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The Examination Of Crime And Crime

Decent Essays

The NCVS surveys individuals from households about crimes committed against them. In 2011, about 143,000 individuals that were 12 years or older were interviewed from a total of 80,000 households (Barkan 2014:43). Some strengths of this measurement would be that it includes contexts of the crimes, victim characteristics, and more accurate estimates of crime than the UCR. Weaknesses of this measurement of crime would be that it ignores white-collar crime, and it has a dark figure of crime. This includes hidden crimes not shown in the NCVS that are from the non-reported crimes, homeless victims, and homicide victims (Barkan 2014:44). A final measurement of crime is self-report studies. This is a survey in the form of questionnaires and interviews that asks respondents about what crimes they have committed. These report results are anonymous, which gives people more incentive to tell the truth, thus increasing credibility. On the other hand, major weaknesses of this report are that not everyone will give honest answers, it focuses on minor crimes, and it ignores white-collar crime (Barkan 2014:45). While all the methods listed can be valuable in measuring crime phenomena, they all have their strengths and weaknesses that make some better or worse to use when examining the prevalence of crime. There are typical patterns to the crimes committed in this novel that show how commonly they occur, who the typical victim and offender is, and the social conditions that contribute to

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