Measuring Crime And Crime Statistics

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

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.

In this paper, the main objective will be to outline the importance of statistics as a method to analyze data in the field of Criminal Justice. Also, this paper will focus on ways in which data is obtained keeping in mind the appropriate statistics to use with the collected data, and how to interpret the findings. In addition, it will review the causes of crimes, the rate at which these crimes occur, predictive outcomes and preventative measure to deal with criminals.

Measuring crime is based on three main measurements; criminal justice system data, crime experience surveys and other sources called administrative data (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). Firstly, crime first needs to be categorised into types of crime that is classified under the Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). Only the main and select few offences are reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in collecting annual reported crimes (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). Through ABS, it collects crime data in different ways such as crime reports, victimisations surveys, administrative data (higher courts, magistrates and policing agendas etc.,) and self-reports (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). Crime reports measure crimes such as homicide, robbery, rape, assault and more but is collected through police jurisdictions (Reid, 2012). The strength of crime reports provides additional information such as arrests, charges, officers assaults and characteristics of homicide victims (Reid, 2012). This helps to measure crime more effectively through gaining descriptions and knowledge of identifying crime and criminal behaviour more accurately (Reid, 2012). Administrative data is often helpful in collating data of sentences and jail sentences but fails to collect the ‘dark figure’ of crime (Hayes & Makkai, 2015). National Crime Victimisation Surveys (NCVS)

Although crime has been around for ages, we only started collecting crime data around the 1930’s. Crime statistics show a lot about a country, state, county, etc. Crime can be linked to the environment, behavior of others, and personal experiences, it all depends on how the person deals with the hand they are dealt. Crime data is collected from three sources, which are uniform crime reports (UCR), national incident based reporting system (NIBRS), and national crime victimization survey (NCVS).

The Extent to Which Sociologists Agree that Official Criminal Statistics Do Not Give an Accurate Picture of the Extent in Terms of Crime

Deviance is not usually a crime, but may be seen as one. Deviance is when someone breaks the norms and values of a society, but the act is not illegal. Crime is where a person beaks the law of land, they either do something they shouldn’t, or they don’t do something they should. Crime and deviance can be measured with the use of Official Crime Statistic (OCS). OCS is the crimes which are reported by the victim, and then further recorded by the Police. Not all crimes are recorded by the Police, which lead to a dark figure in the overall collected OCS. To avoid dark figures there are other methods to measure crime and deviance.

(Australian Institute of Criminology, 2009, p. 6) The media’s representation of a rapidly increasing violent crime rate is not supported by statistics which reflect that while the crime rate is rising, the rate is steady and it is believed that this number could even be fluctuated by the increase of victims reporting these types of crime to the police. According to the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2007, 74% of the respondents had quite a lot/a great deal of confidence in the police to solve crime. (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2007 p. 16-17) Although the statistics show the general trend of violent criminal offences is static, a significant proportion of our population still has the perception that our crime rates are increasing (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2010) due to media influence. Another way the media misrepresents Australia’s crime rate is by selectively reporting violent crimes whilst under reporting other offences, which are more prevalent in society.

The article I will be critiquing for SOCI 247, is one published by Sky news back in April 2014. As the title explains, the published title expresses crime has fallen to its lowest in 33 years within England and Wales. I will be looking in great depth to identify what Sky news mean by crime and whether they are measuring this as overall crime or whether it is certain aspects of crimes which have been affected by this decrease. I will also refer to different media articles which may have similar aspects and compare statistics to what is relevant within the public at the time of when there are popular crimes.

Criminology is the study of crime, those who commit crime and also studies the criminal justice and penal systems. Crime is defined as the act of omission established with the laws of the nation in which it occurred in. However, deviance as Downes and Rock suggested may be considered as the behaviour which is banned or controlled and would more limey attract punishment or disapproval. Not all deviances are crimes it is merely behaviours which do not comply with the norms of societies. It is important to clarify what crime is and how it occurs in order to have accurate measurements of it. There are two opposing views on crime statistics: the realist view and constructivist perspective. The former view has a number of forms, pertinently; left realism and right realism. Basically, realist view sees the official records as an indicator of the state of crime in a society. On the contrary, the latter perspective is related to how officials and others perceive the process as well as how official statistics could be understood by the procedure agencies responsible carry out their work. Crime statistics give an indication of crime occurrences and there are two methods used in constructing crime rates: recorder crime statistics and the national crime victimisation surveys (British Crime Survey). This essay will critically analyse how accurate the measures of crime are with reference to the theories on crime.

Crime has always been a shadow upon societies image, these learned behaviors can be seen in all shapes and sizes, in the cities, in the streets and even in homes. The media has controlled the image of what is perceived as crime. But what truly stalks the streets at night, is it the sadistic men who care so little about human dignity they travel from coast to coast sexually assaulting women?

Firstly, recorded crime statistics are collated through the collection of data by law enforcement agencies, such as the police in England and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in America. It focuses on the crime that is reported by the public and then what is chosen to be recorded by the police. During the mid-late 19th century, these statistics formed the basis of information about crime, however, although they still provide raw data for publications such as the Offenders Index, they are now viewed critically. This is because, according to Mayhew and Hough (1988), the recorded crime statistics are “adequate as a measure of police workload, but because of unreported and unrecorded crime – deficient as an index of crime”.

6% of cases were tried in Crown Court[2]. (So you might say that if so

Data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) from 2013/2014 have been used. The CSEW is a face-to-face survey asking households about their perception and experience of crime in the 12 months preceding the interview. The information at my disposal are part of a special unrestricted access teaching dataset produced by the UK Data Archive. Out of a sample of 35,371 households chosen in England and Wales for the actual survey, I had access to a 25% sample of 8,843 households. Representative of households were chosen through the Postcode Address File which excludes aggregative accommodation such as residential halls and prisons.

In my essay I will first talk about crime and what it means, I will