A Brief Note On Crime And Violent Crime

Throughout crime in Australia, a noticeable increase in crime occurred between the 1970’s to the 1990’s but has declined to a stable rate of crime which is similar trend in America. However, crime itself is often complex to define due to the variety of crime. Therefore, it is difficult to accurately measure crime and if crime cannot be measured efficiently and it proposes concerns of whether crime in Australia is stable or not. Although Australia’s system of collecting crime data is striving to be as accurate as possible, the media will often manipulate the data which misleads the Australian public of crime stability. Inclusively, through gaining an understanding of defining crime, accurately measuring data and comparing Australia’s crime data

Weatherburn, Matka and Land (1996) reported that there is a extensive difference between the actual levels of violent crime within society and societies observations about the nature of this crime. In Australia, within the period of 1990 to 2007, the rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide incidents decreased from 1.9 in 1990-91 to 1.3, in 2006-07 (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2012) despite the public’s perception of a crime increase. This study found there were several inconsistencies between the crime television reported and the crime that actually occurred within society. Very serious crimes such as homicides, abductions, armed robbery and sieges were over-represented in the news reports. Children and the elderly were over-represented

According to the 2015 and 2016 Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, the overall Canadian Crime rates appear to be gradually increasing, as of 2016 (Allen, 2016; Keighley, 2017). In 2015, the police-reported crime rate in Canada raised for the first time since 2003, with the volume of police-reported crime increased for 3% from 2014 to 2015 (the crime rate

Criminal cases being more publicised will cause the viewers to be distressed about the number of murders and robberies occurring in Canada. The media will catch fire over these felonies causing many people to talk and spread the news making it seem like there is an epidemic of crimes even though the police-reported crime rate in Canada has been decreasing for over 2 decades. However, since the news stations and media will be broadcasting to the public about all these scandals and modify some of the facts to make it more “entertaining”, many people will believe it and think there are many criminal acts committed in Canada than there really are. The point here is that what the media chooses to focus on often times becomes the facts regardless of what the actual facts

Violent crimes present in British Columbia seemed to be decreasing between 2012 and 2014 with a 96.04 index in 2012 leading to a 11.58% drop in 2013 however by 2015 there was an increase of 7.43% still only putting the index at 82.99 from 77.25 the previous year (Statistics Canada, 2016). Throughout Canada there has also been a decrease between the years 2012 and 2014 for violent crimes with an 85.72 index in 2012 then going down to 70.50 by 2014 (Statistics Canada, 2016). The biggest drop in those years was again in 2013 with a 9.76% drop though by 2015 it started to increase to a 74.48 index making it a 5.65% change (Statistics Canada, 2016).

Due to the conflicting approaches between NYS and Canada on handling crime, I felt Canada was a good choice for this comparison. Canada in 1975 showed an even lower crime rate than NYS (see figure 1) but also peaked around the same years that NYS did (See figure 2 and 3 for visual comparison), with Canada’s highest violent crime rate in the range of dates falling in 1993 at 1082. Canada’s last data year was 2013, with a crime rate of 766. At first glance, the drop doesn’t seem as strong as the one NYS made, however, this is a significant decrease from years before, with the drop between 2012-2013 at 75. In NYS, the drop between 2013-2014 was only 12 (See figure 1). Additionally, the violent crime rate for NYS seems to be leveling out (see figure 2), whereas the violent crime rate for Canada appears to be starting to drop significantly (see figure 3). Overall, however, violent crime rates have dropped significantly for both areas since the 1990s, the peak rate of crime for both areas in this range of dates.

