Week #2: Lecture

Question 1

What is the purpose of this course?

Answer 1

• To train you to think critically about crime and its causes, and
• Help you in evaluating the logic and effectiveness of criminal justice responses.

Question 2

Is crime going up or down?

Answer 2

• Must ask what kind of crime?
• Violence, Property, Sex Crime, or other?
• When you say is crime going down, basically what you are talking about is property crime because it makes up 95.4% of all crime

Question 3

Explain the dispersion of crime in Denmark?

Answer 3

• Penal code offenses, 2014 Denmark
  a) Sex crime = .6%
• 60% of sex crimes = offences against public decency (exposure, groping)
  b) Violent Crime = 4%
• 46% of violent crime is common assault
  c) Property Crime = 95.4%
• least serious crimes are the most prevalent
• 48% of all property crime is theft
• 16% of theft is bicycle theft, 33% is other theft

Question 4

What are the 3 primary measures of crime volume?

Answer 4

1. Official Data (e.g., crimes reported to police)
2. Victimization Surveys
3. Emergency Rooms Admittances

Question 5

Explain Official Crime Data?

Answer 5

Crimes reported or otherwise known to police
Arrests
Prosecutions
Convictions
Prison admittances

Question 6

What is Index Crime?

Answer 6

USA categorizes crime as Part I and Part II Index Crime.
Results published in UCR
When people are talking about statistics about crime rising and falling, they mean this Part I category

Question 7

What is Robbery?

Answer 7

Taking Something by use of threat or forc

Question 8

What is Aggravated Assault?

Answer 8

Involves serious violence

Question 9

What is burglary?

Answer 9

going into someone’s house with the purpose of stealing

Question 10

What crimes are people recording, in Crime Rates, in US, UK AND DENMARK?

Answer 10

US - Part I index offenses
England - 100 notifiable offences (offences much broader and more serious
Denmark - Penal code offences, roughly 60 offences

Question 11

How does population effect crime rates?

Answer 11

In 2012 there were: 515 murders in NYC and 88 in Washington

NYC has much larger population, and is safer

Question 12

What are 3 types of crime rates?

Answer 12

Incidence (Crime) Rate in a jurisdiction (I):
- Crimes/(population/100,000)
Prevalence of offending in a population (P):
- Offenders/population, i.e., % of the population
Lambda (λ):
- Average frequency of offending per active offender
- Crimes/active offenders
- How frequently they are doing it

Question 13

What are Problems with Official Crime Data?

Answer 13

• Laws differ across jurisdiction and change over time, e.g., drugs, prostitution
• Many crimes go unreported to police
  Rates of non-reporting differ by crime type, nation/jurisdiction and victim demographic
• Not all crimes are properly recorded by police

Question 14

What is the crime funnel in the US?

Answer 14

All offenses (100%)
Reported to police (50%)
Recorded by police (48%)
Arrest made (14%)
Prosecuted (3%)
Resulting in conviction (2%)
Imprisonment (1%)

Question 15

What is the ”Dark figure of crime”?

Answer 15

crimes unreported to the police

Question 16

What are reasons for not reporting?

Answer 16

Victim considers it too trivial
Victim feels the police will not be able to do anything about it
Victim feels the police will not be willing to do anything about it
- The police are uninterested
- The police won’t believe them
- The police are too busy
The matter is embarrassing or compromising
Victim is scared to report it
Victim would prefer to deal with the matter in another way

Question 17

Reasons for non-recording by the police?

Answer 17

• Insufficient evidence to confirm that a crime has taken place
• Unbelievable account given by the ”victim”
• Victim refuses to press charges
• Matter is already satisfactorily resolved
• Avoid work / paper work (for example, at end of shift)

Question 18

What is the clearance rate?

Answer 18

• clearance = charges laid, cleared by arrest
• 62% - murder US
• Varies by type of crime, burglary in US is 14%, In Denmark is 7%

Question 19

Explain Victimization Surveys

Answer 19

• Random (representative) surveys of the population
• Ask about victimization experiences during – past year – past 5 years – ever
• Uses non-technical descriptions: not “have you experienced burglary”, but “has someone broken into your house and tried to steal?”
• Probes experiences (context, weapon, injury, etc.)
• Gets at unreported/unrecorded crime (“dark figure”), and is therefore generally considered a more valid measure of volume
• Also asks about demographics, fear of crime, trust in police, reporting to police, etc.

Question 20

Problems with Victim Surveys

Answer 20

Only as good as the (random, representative) sample

• Selective non-response
• Excludes persons under age 16
• Household sample, so excludes people not living in a household (e.g., homeless, drifters, incarcerated/institutionalized persons)
• Excludes crimes against businesses (shoplifting to white collar crime) and ”victimless” crimes (e.g., drugs)
• Insufficient sample size to access low base rate crimes

Under-estimation

• Forgetting
• Shame, fear

Over-estimation

• ”Telescoping”
• Nice to talk

Question 21

What are the major victimization surveys?

Answer 21

National

• US National Crime Victims Survey (NCVS)
• British Crime Survey (BCS)
• Dutch Crime Victim Survey
• Plus many others, including all Nordic countries

International

• International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS)
• European Crime Survey (ECS)

Question 22

Explain Measures of Crime Volume: 3. Emergency Room (ER) Admittances

Answer 22

• Collected by ER intake staff
• Captures serious violent victimizations regardless of whether reported to police
• Provides basic demographic data on the victim
• Provides data on the nature and seriousness of injuries

Question 23

Problems with Emergency Room Data

Answer 23

• Only measures violence (no property crime)
• Only the most serious forms of violence (requiring a trip to the ER)
• Patients can lie about cause of violence(e.g., domestic violence), but ER staff make determination