Measuring Crime Flashcards
What is a benefit to the legalistic approach?
Clarity
What is a drawback to the legalistic approach?
Not everything illegal is harmful and not everything harmful is illegal.
What are two ways to measure crime?
Police statistics and victim surveys.
Why do we measure crime?
To see what is causing it.
Is crime increasing or decreasing globally?
Decreasing
What are the costs of crime?
Anticipation (buying a house), consequence of crime (support services), post crime response (criminal justice system).
What does Australia spend annually on crime?
~$32b
Why do we measure crime? (4)
Measure moral health, measure the effectiveness of social control, measure likelihood of becoming a victim, developing and testing criminological theories.
Who defines what is a crime?
Legislators
What are some limitations of police data? (5)
Not all crime is reported, not all crime is recorded, jurisdictional differences, recording may not meet research needs, reporting can be influenced by external factors.
Why might local and national crime surveys differ?
Because local surveys may target a particularly poor or good neighbourhood whereas national gets a large average.
Why is it difficult to compare police findings with victim surveys?
Because both have individual weaknesses. Police data doesn’t account for family/embarrassing crime and victim surveys are subject to memory degradation and bias.
What are the strengths of police crime stats?
Police stats aren’t effected by bias.
What are the weaknesses of police stats?
Police stats aren’t always reported/recorded and don’t always account for embarrassing/family crime.
What are the strengths of victim surveys?
Victim surveys get a better understanding of the crime that isn’t reported/recorded.
