Criminology Chapter 4 Flashcards
1
Q
Define quantitative
A
Relating to the measurement of something - its quantity- rather than its qualities
2
Q
Define qualitative
A
The study of phenomena based not on measurement but an exploration of the reasons for human behavior and the qualities of subjective experience
3
Q
Data from media and criminological research are which type of data? Quantitative or qualitative data?
A
Quantitative
4
Q
Data from people’s words and methods that emphasize interaction with research participants are which type? Quantitative or qualitative data?
A
Qualitative
5
Q
What does quantitative data do? 2 things
A
They help show overall patterns
Their consistent structure allows for comparisons to be made between groups, times and places.
6
Q
What are two things qualitative data do?
A
They help serve to strengthen statistical results and help to put them into context for better understanding.
7
Q
Define convergent methodology
A
Using two or more methods
8
Q
Define triangulation
A
Combining methods
9
Q
Which methods gives us a more comprehensive understanding of a phenomenon?
A
Triangulation
10
Q
How does triangulation help improve the results in research? 3 things
A
It makes it more complete, holistic and contextual.
11
Q
What are 2 factors that contribute to the complexity of measuring crime?
A
- The inherently theoretical nature of “crime” as a construct and
- The practical challenge of knowing where crime occurs, what to count, and how to count it.
12
Q
How many bases on which an act can be defined as “criminal” are there and what are four of them?
A
11 bases 4 of them include: Prohibition based in law Violation of moral values Violation of social convention An act that has behavioral consequences
13
Q
Who offered 11 bases on which an act can be defined as “criminal”?
A
Muncie
14
Q
What is the Criminal Code and when was it developed?
A
A federal statute and a code that defined criminal and came into force in July 1, 1893.
15
Q
What are the four general approaches theories?
A
The structuralist, positivist, constructionist and integrationist approaches.
16
Q
Define conflict theories
A
Theories, originating primarily with Marx, that focus on the unequal distribution of power in society - for example, due to class, race, or gender. Conflicts between classes or groups are driven to a large extent by this unequal power and unequal access to resources.
17
Q
Structuralist perspective fall within the general scope of _____ ______?
A
Structuralist perspectives fall within the general scope of conflict theories
18
Q
What are two examples of the structuralist perspective and what are they about?
A
Marxist theories (which focus on inequities in the distribution of capital in society) Feminist theories (which focus on gender inequity in societies organized on largely patriarchal lines)
19
Q
Which perspective is likely to pay attention to power structures and ideological influences that play out in a wide array of social context?
A
Structuralist perspective
20
Q
What do structuralist view the Criminal Code as?
A
As a contemporary scorecard that reflect who has the power to create the laws that define what is and is not criminal. They believed that Criminal Code is a battleground where crime statistics are irrelevant because the statistics reveal more about the distribution of societal power than the distribution of societal misconduct
21
Q
What are two things feminists fought?
A
They fought to make abortion legal and they fought to turn wife assault into something illegal
22
Q
What do structuralists’ perspective focus on? 2 things
A
Research from this perspective tend to focus on activities around the creation and implementation of laws and/or on what happens in the absence of law that the structuralist advocate deems desirable.
23
Q
Those who advocate for legal reform from a ______ perspective strive to ensure that the changes they seek do not unfairly advantage or disadvantage identifiable groups based on factors such as gender, culture, race or socio-economic status
A
Those who advocate for legal reform from a structuralist perspective strive to ensure that the changes they seek do not unfairly advantage or disadvantage identifiable groups based on factors such as gender, culture, race or socio-economic status
24
Q
Positivist perspectives fall within the general scope of ______ ________
A
Positivist perspectives fall within the general scope of consensus theories
25
Define consensus theories
In opposition to conflict theories, consensus theories which originate with Durkheim, hold that society functions through social bonds and collective beliefs, and is characterized by widespread acceptance of values, norms and laws
26
How do positivists tend to take the Criminal Code as?
They tend to take the Criminal Code as a reflection of societal consensus about what is and is not criminal. They assume that the Criminal Code is a reflection of a society's collective social values and therefore consider crime statistics generated by the criminal justice system and governmental agencies unbiased measures of societal crime and criminality
27
Fun fact: John Lowman and Ted Palys note "Such records are still the most lengthy time-series crime data available to us, having been collected in parts of Europe and North America since the early nineteenth centry"
wow
28
In Canada, since when was police-recorded crime statistics first collected and published? What were two problems with the early data collected?
Police-recorded crime statistics have been collected and published since 1921. Two problems with the early data was that it was inconsistent due to small number of police agencies that submitted information and the lack of consistency from year to year and place to place for crimes reported.
29
When did the most significant improvement for crime statistics occur and what was it?
The most significant improvement occurred in 1962 when Canada implemented UCR.
