Interval Level Data

Crime measurement and statistics for police departments are very important when it comes to money allotment, staffing needs or termination and it is also used to determine the effectiveness of new laws and programs. There are three tools used to measure major crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports, National Crime Victimization Survey and the National Incident Based Reporting System- which is currently being tested to replace the Uniform Crime Reports. Although there different tools used to measure crime, crime rates can be deceiving. Each different tool reports a different type of rate, crime rates, arrest

To begin with, statistics can be defined as the practice or science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large quantities, especially for the purpose of inferring proportions in a whole from those in a representative sample. Criminal justice on the other hand is defined as the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. The use of statistics has been around for decades in a number of scholarly disciplines. More specifically, it has been an important vehicle in obtaining better knowledge in the field of criminal justice. This paper will discuss the role of statistics in criminal justice.

The Uniform Crime Report and the National Crime Victimization survey are similar in creating data for crime and aim to be accurate as possible and they both are valuable in helping with crime statics. The UCR reports crime and the NCVS aim to look for unreported crimes. However, the purpose of the UCR (Uniform Crime Report) reports to law enforcement agencies accordingly to our textbook (Understanding violence and Victimization, Meadows, Robert-6th ed. P. 3). It helps to enable law enforcement to exchange information about different crimes on a nationwide system, but there is certain information that would not be available because crimes are only reported to

Bradley R. E. Wright, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt and Ray Paternoster Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 2004 41: 180 DOI: 10.1177/0022427803260263 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/41/2/180

While studying Criminology I have gained insight on different techniques used to determine which individuals commit the most crimes. There are three basic methods to measure criminal behavior. These include: Uniform Reporting of Crime, Self- Report and National Crime Victimization Survey. Uniform Reporting of Crime (URC) is a nationwide, cooperative statistical effort of more than 18,000 voluntarily individuals reporting data on crimes (“Federal Bureau of Investigation”1). Self-report surveys measure crime by distributing questionnaires to a sample of people, asking if they have committed any crimes during a period of time. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a national source that samples about 90,000 households in order to uncover unreported crime and describes the relationship between the victims and the offender (“Bureau of Justice Statistics” 1).

To increase the validity, the alternative measure of Victim surveys (VS), are used to eliminate the dark figures of OCS. This is used to provide a fuller picture of crimes. VS data is collected quantitatively so it is easily recorded, and be easily put into a graph to find trends and patterns. As not all crimes are reported or recorded, it is difficult to get an accurate figure. Some crimes may not be reported as the victim feels the police may not be able to do anything about the crime committed, or possible fear of reprisals. As VS give the opportunity to ask people if they have been the victim of crime within the past 12 months. This gives a gateway for unreported crimes to be recorded and included within the OCS. Problems may arise with the use of

Authors Note: All questions and concerns on this paper can be addressed to Sheila Capers, Saint Leo University, Criminal Justice, Savannah, GA. Email: Sheila.capers@email.saintleo.edu.

Assisting in a research study, “BSCC Study of Intermediate Criminal Justice Outcomes,” I was responsible for identifying, collecting, and analyzing data to be used in describing a set 6 to 12 recommended performance metrics that were commonly available and could be used to provide information about the results of a county’s community corrections system. I identified data sources by searching criminal justice web sites and web pages containing crime data and demographic data comparable to data found in County reports and on their web sites. To determine defensible and usable data, I checked the data sources and data sets by crosschecking variables with other data sets to identify consistent collection methods and sources, variable definitions

Volume is a fundamental marker of the recurrence of known criminal movement. In dissecting offense information, the client ought to know that a UCR volume pointer does not speak to the genuine number of wrongdoings conferred; rather, it speaks to the quantity of reported offenses (Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics, 2016). Rates are markers of reported wrongdoing action institutionalized by populace. They are more refined pointers for similar purposes than are volume figures. The three types of crime rates reported are offense rates, arrest rates, and clearance rates. An offense rate, or wrongdoing rate, characterized as the quantity of offenses per 100,000 populaces, is inferred by first isolating a locale 's populace by 100,000 and after that partitioning the quantity of offenses by the subsequent figure. Wrongdoing or capture rates/ arrest rates are gotten from law implementation organizations for which 12 months of complete offense or capture information have been submitted (Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics, 2016). Law implementation worker rates are communicated as the quantity of representatives per 1,000 occupants. Clearance rates varies adroitly from a wrongdoing or capture rate in that both the numerator and denominator constitute the same unit of number (Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics, 2016). A clearance rate is, subsequently, proportionate

I. An analysis of Department of Corrections data by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal

Mobley, Alan & Owen, Barbara. 2012. Western Criminology Review. Aug. 2012. Volume 13. Issue 2. p 46-57.

This article was produced by scholars. Reflection on article: I believe this article has portrayed something that I would like to incorporate in my final research paper. . Ariel, Barak; Farrar, William A.; Sutherland, Alex. In: Journal of Quantitative Criminology.

Gendreau, Paul, Tracy Little, and Claire Goggin. 2006. “A Meta-Analysis of the Predictors of Adult Offender Recidivism: What Works!” Criminology 34(4): 575–608.

Unfortunately, the author 's credentials in the field of criminal justice remain unknown. However, the researcher has

“Self-report measures of criminal victimization have become widely used social indicators and research tools in criminology and criminal justice.” Self-report data is collected also by tradeoffs between data quality and the costs of administering the survey within the environment of the U.S. Census Bureau. The data is collected in schools, courts, detention centers, correctional facility