It is commonly known that crime in Canada has gone down over the last few years, and that this is or has been advertised in just about every online news outlet in Canada. Overall, this is great! However, we still see and hear about many stories based around crime daily in the news, and this is not surprising. What is though, is that the crime reported in the news is typically violent crime, regardless of the fact that crime statistics typically indicate that only about 10 percent of crimes committed in Canada are actually violent. Stats Canada (2014) indicates that there are approximately 340,000 violent crime violations (e.g. homicide, sexual assault, robbery) per year. This may sound like a lot, and it is! But not when you consider that there is approximately 1,00,000 property crime violations (e.g. break and enter; theft over 5,000) and 582,000 other crime violations (e.g. administration of justice violations, impaired driving, drug violations) per year. It is argued that the media disproportionately reports violent crime because is more serious and creates a better news story, which in turn gains more views for the media. Not many people would be intrigued hearing about how many parking violations occurred that day or how many petty thefts occurred. Non-violent crime is unintentionally, and sometimes

The crime rate in Canada has been in a general decline since 1991 and recent statistics show that of those crimes reported, 48% were property related and 12.6% were violent crime. Ironically, the three most northern territories with the least population have higher per capita crime rates that any province. Statistics from the Canadian Centre of Justice, crime was, in fact, the lowest since 1972. This general trend is positive, but there remains an increase in certain crimes since 2010 including homicide (7% increase), criminal harassment (1% increase), sexual crimes against children (3% increase), child pornography (40% increase), and impaired driving (2% increase) (Canada's Crime Rate, 2012).

In this paper it is going to discuss violent crime and property crime. It will be discussing the different types of violent crimes and property crimes that exist. The differences between the two crimes and there impact on the United States. The statistics of violent crime compared to property crime in the year 2012. There are many things that may surprise you when it comes to the crime rate in 2012 compared to 2011 and before then.

It was implied that Australia was beginning to succumb to an influx of crime that was violent in nature, and that society’s fear had increased. The public’s fear of violent crime has increased due to media outlets and to social media networks that now can be found quite easily on the internet (Sanson et al, 2013). Although, new figures from the Australian Institute of Criminology demonstrate that the number of violent crimes have essentially decreased. These same figures show that incidents of murder, sexual assault and robbery, both armed and unarmed, have all declined from the previous calendar year.

The 1990s in the United States were marked by the incredible drop in crime, a decline in both property crime, and violent crime. The phenomenon was confirmed as “real” versus an artifact of reporting by data generated from the National Victimization Survey (Zimring, 2007). Reasons for the precipitous drop in crime could be because of a booming economy in the United States, and that booming economy certainly accounted for some of the drop-in crime. Incarceration rates also increased in the late 1990s and throughout the 1990s and likely contributed to the drop-in crime (Zimring, 2007).

Canada’s crime rate has never increased in the past 12 years from 2016 until now . The main culprits of this rise is Western Canada, specifically Alberta. An assessment must take place on what Ontario is doing right and what Alberta is doing wrong. The collection of these findings were collected by Statistics Canada, a Canadian government agency who obtains statistics of Canada. The collection of these statistics took place in 2015, the last time they obtained Canada’s crime rate. It is being compared to 2014. They look at two types of crime rates: the CSI (Crime Severity Index) and the traditional crime rate. The CSI “measures the volume and severity of police-reported crime”. The CSI was created to look past the restriction of the

The volume of crime news varies over time and place, and is influenced by how crime is defined. If crime is narrowly defined there is less crime news and if broadly defined there is more crime news (Hayes & Prenzler, 2014). The reporting by the media of more crime news or less crime news can shape the public’s perceptions of the volume of crime in their communities. The media also tends to focus on violent crimes rather than property or white collar crimes and portrays these types of crimes as being more typical and more of a threat to the community, when crime, in general, has either decreased or stabilised (Indermaur & Roberts, 2005). The volume of crime and the types of crime selected and reported by the media are defined by the media and are not representative of the facts and this plays a role in shaping the public’s distorted perception of

The effects of crime on victim can have a mixed feeling about making a victim impact statement. They may want to tell the judge or parole hearing officer how the crime affected their life and yet they may be anxious because you don't know how to prepare an impact statement or you don't want to bring back bad memories by describing how the crime has hurt you. The victim impact statements may include descriptions of:

The importance given to certain crimes in the daily newspapers and other media sources shows us proof to the fact that crime is a topic that has the public’s interest and is a focus of their worries (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001). It goes on to discuss the fact that crime as reported on by the media increases the public’s levels of fears and that there is little or no correlation to actual levels of violent crime in our society today.