30
What is the UCR and what is one of its problems?
The Uniform Crime Reporting Survey had a goal of providing police-reported crime statistics that were complete, accurate and standardized to facilitate temporal (time to time) and spatial (place-to-place) comparisons. A problem with the UCR is that the variations between how crime data were collected and counted produced results that seem to obfuscate what was "really" going on.
31
What has always been a problem in measuring crime and what is it and how does it affect crime reports?
Dark figure of crime (crimes that occur that are never reported to police) has always been a problem in measuring crime. Dark figure of crime refers to the variation between the number of crimes that occur and the number of crimes that are actually reported to the police. This figure highlights the large number of unreported crimes and makes the collected data both erroneous and incomplete.
32
What do constructionist theorists believe in and suggest?
Constructionist theorists do not disagree with the wisdom of trying to minimize error but suggest that we cannot fully understand crime and its causes and consequences unless we also accept that the identification, coding, and counting of crime is a social process that says as much about our society and justice system as it does about the amount of "crime" that occurs. Interpreting crime statistics is a technical and theoretical problem that can be overcome by identifying the sources of error and finding ways to correct them.
33
What do constructionist argue for?
They argue that crime and crime rates cannot be fully understood unless we understand the justice system response to crime, criminality and deviance.
34
How do constructionist view police report?
They view the crime statistics as more of a measurement of police activity and attention on a particular group while other criminal groups escape attention.
35
What is the perspective that sees some merit in the other three perspectives?
Integrationist perspective
36
Define integrationist
A combination of structuralist, positivist, and constructionist approaches in criminology facilitating the inclusion of philosophy and sociology of law , the empirical study of crime and its interpretation by those who control and implement the law.
37
What did Jason Ditton (a constructionist) assert?
He asserted that crime statistics have little to do with the amount of crime that really exists and are instead primarily measures of police activity
38
What are two things criminology theory that seek to offer a complete explanation of crime and its causes and consequences should include?
(1) A philosophy and sociology of law that focuses on the development and change in laws
(2) An empirical study of crime and deviance focused on not only how the criminality revealed by crime statistics is distributed in society and its interpretation by those who control and implement the law.
39
What part of figure 4.1 is considered a crime funnel, define crime funnel and what does the figure 4.1 represent? (also draw 4.1)
Crime funnel is a model indicating that the actual total quantity of crime is much higher than the decreasing proportion that is detected, reported, prosecuted and punished. Figure 4.1 is on page 79
40
What problems might arise when comparing the rate of assault in Flin Flon and Winnipeg? 1 thing
Different definition of "assault"
41
What are 5 factors on why witness of crimes do not report to police?
1. One's confidence in police abilities
2. Individuals such as teachers and social workers have legal duties to report particular kinds of crimes while others do not
3. Crime perception
4. Type of crime
5. The outcome of reporting
42
What is one example of why people do not report to the police?
The members of the city's Aboriginal community prefer to call the Aboriginal Justice program than to call the police because they prefer how they deal with offenders compared to the way police do.
43
What is the GSS and what did they find?
General Social Survey (GSS) are broad social surveys that are conducted by Statistics Canada every 5 years and help shed light on the extent to which people fail to call police and a few of the reasons why. They found out there is an increasing percentage of Canadians that decided not to report the crime they experienced which is 34% in 2004. For those who did report, 31%.
44
What is two crime most reported and their percentage? Least likely to be reported? Robbery and physical assault percentage of reports?
Break-in 54% and motor vehicle theft 50% are most reported. Least likely to be reported are sexual assaults 12%. Robbery 43% and physical assault 34%.
45
What are 3 common reasons for not reporting crimes and their percentage?
1. Not important enough (68%)
2. Nothing police could do to help (59%)
3. Dealt with situation in another manner (42%)
46
What was Operation Identification and what happened?
Operation Identification is a program that encouraged individuals to engrave identifying information on precious items to make it easier to recognize them as stolen and thereby easier to potentially foil and convict thieves. Because of this, crime rates increased as more people were calling to report as they believed that they will get their stolen goods back just like how the program advertised.
47
What has Bruce Levens and Donald Dutton found? 3 things
- They found out that when one major Canadian police department received calls from women who had been or were being assaulted by their husbands, it sent out officers to investigate less than 50% of the time.
- They found out the variety of factors influence whether the police decide to write a report instead of simply issue a warning, confiscate illicit goods, interrupt some escalating activity, or undertake some other non-processed alternative.
- They also found out officers were less likely to write a report when the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim was close (believing that incidents were less likely to end in court) and were more likely to write a report when the complainant was deferential or someone of high social status.
48
What is one example of an increased crime rate due to more police attention?
The police campaign to "shame the johns" by arresting sex workers in the 1980s and 1990s.
