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Chapter2-The Nature and Extent of Crime

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47 views16 pages

Chapter2-The Nature and Extent of Crime

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aneezahameed32
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Larry J.

Siegel

Chapter Two
The Nature and Extent of Crime
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Primary Sources of Crime Data
– Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
• Part I Crimes (The 8 most serious offenses included in the UCR: murder, rape, assault,
robbery, burglary, arson, larceny, and motor vehicle theft)
• Part II Crimes (these include drug offenses, sex crimes, and vandalism, among others)
• Cleared Crimes: Crimes are considered cleared when at least one person is arrested, charged,
and turned over to the court for prosecution or when some element beyond police control
(such as the offender having left the country) precludes the physical arrest of an offender.
• Validity of the UCR: The UCR’s accuracy has long been suspect. Many serious crimes are not
reported to police and therefore are not counted by the UCR. The reasons for not reporting
vary:
 Victims may consider the crime trivial or unimportant and therefore choose not to call
police.
 Some victims fail to report because they do not trust the police or have little confi dence
in the ability of the police to solve crime.
 People without property insurance believe it is useless to report theft.
 Victims may fear reprisals from an offender’s friends or family.
 Some victims have “dirty hands” and are involved in illegal activities themselves. They do
not want to get involved with police.
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Primary Sources of Crime Data
– National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
• Improvement over UCR
• 46 specific offenses
• 22 crime patterns
• Incident, victim, and offender information
• 20 states have implemented
• 12 states finalizing data collection
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Primary Sources of Crime Data
– National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
• Annual survey of victims
• Addresses “non-reporting” issue
• Information regarding victims, offenders, and crimes.
- Validity of the NCVS: Although its utility and importance are unquestioned, the NCVS
may also suffer from some methodological problems. As a result, its findings must be
interpreted with caution. Among the potential problems are the following:
 Overreporting due to victims’ misinterpretation of events. A lost wallet may be
reported as stolen or an open door may be viewed as a burglary attempt.
 Underreporting due to the embarrassment of reporting crime to interviewers, fear
of getting in trouble, or simply forgetting an incident.
 Inability to record the personal criminal activity of those interviewed, such as drug
use or gambling; murder is also not included, for obvious reasons.
 Sampling errors, which produce a group of respondents who do not represent the
nation as a whole.
 Inadequate question format that invalidates responses. Some groups, such as
adolescents, may be particularly susceptible to error because of question format.
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Primary Sources of Crime Data
– Self-Report Surveys
• Given in groups
• Anonymous
• Additional questions about attitudes, values , and
behaviors.
• Validity of Self-Reports: The “missing cases” phenomenon is
also a concern. Even if 90 percent of a school population voluntarily
participates in a self-report study, researchers can never be sure
whether the few who refuse to participate or are absent that day
constitute a significant portion of the school’s population of persistent
high-rate offenders.
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Evaluating Crime Data
– Strengths
• UCR
– Offender data
– This survey omits the many crimes that victims choose not to report to
police, and it is subject to the reporting caprices of individual police
departments.
• NCVS
– Unreported crimes
– Victimization data: the data consist of estimates made from relatively
limited samples of the total U.S. population, so even narrow fluctuations in
the rates of some crimes can have a major impact on findings. It also relies
on personal recollections that may be inaccurate. The NCVS does not
include data on important crime patterns, including murder and drug abuse.
• Self-report surveys
– Information on offenders: can provide information on the
personal characteristics of offenders (such as their
attitudes, values, beliefs, and psychological profiles) that is
unavailable from any other source. Yet, at their core, self-
reports rely on the honesty of criminal offenders and drug
abusers, a population not generally known for accuracy
and integrity.
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Evaluating Crime Data
– Weaknesses
• UCR
– Does not include unreported crimes
• NCVS
– Limited samples
– Personal recollections
– Does not include homicide (the killing of one
person by another, drug abuse crimes)
• Self-report surveys
– Rely on honesty of offenders
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Crime Patterns
– The Ecology of Crime
• Day, Season, and Climate
• Temperature
• Regional Differences
– Use of Firearms
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Crime Patterns
– Social Class, Socioeconomic Conditions and Crime
• Instrumental crimes (offenses designed to improve the
financial or social position of the criminal)
• Expressive crimes (offenses committed not for profit or
gain but to vent rage, anger or frustration)
– Age and Crime
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Crime Patterns
– Age and Crime
• Aging out of crime:
• A reduction in supervision
• An increase in social and academic demands
• Participation in a larger, more diverse, peer-oriented social world
• An increased desire for adult privileges
• A reduced ability to cope in a legitimate manner and increased incentive to solve
problems in a criminal manner
• Age and biology

– Neurotransmitters: A chemical substance, such as dopamine, that transmits


nerve impulses from one neuron to another (neurons are specialized cells that
make up the body’s nervous system).
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Crime Patterns
– Gender and Crime
• Official statistics
– Male to
female
arrests 4-1
overall
» 5-1 for
serious
violent
crime
» 8-1 for
murder
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Crime Patterns
– Gender and Crime
• Trait differences
• Socialization differences
• Cognitive differences
• Social/political differences
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Crime Patterns
– Race and Crime
• Racism and discrimination
• Economic and social disparity
• Family dissolution
The Nature & Extent of Crime
• Chronic Offenders/Criminal Careers

Crime data shows that most offenders commit a single


criminal act and, upon arrest, discontinue their
antisocial activity. Others commit a few less serious
crimes. A small group of criminal offenders, however,
account for a majority of all criminal offenses. These
persistent offenders are referred to as career criminals
or chronic offenders
The Nature & Extent of Crime

• Chronic Offenders/Criminal Careers


– What Causes Chronicity?
• Early onset : The view that repeat offenders begin
their criminal careers at a very young age.
– Implications of the Chronic Offender Concept
• “three-strikes”: Laws that require offenders to
serve life in prison after they are convicted of a third
felony.

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