The Nature of Crime and Victimization

1
Chapter 2
The Nature of Crime and Victimization
2
Measuring Crime

• Primary sources for measuring crime are
• Official Data (Uniform Crime Reports)
• Victim Surveys (National Crime Victim Survey)
• Self-Report Surveys

3
Weaknesses of the Uniform Crime Reports

• They only measure crime reported to the police
• All crime is not counted the same
• Indexed crimes are measured when reported
• Non-indexed crimes are counted when an arrest is
  made
• Reporting practices

4
Revising the Uniform Crime Reporting System

• Definitions of crimes will be revised.
• Counting method will be by the number of
  incidents.
• More crimes will be included in each category.
• Other changes to make the data more accurate.

5

National Crime Victim Survey

• Data is gathered by the Bureau of Census and
  compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
• Sample includes 100,000 people in 50,000
  households.
• Respondents are over the age of 12.
• Respondents queried every six months about
  household and personal victimizations.

6
Self-Reported Crime Data

• Asks respondents to tell about their criminal
  activities.
• Measures the dark figure of crime.
• Reveals that crime is a very common activity.
• Demonstrates youth crime is spread throughout the
  social classes.
• Is probably a reliable measure of trends over a
  period of time.

7
Compatibility of Crime Statistic Sources

• Prominent crime experts have concluded that the
  data sources are more compatible than was first
  believed.
• Tallies of crimes are not in synch, but trends
  reported are often quite similar.

8
Explaining Crime Trends

• Factors that influence crime rate trends include
• Social factors
• Economic factors
• Personal factors
• Demographic factors

9
The Ecology of Crime

• Crime is not equally spread across society.
• Some factors that account for different crime
  patterns are
• Day, season and climate
• Population density
• Firearms and crime
• The Graduate Institute of International Studies
  in Geneva, Switzerland is the principle
  international source of public information on all
  aspects of small arms.

10
The Ecology of Victimization

• Most victimization occurs in large urban areas.
• Most incidents occur in the evening hours.
• The most likely sites are open public areas.
• An overwhelming number involve only one victim.
• Most serious crimes take place after 6 p.m.

11
Social Class and Crime

• A still-unresolved issue in criminology is the
  relationship between social class and crime.
• Traditional crime has been thought of as a
  lower-class phenomenon (instrumental and
  expressive crime).
• Methodologies used to measure the phenomenon vary
  widely.

12
Gender and Crime

• Three data-gathering statistics tools support the
  theory that male crime rates are much higher than
  those of females.
• Explanations include
• Masculinity hypothesis
• Chivalry hypothesis
• Socialization
• Development
• Liberal feminist theory

13
Race and Crime

• Official crime data indicate that minority
  groups members are involved in a
  disproportionate share of criminal activity.
• Critics of these data argue police bias in the
  arrest process creates the differences.
• Some critics believe institutional racism creates
  economic deprivation which leads to more crime.
• Other researchers focus on family dissolution as
  an explanatory factor.

14
Careers and Crime

• Most offenders commit a single criminal act and
  upon arrest discontinue their antisocial
  activity.
• Some commit a few less serious crimes.
• Career criminals or chronic offenders account for
  a majority of all criminal offenses.