49
Do many factors that influence the left side of figure 4.1 mirror the same way for the right side?
Yes
50
What are the three general counting rule for UCR?
1. For crimes of violence, one counts the number of victims
2. For crimes of property, one counts the number of events
3. For mixed or multiple offences, only the most serious offence is recorded.
51
How would the police create a report if two perpetrators robbed a store, burnt the store, and shot an officer and what are two problems of the three general counting rules with this?
Police would choose the most serious offence to be recorded since there was multiple offences. The two problems with these rules is that it failed to capture the true nature of the event, and because of the counting bias that favored the reporting of violent crime, it would consistently underestimate the amount of property crime and give a distorted picture of the relative amount of violent crime in Canada.
52
What are three examples of distortions in crime measurements?
United Kingdom: David Farrington and Elizabeth Dowds found out that Nottinghamshire, said to have significantly higher crime rates, actually had one-third to one-quarter difference when compared to victimization surveys.
United States: The CompStat for New York City showed a decline in crime by 12% in 1994, 16% in 1995, and 16% in 1996. The distortion was that patrol officers were pressured to "write down" crime - record lower level offences rather than higher level index crimes - and to disregard witness statements to ensure that crime dropped.
Australia: Police department in Victoria had a distorted crime data as they were underreporting crime (disclose up to 15,000 of the 380000 annual crimes) and over reporting clearance rates.
53
Define CompStat
Computer statistics; the name given to New York City Police Department's accountability process that was introduced in the 1990s to facilitate a reduction in crime.
54
Define clearance rates
The proportion of criminal incidents solved by the police. A crime is cleared when the police believe that have found its perpetrator
55
What are victimization surveys and three examples of them?
Victimization surveys are social surveys in which a sample of citizens is asked to divulge information about experience with crime and the criminal justice system. 3 examples include the Canadian Urban Victimization Survey, the Violence Against Women Survey, and General Social Survey (GSS).
56
How is GSS used and its two purpose?
It is used more generally to gather data on social trends to allow the government to monitor changes in living conditions and the well-being of Canadians over time but it has a section dedicated to victimization and eight crime type are targeted in the survey. Its purpose is to gain a better understanding of how Canadians perceive crime, the justice system and personal experiences of victimization. Another purpose to shed some light on information on crimes that individuals fail to report or police fail to discover.
57
What is six issues of victimization surveys?
- There are steps before a criminal event becomes a crime statistic which leaves room for errors that affect the results.
- Crime requires a victim but there exist victimless crime
- Victimization survey is not equally distributed across society
- Some are difficult to access or unwilling to be interviewed
- Determining whether the interviewee has been victimized or not
- Different crimes are more likely to be reported than others
58
Draw Figure 4.2
Check figure 4.2 on page 85
59
Define victimless crime
Actions (often perpetrated consensually) that are ruled illegal but do not directly violate or threaten the rights of other individuals
60
What are two examples of victimless crime?
Using prostitutes or consuming illegal drugs
61
Define sampling
In statistics, the selection of a subset of the population in such a way that will allow the results of one's research to be generalizable to the population as a whole
62
What are three errors that can occur during an interview and which errors causes false negative and false positive and how does that affect rates of victimization?
1. Individuals are not aware of or unable to recall the victimization
2. Memory fade, which happens when respondents forget about a victimization that has taken place or recall it erroneously as having taken place outside the time period addressed in the survey
3. Telescoping.
- Number 1 and 2 both causes false negatives which is when people who were actually victimized end up not reporting the event and thereby cause an underestimation of actual victimization rates. Telescoping causes false positive in which individuals report victimization that did not actually occur which inflates rates of victimization.
63
What is the time frame of victimization that the victimization survey ask?
Sometimes time frame is as short as six months (which is most common when the individuals being interviewed are known victims) and other times is as long as two years (which is most common in surveys of the general population).
64
Define memory fade
The phenomenon whereby a survey participant forgets about a victimization that has taken place
65
Define telescoping
The phenomenon whereby a survey participant recalls events as having occurred more recently than is actually the case
66
What are 4 errors that occur when the victim tells the interviewer about the event?
- forgetting
- Misremembering
- lying
- Differential reconstruction of events (seeing the event differently than how others see them)
67
When did the Statistics Canada adopted UCR2 and when did it become the official police-reported crime survey?
1980s and became the official police-reported crime survey since 2009
68
Who created and managed the UCR2?
Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS)
69
What were some of the improvements to the UCR2? 4 things
- Included more information like victim, accused persons and incident characteristics
- Allowed for the entry of up to four different offences to provide better understanding of multiple-event occurrences
- Wider list of offence categories to better reflect the nature of criminal offences. For example, violent crime now include events such as sexual offences against children, harassing phone calls
- Changes to counting. For example, robbery is not counted by victims instead of by number of incidents that occured
70
In the UCR2, what did they add to violent crime category, property crime category, and other new categories of crime? 8 things for violent crime and property crime and you only need to list 3 for others.
