Chapter Two: Measuring Crime

1
Chapter Two Measuring Crime Criminal Behavior
2
Chapter Summary

• Chapter Two introduces the students to the
  techniques used to collect data on crime in the
  United States. The chapter covers the pros and
  cons of official statistics, victimization survey
  data, and self-reported data.
• The second half of the chapter discusses the
  financial cost of crime, and how that cost is
  estimated. In the concluding section, the chapter
  highlights some of the major theories used to
  explain crime trends in the United States through
  time.

3
Chapter Summary

• After reading this chapter, students should be
  able to
• Understand how crimes are categorized and
  measured.
• Understand the concept of a crime rate.
• Be able to describe the strengths and weaknesses
  of official crime statistics as measured by the
  Uniform Crime Reports (UCR).
• Be able to describe the strengths and weaknesses
  of victimization crime statistics as measured by
  the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)..

4
Chapter Summary

• Be able to describe the strengths and weaknesses
  of self-report data.
• Understand the expected role of the National
  Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
• Be able to describe the major areas of agreement
  among the various measures of crime.
• Understand the difficulty of interpreting crime
  trends.

5
Categorizing and Measuring Crime and Criminal
Behavior

• When attempting to understand, predict, and
  control any social problem, including the crime
  problem, the first step is to determine its
  extent.
• Three categories of major crime data sources in
  the United States
• Official statistics
• Victimization survey data
• Self-reported data

6
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• The primary source of official crime statistics
  in the United States is the annual Uniform Crime
  Reports (UCR) compiled by the Federal Bureau of
  Investigation (FBI).
• The UCR reports crimes known to the nations
  police and sheriffs departments and the number
  of arrests made by these agencies federal crimes
  are not included
• Participation in the UCR reporting program is
  voluntary, and thus all agencies do not
  participate.

7
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• The UCR separates crimes into two categories
  Part I offenses (or Index crimes) and Part II
  offenses.
• Murder The willful (non-negligent) killing of
  one human being by another.
• Forcible rape The carnal knowledge of a female
  forcibly and against her will.

8
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• Robbery The taking or attempted taking of
  anything of value from the care, custody, or
  control of a person or persons by force or threat
  of force or violence and/or putting the victim in
  fear.
• Aggravated assault An unlawful attack by one
  person upon another for the purpose of inflicting
  severe or aggravated bodily injury.

9
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• Burglary The unlawful entry of a structure to
  commit a felony or theft.
• Larceny-Theft The unlawful taking, leading, or
  riding away from the possession or constructive
  possession of another.
• Motor vehicle theft The theft or attempted theft
  of a motor vehicle.

10
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• Arson Any willful or malicious burning or
  attempting to burn, with or without intent to
  defraud, a dwelling house, public building, motor
  vehicle or aircraft, personal property of
  another, etc.

11
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• Determining Crime Rates
• The rate of a given crime is the actual number of
  reported crimes standardized by some unit of the
  population
• To obtain a crime rate we divide the number of
  reported crimes in a state by its population, and
  multiply the quotient by 100,000.

12
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• The FBIs famous crime clock provides estimates
  of the relative frequency with which each Part I
  Index crime (arson is omitted) is committed.
• Part II offenses are treated as less serious
  offenses and are recorded based on arrests made
  rather than causes reported to the police.
• Part II may not be true criminal offenses, or
  if they are, may not be particularly serious.

13
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• Cleared Offenses-If a person is arrested and
  charged for a Part I offense, the UCR records the
  crime as cleared by arrest..
• A crime is also recorded as cleared by
  exceptional means, or the police have identified
  a suspect and have enough evidence to support
  arrest, but he or she could not be taken into
  custody immediately, or at all.

14
Figure 2.1 The FBI's Crime Clock for 2004

• Every 23.1 seconds One Violent Crime
• Every 32.6 minutes One Murder
• Every 5.6 minutes One Forcible Rape
• Every 1.3 minutes One Robbery
• Every 36.9 seconds One Aggravated Assault
• Every 3.1 seconds One Property Crime
• Every 14.7 seconds One Burglary
• Every 4.5 seconds One Larceny-theft
• Every 25.5 seconds One Motor Vehicle Theft

Source Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2005).
Crime in the United States, 2004. Washington, DC
Government Printing Office. Note The crime
clock should be viewed with care. The most
aggregate representation of UCR data, it conveys
the annual reported crime experience by showing a
relative frequency of occurrence of Part I
offenses. It should not be taken to imply a
regularity in the commission of crime. The crime
clock represents the annual ratio of crime to
fixed time intervals.
15
Problems with the UCR

• The UCR data significantly under-represents the
  actual number of criminal events in the United
  States each year.
• Drug offenses and federal crimes are not
  included.
• The voluntary nature of the UCR program means
  that the crimes committed in the jurisdictions of
  non-participating law enforcement agencies are
  not included in the data.
• Crime data may be falsified by police departments
  for political reasons.

