CHAPTER 4

Question 1

What are the two most pressing concerns in crime statistics and data collection?

Answer 1

Reliability: Are the methods strong enough that anyone following the procedures would produce the same counts?

Validity: Do the statistics collected count what they purport to count

Question 2

Describe coverage and methodology as concerns over counting crime

Answer 2

Coverage: How can we obtain reliable and valid data on the scope and nature of crime?

Methodology: Do the methods used to count crime hold up under critical analysis

Question 3

Describe the idea of crime being a funnel

Answer 3

Police cannot record unreported crime or crime of which they are unaware

funnel diagram example : Only 1% of all break and enters were actually sentenced to custody. from reports to convicts to custody, the percentage gets smaller and smaller

Shows that the further into the CJS you go, the more obvious it becomes that you are collecting statistics on how the CJS operates rather than a measure of the actual scope and nature of crime

Question 4

Theories and facts are mutually dependent.

Theory without facts is ______
Facts without theory is _______
Statistics without theory is ______

Answer 4

Ideology

Implicit ideology

numerology

Question 5

What are the three broad types of criminal justice statistics?

Answer 5

1. Statistics about crime and criminals
2. Statistics about the CJS and its response to crime
3. Statistics about perceptions of crime and criminal justice

Question 6

What are some examples of raw data that the CJS produces?

Answer 6

Police reports and records, court decisions, administrative records of prisons and penitentiaries, decisions of parole and probation officials

Question 7

What is the difference between records and statistics?

Answer 7

Records = concerned with individual cases (ex. an offender) > can help practitioners make decisions about these individual cases

Statistics = aggregated and concerned with what’s common among many individual cases > they provide information about larger questions: planning and evaluation, policy and program development, etc.

Question 8

What are the five methodological issues that we need to consider when changing records into usable statistics?

Answer 8

1. Units of count - what is being counted (ex. suspects, offences, charges, victims which is often ignored)
2. Level of aggregation - how to combine data (the more you combine data from diff sources, the more questionable result)
3. Definitions - how to define what is being counted (ex. depending on how you define a criminal, you can inflate or deflate the statistic)
4. Data element - what info is to be collected (often data collection differs between police departments)
5. counting procedure - how to count units and elements

Question 9

What is the CCJS and when was it founded? Which of its data is good and which has improved?

Answer 9

Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics > Founded in 1981 to collect national data on crime and justice

Its data on CJS inputs (resources, expenditure) are good

Its data on criminal incidents, arrests, charges, convictions, and dispositions have improved

Question 10

What is the major problem of crime statistics and why its problematic?

Answer 10

The dark figure of crime > tons of crime that remains unreported, unrecorded, or just unknown

Question 11

What are the three dominant ways to count crime or describe crime patterns and trends?

Answer 11

1. Official (police-reported) statistics
2. Victimization surveys
3. Self-report studies

Question 12

What is UCR and what is its goal?

Answer 12

Uniform Crime Reports

Goal is to provide uniform and comparable national statistics

Question 13

What are the two versions of UCR?

Answer 13

UCR Aggregate (UCR1.0)
*since 1962
Survey: collects summary data for 100 separate criminal offences

UCR Incident-Based (UCR2.0) *since the mid 80s
Survey: collects more detailed information on each incident, victims, and accused

Question 14

What is the Seriousness Rule in UCR statistics and what are the implications of this rule?

Answer 14

Rule > only the most serious crime is scored in an incident involving several crimes

*used with UCR1.0 but not with UCR2.0 because that one allows up to 4 violations per incident, permitting the identification of lesser offences

Implications:
- deflates the total crime count
- inflates serious crimes as a percentage of the total
- not enough qualitative data about crimes are recorded to use a sophisticated scale of seriousness

Question 15

Why are gross counts of crime misleading?

Answer 15

It doesn’t differentiate between serious (indictable) and less serious (summary) offences

Question 16

List some concerns of UCR Official Statistics

Answer 16

• crime categories are too general
• it’s not always clear what is being counted (criminal code, federal or provincial statutes, or bylaws?)
• is a particular crime increasing, or is it a reflection of changing social norms and police charging policies (ex. is domestic violence increasing or is it a product of society being more against this crime?)