Violent crime : Criminal harassment, sexual offences against children, kidnapping, extortion, uttering threats and harassing phone calls.
Property crime: mischief and arson
Other: Assault with weapon, causing bodily harm to a peace officer, aggravated assault on a peace officer, robbery to steal a firearm, sexual exploitation of a person with a disability, break and enter to steal a firearm, break and enter to steal a firearm from a motor vehicle and identity theft and fraud.
71
Which type of crime tends to be the vast majority of crime in Canada and what does that mean?
Non-severe type of crime tend to be the vast majority which means that the UCR2 is dominated by less serious crimes.
72
What is the CSI and what did it include? 4 things it includes
The Crime Severity Index (CSI) counts the violations of the Criminal Code and it includes:
- Overall CSI (based on the total volume of police reported federal statute offences - a measure of the relative severity of overall crime)
- Violent CSI (based on the total volume of police reported federal statute offences - a measure of the relative severity of violent crime)
- Non-Violent CSI (based on the total volume of police reported federal statute offences not considered violent in nature - a measure of the relative severity of non-violent crime)
- Youth CSI (based on the number of youth accused of crime - a measure of the relative severity of overall youth crime)
73
What is CSI designed and what is an example of it?
The Crime Severity Index is designed to measure both year-to-year changes in crime volume as well as crime seriousness. A serious offence such as murder is weighted a value several hundred more times than a less serious offence such as mischief.
74
How are more serious crime weighted in CSI and what are the four problems with it?
CSI weights more serious crimes on the basis of court sentencing thus relying on the subjectivity of the judge imposing the sentence. Problems with this include
- Time served on remand (jail time before sentencing) is not included in the weighting of the CSI
- Repeated offenders, youth offenders and life sentences can all skew the weightings as the judges consider past criminal records
- information related to recidivism is not collected
- conditioned sentences were not taken into account.
75
What does it mean "trying to capture a moving target"?
Society itself is changing which means that one is trying to capture in a fixed way, a target that is always moving
76
Define cybercrime
Crime committed over the Internet or a computer network
77
When did Canada begin collecting statistics on cybercrime?
2005
78
Over two past decades what has happened and two examples of it? What are 3 explanation for this?
Industrialized countries worldwide have reported dramatic decreases in some police-reported crimes. Some examples include automobile theft and worldwide levels of homicide while levels of assault has risen.
1. Improvements have been made in emergency medical care, which have led to an increased number of assault victims surviving their assault rather than dying as they would have 20 or 30 years ago
2. Young adults have become less risk tolerant, which has led to safer behaviors and a reduction in potential victimization
3. The advent of commerce on the Internet led a greater number of young adults to stay home playing online video games, removing them from potential harm as a victim and offering a substitute for excitement and risky behavior that could lead to fatal assault
79
What are some effects of the internet on crime measurement? 4 things
Effects:
- Some traditional crime have been displaced by cybercrime.
- identity theft and fraud is linked to the growth in Internet adoption
- Hard to notice cybercrime
- Police are rarely called about "cybercrime" because other alternatives are used instead. Like calling tech support
80
What are some issues with recording cybercrime on crime statistics? 2 things
- Where should the perpetrator be recorded in? the count of the victim or the perpetrator?
- How do we record time and location of the crime?
81
What is the Bill C-13?
Bill C-13 - The Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act.
82
How prevalent was cybercrime in Canada? In other words, what was the percentage for the two things people reported about cybercrime?
62% percent of respondents reported experiencing at least one attempt by cybercriminals to steal their personal financial information and 41% reported that they had lost money they were unable to retrieve
83
What are some of the offences against computer data and systems and against people related to cybercrime? (9 offences against computer data and 4 offences against people)
- Offences against computer data and systems: Money laundering, corruption, offences against confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems which includes unauthorized entry into computers, unauthorized use or manipulation of data and system, and illegal downloading of data and programs.
- Offences against people: Harassment, bullying, child luring and child pornography.
84
What are some issues for cybercrime for law enforcement agencies? 4 issues
Issues to be determined:
- Jurisdictional boundaries and domains
- Application of newly tabled legislation
- Police practices
- The ability to process Internet-related evidence
85
How do structuralist see crime statistics as?
They see it as more than a measure of the extent to which agents of social control recognize and deal with activities those with the power to do so identify as criminal.
86
Define constructionist
Constructionist perspectives emphasize the idea that life does not come with categories and labels and that we understand and define the world on the basis of our socialization and interactions with others
