Bureau Of Justice Statistics : The United States ' Primary Source For Criminal Justice

Law enforcement agencies use three different sources to collect crime statistics. They use official statistics, victimizations surveys, and self-report surveys as their main sources of collecting data. The University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Texas at Austin both have pretty similar crime statistics.

The death penalty is the punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime (law.cornell.edu, 2015). The first Congress of the United States authorized the federal death penalty on June 25, 1790 (deathpenalty.org, 2011). The death penalty can also be referred to as capital punishment, however capital punishment also includes a sentence to life in prison, as opposed to strictly executions. A convict can be sentenced to death by various methods including lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, firing squad, and hanging. After the death penalty was established, many debates have arisen arguing that these methods violate several of the United States’ Amendments. Select cases have been accused of violating the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. It is important to note that the judiciary goes through a series of processes prior to deciding a sentence for a capital crime. Many factors influencing the verdict include proportional analysis, individualized sentencing, method of execution, and classes of people not eligible of the death penalty. This paper will discuss brief descriptions of the methods used for executions, economical issues, the Supreme Court’s opinion regarding the death penalty, as well as important factors that make up the proportional analysis, individual sentencing process, method used, and determining classes of people who are not eligible for the death penalty.

From the day our government began to keep an accounting of criminal activity, there have been arguments over crime statistics. The Uniform Crime Report (UCR), Self-Report Surveys (SRS), and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are three methods in which the government collects data, and monitors criminal activity in the United States. The Uniform Crime Reports, Self-Report Surveys, and the National Crime Victimization Survey each have both positive and negative attributes that have influenced different aspects of society.

Von Drehle, David. "The Death of the Death Penalty." Time. Time, 8 June 2015. Web. 04 Nov.

The death penalty is a serious punishment in the United States with many citizens being split on the idea of whether the practice is moral or not. American sociologist and social critic Ernest Van Den Haag, defends the death penalty by looking at the topic through consequentialist and retributivist perspectives. In this essay, I am going to argue that Ernest van den Haag is accurate in his belief in the morality of the death penalty.

Besides the Uniform Crime Report, there are other ways to measure crime. The victimization survey “in which a sample of citizen is asked to answer information about experiences with crime and the criminal justice system” using a cross sectional

“Discussion of Recent Deterrence Studies.” Deathpenaltyinfo.org, Death Penalty Information Center, deathpenaltyinfo.org/discussion-recent-deterrence-studies. Accessed 18 Apr. 2017.

Many people question the need for the death penalty, the execution of those who have committed certain crimes, as a capital punishment. For instance, the author of “Against the American System of Capital Punishment”, Jack Greenburg, who is a Professor of Law at Columbia University, argues that the death penalty does not benefit society and is not necessary. Likewise, Kevin Johnson, writer of “Study Finds No Evidence Death Penalty Deters Crime”, also argues against the use of the death penalty by pointing out the flaws in the common research of deterrence. On the other hand, some may also argue for the many aids the death penalty offers. Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University, Ernest Van den Haag, with his “The Ultimate Punishment: a Defense”, and authors James M. Reams and Charles T. Putnam, with their article, “Making a Case for the Deterrence Effect of Capital Punishment”, both give arguments for the grander justice the death penalty offers. While each of these articles give very well thought out claims for the necessity of the death penalty, using arguments including racism, and deterrence, Van den Haag’s claim gives the clearest and best arguments.

Against the Death Penalty: An Annotated Bibliography While the Death Penalty has been historically used as a deterrent of crime, it is barbarity, is economically costly, and racially bias in the United States of America. With this research paper, I will explain how the death penalty should be abolish from our judicial system. Death Penalty Information Center. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org./ This is a website that gives lots of information about the death penalty from the history, current inmates and trials that could lead to death row.

Self-report survey and official crime reports both have their problems. This makes it important to compare them both with each other to reduce the amount of errors reported ( Auty and Farrington, 2015). Both systems collect

The three sources for crime data in the United States are known as the Uniform crime report, the National incident based reporting system, and the National Crime Victimization Survey. The Uniform Crime report is a nationwide data system with data from over eighteen-thousand-two hundred and ninety jurisdictions that puts date into a rate of crime per area format. The data comes from cities, counties, states, tribal universities, college and federal law agencies. The data is compiled by law enforcement. The main problem with

The use of this data is aimed to emphasize that more than half of the country has the death penalty in their prison systems. The writer, that is, The National Conference of State Legislatures, is a nonpartisanship agency who serves as a researcher for state and state-federal legislations that impact state politics, the agency was established in 1975, because of the agency focus on state political issues, they must provide reliable and trustworthy information. The most useful part was the concise information about the exact number of states, however, the website had more useful data related to the topic.

Death Penalty Information Center, displays the different statistics based on inmates facing the death penalty. Not all states have the death penalty sentence but since 1968, there have been 3,170 inmates in the United States that have faced the death penalty. There have been 724 inmates in California alone, being the most in any state that faced the death penalty. Since about 1979 to 2007 the number of inmates that were executed increased greatly from 539 to 3,215. Due to the statistical evidence of inmates that have been charged with the death penalty, this data base is very critical to my research paper. Knowing the number of inmates sentenced to death row can help me better my understand the crime rates for each state based on the criminals charged with murder because only criminals facing charges of murder can be sentenced to death row based on the eighth amendment.

Death Penalty & Capital Punishment | Amnesty International USA. (n.d.). Amnesty International USA - Protect Human Rights. Retrieved February 26, 2011, from http://www.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/page.do?id=1011005

In this report, the area of research is focused directly on capital punishment in America excluding that of religious and cultural beliefs.