Question 17

Describe how UCR official statistics may actually be telling us more about police activities

Answer 17

• “official violations” statistics are often a product of police policy decisions
• crime statistics are influenced by police discretion regarding what crimes are serious enough to attend to, record, and pursue
• the ways police apply crime recording and scoring procedures reflect the policing style and policy of the particular police department

Question 18

The UCR aggregate crime rate is expressed as a number of criminal incidents for every ________ Canadians. Why is the use of a rate helpful?

Answer 18

100 000

> allows for comparisons between jurisdictions or over time

> is not influenced by differences in population size between jurisdictions, or changes in population size in one jurisdiction

Question 19

Describe what issue the Crime Severity Index addresses and how it’s calculated.

Answer 19

*available from 1998

Addresses the matter of the crime rate being driven by high volumes of less serious offences

Calculated by assigning each offence a weight derived from sentences given by the criminal courts
> the more serious the average sentence, the greater the weight
> therefore, more serious offences have a greater impact on the severity index

Question 20

What is a victimization survey and what are some things victims may be asked to describe?

Answer 20

A victimization survey asks a sample of people, via questionnaire survey, whether they have been a crime victim

May be asked to describe…
- nature and consequences of their victimization
- whether it was reported to police and if not why
- the CJS response
- the perceptions of, and attitudes toward, crime and the CJS, and their feelings of safety

Question 21

What are some limitations of victimization surveys?

Answer 21

1. Not all crimes are captured (ex. murders or victimless crimes) - or crimes that keep victims unaware of victimization + there are a limited set of crimes that are included
2. Survey data may lack reliability - depends on people’s memory, truthfulness, etc.
3. Survey data may be skewed - well-educated respondents are more likely to talk to interviewers and give full accounts of their victimization
4. Very costly
5. Some people may not know if an offence is criminal or not

Question 22

What are some lessons that have been learned from victimization surveys?

Answer 22

• many more canadians are victimized than is revealed by official statistics
• some people still do not report due to fear (esp. victims of sexual or domestic abuse)
• when incidents produced financial loss, reporting was more likely
• some crimes are more likely to come to police attention than others (ex. murder and auto theft)
• some categories of victims and offenders are more/less likely to report and more/less likely to be reported (ex. family members)

Question 23

Which age group experiences the highest amount of victimization?

Answer 23

Age 20-24

Question 24

What is the most common type of self-report study?

Answer 24

Those administered among a specific population (ex. secondary school students)
> asked about whether they have committed a crime, the nature of the crime, and when

Question 25

What are some benefits of self-report surveys?

Answer 25

> overcome some of the weaknesses of police data and victimization surveys > contribute to research and theories on the causes of crime and delinquency, esp. the relationship between social class and crime > people are willing to report crimes in self-report surveys > adds validity and reliability > useful in answering questions related to understanding the causes and correlates of crime

Question 26

What are some limitations of self-report surveys?

Answer 26

> those who are typically law abiding are more likely to report their occasional infractions compared to more serious and chronic offenders > respondents tend to report minor infractions and downplay more serious infractions > some demographic groups are more apt to underreport criminal behaviour (lower class and black males in the US are more likely to underreport their own criminal behaviour) > it is often difficult to survey serious, chronic offenders >problems with sampling (ex. the most deviant students are the least likely to be at school for the survey)

Question 27

Which source of data is the most reliable and valid?

Answer 27

Corrections data > tells us about the CJS, not about crime

Question 28

Police-reported crime rates in Canada have _______ since the year of 1991

Answer 28

declined

Question 29

In 2004 and 2006, what was the ratio of women who self-reported sexual assault on a victim survey and males who were convicted of sexual assault?

Answer 29

300:1

Question 30

What was the general trend of crime during the pandemic. Which kind of crimes differed from this trend?

Answer 30

In April of 2020 there were 18% fewer criminal incidents compared to April 2019 *Cyber related crime and domestic violence increased

Question 31

What is the trend of homicide rates from 1986-2020

Answer 31

Overall, remains pretty consistent but is slowly declining

Question 32

What is the trend of Impaired driving rates in Canada from 1986-2020

Answer 32

Gone down from almost 600 to 200

Question 33

What good can come from official crime statistics?

