Another example of how statistics from the police and statistics from victim surveys are different is because not all victims report crime to the police for many reasons and therefore create what’s called “the dark figure” (The number of crimes that go un-reported, we have no idea how big or small this number is). One last example of how they differ is that the victims are left to classify the crimes that they have been fallen victim to, which means that the classification may be wrong changing the statistics, whereas the recorded crimes get classified by the police. The advantages for using victim surveys to studying patterns of crime are: able to triangulate the accuracy of official statistics; may be more valid, as official procedures don’t have to be followed and victims have their own say; victims more likely to respond due to no fear of reprisal; can estimate the overall levels of crime, as unreported crimes are included; they have a high rate of comparability. These reasons allow us to see all of the advantages for helping to decide how useful victim surveys are in understanding patterns of crime. The disadvantages for using victim surveys to studying patterns of crime are: Not all
Crime Reporting and Reporting Crime: Uniform Crime Reports vs. National Crime Victimization Survey Vanicia Carr Roosevelt University Abstract The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) are two reports in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation uses to measure crime across the United States. Through traditional methods of collecting crime data to new and improve ways of collecting data the UCR/NIBRS program has been an important part of the FBI crime reporting, however, the program falls short on crimes not reported. With the development of the National Crime Victimization Survey data is collected on unreported crime. Weakness and strengths are presented on each program, with particular emphasis on domestic violence. The strengths of the NCVS outweighed the UCR/NIBRS program in measuring domestic violence.
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.
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.
Lynne Borges CJS 258-01 Prof. Harden May 6, 2011 Chapter 13: Choosing Crime in Everyday Life Chapter 13 is titled, “Choosing Crime in Everyday Life.” Explain the significance of this title and how opportunity theorists seek to explain and deter criminal behavior. In your answer, please also include what Marcus Felson meant when he stated the “chemistry for crime.” ___________________________________________________________ “Choosing Crime in Everyday Life” is an appropriate title for this chapter because opportunity theorists are concerned with crime—the actual behavioral act of breaking the law—rather than criminality, which are qualities developed overtime. Their focus is not to find out what has occurred in an individual’s past [i.e. criminality] that caused them to commit a crime, but rather they seek to find what is occurring in an individual’s present situation that leads them to criminal behavior. Opportunity theorists reject the notion that criminals are pushed and pulled into criminal behavior.
I feel some crimes that have taken place in this country could have been stopped or lessened to a degree with a concealed firearm. The government can not ensure the 100 percent safety and wellbeing of all its citizens. For example the school shootings and workplace instances etc that happened in this country. But if there were more responsible law abiding people that had a concealed weapon on them some of these tragedies could have been avoided or at least minimized the damage that those criminals caused saving the lives of others is always a good thing. Criminals are not known for following the rules so all law abiding citizens have the right to defend themselves by any means needed.
Sutherlands first three principles: 1. Criminal behaviour is learnt Sutherland found no evidence that heredity or human nature being involved in causes of criminal behaviour. People are not predetermined to be criminals because their parents were criminals (Joubert et al., 2009). They have to learn to commit crimes themselves. Just like anything in life you have to be taught how to do it, crime is the same you do not simply become a criminal.
The disadvantage of the National Crime Victimization Survey is that it is only based on reported crimes and to take into account personal interpretations of victimizations without validation. (Groves, R.M and Cork, D.L. 2008) NCVS does not include the crime murder (since its victim can't report it) nor crimes for which there is no reporting victim, like most drug-related crimes. Also not included are all white collar crimes, like the savings and loan frauds, and much more. (Measure of
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.
Government agencies use these reports to document crime and do further research on crime in the nation. After a few years of reporting with the first program created, the UCR or Uniform Crime Reporting Program, another program had evolved from that having the FBI designated to coordinate the latest program, NIBRS or the Nation Incident Based Reporting System. With the UCR you could not differentiate between misdemeanor and felony crimes, so the NIBRS was created to gather more in depth and detailed crime data. The NIBRS collects detailed data on every single crime occurrence. Along with those programs came the NCVS or National Crime Victimization Survey, this survey is a self-reporting survey which victims report their own incidents.