Crime Statistics “Crime statistics is an attempt to provide statistical measures of the crime in societies.” Unfortunately, because some crime is secretive, some unknown because they are never reported, therefore the results become very inaccurate. There are several ways on how these statistics are received, such as, hospital of insurance records, household surveys, and reports for several law enforcement agencies. Many countries gather their statistical crime information and it becomes of interest to international organizations such as, Interpol and the United Nations. Places like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Home Office in England & Whales, are the agencies that publish these crime statistics and compile the statistics based on the different crimes that have been reported. Statistics are usually collected on based on three categories: Offenses, the breach of law; Offenders, those who commit the offenses; and the victims, the ones who are offended against.
There are many theories relating to deviance and crime with each theory illustrating a different aspect of the procedure by which people break rules and are classed as deviants or criminals. (New texts pg 138) which highlights the problems in defining crime or deviance. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CRIME AND DEVIANCE Many believe crime and deviance has developed on separate tracks over the years as criminologist serve only for legality, crime and crime-related phenomena. The study of deviance however serves for a wider range of behaviours that are not necessarily illegal for example suicide, alcoholism, homosexuality, mentally disordered behaviours. (Bader et al) The main difference between crime and deviance is deviant behaviour is when a social norm has been broken whereas a crime is where a formal and social norm is broken.
Other methods like the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), improve on several characteristics of the UCR but have their own errors and are subject to limited use (Maxfield, 1999). Steven Levitt (1998) points out that the issue of the validity of reported crime statistics is a hotly contested issue. Opinions vary widely on the significance of the problems connected with UCR data. Numerous researchers think that reported crime data is tainted from measurement errors coming from the vast differences in police department reporting in different jurisdictions, technological changes in crime recording and changes in crime reporting by victims ultimately. Even when such issues are present, it doesn’t affect the utilization of reported crime statistics for determining the efficiency of guidelines intended to diminish crime.
The early version was not detailed enough to represent criminal occurrence. Crime reporting as comprehensive information can be access nationwide by the law enforcement agencies The NIBRS centralizes their data collection on 22 categories of offenses, which are then divided into 46 distinct infractions to include Part I and Part II offences instead of a vague summary (Julie, 2010). National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is based on self-report by the victim than police. The NCVS was first conducted in 1972and open the minds of the American society that there are numerous crimes been committed outside of what UCR/NIBRS indicate. NCVS does not use similar data to those of the USR/NIBRS but collect more information from individuals and household crimes.
The statistics can give us an understanding as to the levels of these crimes and as to why or where they are most likely to occur. However because not all crimes which are reported, are actually recorded, the true extent to crime can never be revealed through official statistics or otherwise. Positivists believe that official statistics are indeed very useful to the understanding of social problems. They believe that because official statistics look at such a large proportion of the population that it allows us to make comparisons over time and make comparisons between different societies. They can allow generalisations to be made and over time they can have some affect on laws within society.
Blackmon 1 Leah Blackmon Sociology 201 Deborah Robinson 15 September 2010 Crime and Social Order There are many reasons why an individual may or may not become involved in crime. In his essay, Robert K. Merton writes on the causes of crime. Merton focuses on a pint that society's cultural goals may not be easily attained by everyone. Those who do not have the means to reach these goals, such as family support and a good education, may come up with their own means to reach society's material goals. That usually means reverting to street crimes.
Using cultural norms, weapons availability, gang activity, geographic region, victim-offender relationship, as well as individual characteristics as considerations can give a much greater idea of statistics and causes. 3. What are the key issues to be considered in explaining as well as preventing the crimes of rape and child sexual abuse? * You would need to examine the fact that there are multiple varieties of this offense, in both rape and child sexual abuse, that it is not a black-and-white issue and no two offenses are going to be the same or have the same considerations. There is also very little similarities among child sex offenders, there may be little to no way to identify them primarily.
Crime will always be committed as police are not always looking over people’s shoulders to ensure people will not break the law. With the help of citizens who see crime happening and reporting it helps the justice system ensure citizen’s safety. “The justice system does not respond to most crime because so much crime is not discovered or reported to the police. Law enforcement agencies learn about crime from the reports of victims or other citizens, from discovery by a police officer in the field, from informants, or from investigative and intelligence work. Once a law enforcement agency has established that a crime has been committed, a suspect must be identified and apprehended for the case to proceed through the system.
Legal crimes are not an obvious crime and do not have an obvious victim. However, not all crimes are reported to the police, therefore crimes are classified by the degree of harm caused, how frequent they
Describing crime and deviance is varied across different cultures; history; social situations and place. It will look at the bodies that measure crime and look at the reasons why they are not accurate. There are several differences between crime and deviance, deviance is a violation of the social norms whereas crime is a violation of the laws of the land. Society has no power for deviance but the government can punish with crime. Much behaviour that was seen as deviant in the past has today become a criminal offence, as with crime behaviour seen as criminal is now seen as deviant.