Crime Funnel and Statistics

Question 1

What are the three main statistic surveys? What do they claim about crime levels in Canada, and what is the crime funnel?

Answer 1

GSS: General Social Survey. Says unreported crime is 70%, asks if you have ever been a victim of a crime every 5 years
UCS: Uniform Crime Survey. Focuses on the most severe charge, federal crimes are not reported. States 1.72 million crimes a year. Probably closer to 2 million
ICCS: Integrated Criminal Court Survey. Focuses on number of charges. Claim 1.2 million charges, and only 365,000 people in the court system. That’s 3 charges per person!
This brings our UCR number to 6 million, times the amount of unreported crimes, we get 18 million crimes a year!! This makes the crime funnel: 18 million unreported crime –> 6 million Reported crime –> 2 million Police reported –> 1.2 million Charged crime –> 365,000 Convicted crime. It gets smaller and smaller!

Question 2

What is the ACSS, and what does it find?

Answer 2

ACSS: Adult correctional service study. Finds that 140,000 people are in prison at any given time. Their punishments:
1. Community Corrections. They’re out on the streets, 100,000
2. Institutional-based corrections: Healing lodges, prisons, etc.
63% of crimes are found guilty.
22% of charges are withdrawn
11% have stayed charges, they’re not sure what to do yet
4% of charges are acquitted (not guilty)

Question 3

Mandatory Minimum Penalties

Answer 3

Prosecutors are starting to use these in a terrible way. They’re threaten to charge indictable with the mandatory minimum so they can force people in to plea deals and get them into prison for longer

Question 4

Legislative and Judicial Sentencing: How do judges decide?

Answer 4

The one place where judges have full power is sentencing. They just can’t affect the plea deals. That’s all prosecutors! So what can they do?

1. Nature and seriousness of crime
2. Mitigating (factor that makes it less serious than it seems) vs. Aggravating Circumstances: Why did you do the thing? Actus Reus vs. Mens Rea
3. Case Precedent: What does the law tell me I need to do in this situation?
4. Victim Impact Statement: Put in as much emotion as you can manage!
5. Pre-sentence investigation, pre-sentence report: Look at all of their circumstances! Gladue report, age, peers, hobbies, education, employment, family, etc.