Answer 33

> can tell us how our CJS works: see what police prioritize and look at characteristics of those processed > they do work for some crimes (homicide and vehicle thieft) - most reported crimes > we're aware of which ones are most inaccurate > they can be validated against other statistics like victim surveys, insurance agency data, etc.

Question 34

How often are victimization surveys conducted in Canada, US, and England?

Answer 34

Canada - every 5 years as part of the General Social Survey US and England - every year

Question 35

How does the Kinsey report show a bad example of a study?

Answer 35

Kinsey report studied sexual habits of Americans but it was very badly done --> studied prison inmates and generalized it to all of america --> found that heterosexual males had 75% more sexual partners than heterosexual females --> in reality, men were just more likely to exaggerate their numbers and admit their numbers

Question 36

Describe the trend of reliability and validity of statistics as you go further into the CJS

Answer 36

The farther you go in the system, the more accurate and reliable the count will be, but it will be a decreasingly valid representation of all criminal behaviour

Question 37

How does the "Law of the hammer" relate to crim stats

Answer 37

law > when you give a small child a hammer, they discover that everything needs pounding social scientists have often been accused of letting their methods or the most readily available statistics dictate their theories

Question 38

Describe the polarization of criminologists when it comes to official crime statistics

Answer 38

- Some heading back to the conservative past views and want to use the official records as an indicator of crime and want to explain crime for the purpose of controlling it - Others see crime statistics as a part of the government’s control mechanism and as a reflection of more fundamental structural inequalities

Question 39

What did sociologist Ned Polsky argue about crime statistics

Answer 39

He said that our understanding of crime would never be significantly advanced if we rely on statistical data

Question 40

What is a big challenge for the CCJS to agree on

Answer 40

Challenge to agree on whose needs should be met (criminologists, researchers, policymakers) - they all use stats for different reasons

Question 41

Statistics do not provide _____, they tell us where ____________

Answer 41

Answers Problems may exist

Question 42

Describe Canada's incarceration rate compared to most Western European nations and the US

Answer 42

- much higher rate than most Western European nations - much lower rate than the US > US = 6x higher than Canada

Question 44

In the UCR1.0, describe the MSO (most serious offence) classification system

Answer 44

- classifies incidents according to the most serious offence which is always violence - and then sorts them according to the maximum sentence (+robbery is considered a violent offence) - Violent offences are counted by the number of victims in the incident ; nonviolent ones are counted by the number of separate incidents

Question 45

Define what constitutes "actual incidents" reported by the police

Answer 45

Crimes that are reported to the police = "reported" incident But if the report is unfounded, it is subtracted from the number of reported incidents > this will equal the number of actual incidents (total reported incidents - unfounded incidents)

Question 46

Describe Cybercrime's impact on crime statistics

Answer 46

- Creates huge new opportunities for people to commit crimes - Difficult to detect and often not reported - Far more people have been hacked or been victimized by identity theft than have been victims of burglary, robbery, or car theft **The growth of cybercrimes outweighs the drop in offline crimes

Question 47

What is predictive policing?

Answer 47

- A computer program analyzes crime data and predicts where certain types of crime are likely to occur - Officers using this data and their own knowledge to deploy to particular places

Question 48

2014 survey - Of all the incidents identified, how many were reported to the police? What are the biggest reasons for people not reporting crimes?

Answer 48

Just under 1/3 - crime was minor and not worth taking the time to report it - police wouldn't have considered the incident important enough - lack of evidence

Question 49

2014 survey: what percent of those who had been sexually assaulted did not report the incident to the police?

Answer 49

95% > fear of revenge when they knew their assaulter

Question 50

Women experience violent victimization at a rate _____ higher than men

Answer 50

20% (most will come from sexual assaults)

Question 51

What type of person is the most at risk of criminal victimization?

Answer 51

Young, single male who is not employed full-time and is living an active social life (more evenings spent outside the home = greater risk)

Question 52

What are the biggest reasons for reporting crime victimization?

Answer 52

1. victim's duty 2. to arrest and punish the offender 3. to stop the incident or receive protection

Question 53

Official data are likely to include _________ offences, and self-report data are more likely to include _______

Answer 53

more serious more minor infractions