Topic 1 and 2

Question 1

Why measure crime? (4)

Answer 1

1. To measure the ‘moral health’ of regions
2. Evaluate the effectiveness of the machinery of social control
3. Estimate the risk of becoming a victim
4. Developing and testing of criminological theories

Question 2

Why use police data? (3)

Answer 2

• Insight into trends
• Insight into additional information
• Voluminous data, with lots of detail.

Question 3

Limits of Police data (3)

Answer 3

1. Incident w/ multiple victims recorded as one incident
2. Pol. may regard the incident as not-serious
3. Informal resolution

Question 4

Why do we use Crime Victim Surveys? (4)

Answer 4

1. assess unofficial crime statistics
2. Provided access to info from the public
3. Insight into reporting behaviours
4. Provide insight into the prevalence of and rate of victimisation

Question 5

What are some alternate ways to measure crime? (5)

Answer 5

1. Self-reporting offender surveys
2. Police Calls-for-Service data
3. Arrest rates
4. Drug tests
5. Emergency room data

Question 6

What percentage of the population experiences approx. 74% of victimisation?

Answer 6

Approx. 10%

Question 7

Crime is context depended with regard to: (4)

Answer 7

Government
Public Concern
Society’s power brokers
Media

Question 8

Frameworks for defining crime (5):

Answer 8

1. Crime as a reflection of the nation state, defined in terms of ‘criminal law’.
2. Crime as a social construct
3. Crime as a social/political theory
4. Crime as a religious aspect
5. Crime as a ‘social harm’

Question 9

Fallacies of crime:

Answer 9

1. The dramatic fallacy
2. cops and courts fallacy
3. the ‘not me’ fallacy
4. the innocence of youth fallacy
5. the ingenuity fallacy