measuring delinquency

Question 1

the UCR

Answer 1

uniform crime reports- reported by state law enforcement

Question 2

index crimes

Answer 2

• more serious offenses with higher reporting
• homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor-vehicle theft, arson

Question 3

strengths of UCR

Answer 3

• provides national estimates of crime in the US each year
• standardization and reliability
• allows for comparisons across regions and times

Question 4

weaknesses of UCR

Answer 4

• does not account for the dark figure of crime (crimes that go unreported)
• crude , aggregate-level data
• reports are voluntary and often incomplete

Question 5

what crime do juveniles generally commit

Answer 5

• property crimes such as burglary or motor vehicle theft

Question 6

trends in juvenile crime over time

Answer 6

has decreased substantially since 1998

Question 7

what does official data tell us about 4 correlates of crime (age, race, gender, social class)

Answer 7

• males are much more likely to engage in criminal behavior
• juveniles engage in a disproportionate amount of property crime
• we often observe a large racial differences in arrests ( however this does not actually give an accurate picture of what races commit most crimes because there of systemic/institutionalized racial prejudice)- difficult to disentangle differences in behavior versus differences in police practices
• evidence seems to suggest racial differences in offending actually reflecting class differences in offending

Question 8

self report surveys

Answer 8

• designed to address three major weaknesses with official records
  1) the dark figure of crime
  2) differential police practices that might promote observed differences in offending
  3) more minor forms of delinquency that of not often attract police attention
• asks juveniles about their own behavior, even if they are not caught

Question 9

strengths of self report surveys

Answer 9

• captures dark figure of crime
• captures victimless crime
• can gather information on offender characteristics, causes of crime, and situational info associated with offending

Question 10

weakness of self-report

Answer 10

• can be time consuming, expensive, and not generalizable
• social desirability bias- answering questions in a manner you think is viewed favorably by others
• subjective interpretation of questions
• memory and telescoping issues
• non random “missing” cases

Question 11

victimless crime

Answer 11

underage drinking/ drug use

Question 12

What does self-report data tell us about the four correlates of crime? How does it compare to official data?

Answer 12

age- crime tends to increase from 12-17, then begins to decrease
gender- males engage in more delinquency for almost evert offense
race/ethnicity- race and ethnic disparities are much lower in self report surveys that official data

Question 13

NCVS

Answer 13

-captures crimes against persons and crimes against households
-surveys victims of crime

Question 14

strengths of victimization survey

Answer 14

• can capture dark figure of crime
• finds that about 65% of all crimes go unreported
• allows us to examine differential vulnerability to victimization

Question 15

weakness of victimization surveys

Answer 15

• does not capture victimless crimes and most status offenses
• does not capture when a victim can’t report a crime
• also issues with memory and other reporting issues ay affect data

Question 16

risk factors for victimization

Answer 16

• males more likely to be victimized
• juveniles more likely to be victimized
• black people most likely to be victimized

Question 17

correlates of victimization

Answer 17

• focusing on race does not tell a complete story
• young black males are the most likely to be victims of violent crimes, followed by white males
• victimization is intraracial

Question 18

trends in victimization over time

Answer 18

• victims of crime has decreased, victim rate for males and females getting closer
• victim rates between ages are also narrowing
• overall crime rates have decreased, thus victimization has also