see a theme:
• many abused (mentally/sexually)
• many grew up in harmful environments
• many lured into sex trade
What are the 3 aspects of “the dark figure of crime”?
- Unknown
- Unreported
- Unrecorded
What are 4 factors that affect the crime rate?
Some crimes are…
- “Report-sensitive”
- few reports about intimate partner violence
- drugs neighbour selling drugs - “Policing-sensitive”
- few ppl would phone police on people doing drugs - “Definition-sensitive”
- our definitions of crimes change
- ex. Now weed is legal - “Media-sensitive”
- some people have never heard of elder abuse
= media started reporting
True or false. True-crime, drama-documentaries etc.. have grow exceedingly popular y
True
Canadians exposure to crime-related news has
increase as time spent watching television and
online media content has increased
Despite the “______” in overall violent crime rates, media
reporting does “___” reflect this
Give an example of this
Decline
Not
Ex. >50% of Ottawa crime-related news stories on
murder in year when there were only 7 murders
media over reports crime = VIOLENT crime
Why may there be a conflict of interest between the media and the police?
The media need police for the ‘stories’, therefore less to be critical of police actions
Need a ‘good relationship’ with the police = to GET INFO
Why may there be a conflict of interest between media and corporations?
This occurs when they are *privately owned)
= makes corporate crime “invisible”
What is “damned lies and statistics about (2001)” by Joel Best
.
Media coverage on crime increases the fear of “___________”
Why is this?
Victimization
Overemphasis on reporting violent crimes
Highly repetitive news programming
Longevity of ‘mega cases’
1100 stories in Toronto Star from 1995-2005
concerning the Homolka/Bernardo case
What is the “CSI— effect” on the media coverage on crime?
We get the impression from this show that ”DNA evidence will get us to find the crime”
This impacts jurors mindset heading in (but we don’t always have DNA)
The media coverage on crime also increases “_____/____ ____”
Ethnic/racial bias
Ex. Racial/ethnic status of perpetrator is often salient
They often don’t interview the victim and people that were actually there
= they might have a different view than the police
= ^ they don’t want this so they pick and choose who to interview
Media coverage on crime increases demand toward “___/_____” political campaigns
Law/order
Ex. view of professionals is less salient than that of the police
Media may be “________” by partied with a specific agenda
Exploited
Ex. Groups calling for more funding
What is white collar crime?
“crimes committed by a person of respectability and high
social status in the course of his occupation”
Edwin Sutherland recognized that few WCCs resulted in conviction:
- more often addressed through civil agencies than courts
- citizens prefer *receiving civil damages rather than criminal punishment for offender
- WC criminals escape prosecution because of class
position and privilege - WC prosecutions usually limited to primary offender only
No “__________” accepted definition of what constitutes
WCC today or dataset
Universally
= understanding extent of WCC is extremely difficult