16
The Uniform Crime Reports Counting Crime
Officially

• The UCR under-reports crimes that are know to the
  police because of the FBIs hierarchy rule, which
  requires police to report only the highest
  offense committed in a multiple-single incident
  to the FBI and to ignore others.
• The most frequent criticism has been that these
  data are too easily affected by discretionary
  police policies to be considered reliable.

17
Table 2.1 Estimated Number of Arrests for Part
I and Part II Crimes by Sex and Age in 2000 and
2004 Males Females
18
Figure 2.2 Percentage of Crimes Cleared by
Arrest in 2004
Source Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2005).
Crime in the United States, 2004. Washington, DC
Government Printing Office.
19
(No Transcript)
20
Figure 2.4 Highlights From the 2004 NCVS
Survey Data
Source Catalano, S. (2005). Criminal
victimization, 2004. Washington, DC Bureau of
Justice Statistics.
21
NIBRS The New and Improved UCR

• The National Incident-Based Reporting System
  (NIBRS) began in 1982, and is designed for the
  collection of more detailed and more
  comprehensive crime statistics
• NIBRS collects data on 46 Group A offenses and
  11 Group B offenses
• There is no hierarchy rule under the NIBRS system

22
NIBRS The New and Improved UCR

• The NIBRS provides information about the
  circumstances of the offense and about victim and
  offender characteristics.
• Although reliable, the NIBRS still generates
  concern over the dark figure of crime, which
  refers to all of the crimes committed that never
  come to official attention.

23
Problems with the NCVS

• Crimes such as drug dealing and all victimless
  crimes are not revealed, as well as the serious
  crime of murder.
• Crimes committed against commercial
  establishments are not included.
• Victimization data do not have to meet any
  stringent legal or evidentiary standards in order
  to be reported as an offense.

24
Problems with the NCVS

• Memory lapses, answering the way the respondent
  believes the interviewer wants to hear,
  forgetting an incident, embellishing an incident
  may occur.
• Over-reporting may occur.

25
Areas of Agreement between the UCR and NCVS

• Both the UCR and NCVS agree on the demographics
  of crime.
• Males, the young, the poor, and African Americans
  are more likely to be perpetrators and victims of
  crime than are females, older persons, wealthier
  persons, and persons of other racial or ethnic
  categories.
• Both agree on recent crime trends.

26
Self-Reported Crime Surveys

• Self-reported surveys of criminal offending are a
  way criminologists are able to collect data for
  themselves without having to rely on governmental
  sources.
• These surveys involve asking people to disclose
  their delinquent and criminal involvement on
  anonymous questionnaires or face-to-face
  interviews.

27
Self-Reported Crime Surveys

• The greatest strength of self-report research is
  that researchers can correlate a variety of
  characteristics of respondents with their
  admitted offenses that go beyond the demographics
  of age, race, and gender.
• Self-report crime measures provide largely
  accurate information about some forms of
  anti-social offending, and reveal that almost
  everyone has committed some sot of illegal act
  sometime in their life.

28
Problems with Self-Reported Crime Surveys

• The great majority of self-reported studies
  survey convenience samples of high school and
  college students.
• Self-report studies typically uncover only fairly
  trivial antisocial acts such as fighting,
  stealing items worth less than 5, smoking, and
  truancy.

29
Problems with Self-Reported Crime Surveys

• Even though most people are forthright in
  revealing their peccadilloes, most people do not
  have a serious criminal history, and those who do
  have a distinct tendency to under-report their
  crimes.
• Reporting honesty varies across race/ethnicity
  and gender

30
The Dark Figure of Crime Revisited

• For official statistics, the dark figures are
  highly concentrated at the non-serious end of the
  crime seriousness spectrum.
• Dark figures for victimization data are primarily
  concentrated in the non-serious end of the
  spectrum, although to a lesser degree than in the
  case of official data.
• Most of the dark figures in the case of
  self-reports are concentrated in the upper end of
  the seriousness continuum.

31
(No Transcript)
32
What Can We Conclude about the Three Main
Measures of Crime in America?

• UCR data is probably the best single source of
  data for studying serious crimes, especially
  murder rates and circumstances.
• For studying less serious types of crimes, either
  victimization or self-report survey data are the
  best
• If the interest is in drug offenses, self-reports
  are the preferable data source.

33
The Financial Cost of Crime

• Most estimates of the annual financial cost of
  crime focus on the costs of running the criminal
  justice system, which includes the salaries and
  benefits of the personnel, and the maintenance
  costs buildings and equipment. These costs are
  known as the direct costs of crime.

34
The Financial Cost of Crime

• The indirect costs of crime include manner of
  surveillance and security devices, protective
  devices, and insurance costs, medical services,
  and the productivity and taxes lost of
  incarcerated individuals.

35
Interpreting Crime Trends

• There is no single cause of crime or criminality,
  there is no single cause that explains crime
  trends
• Possible reasons for crime rate fluctuations
  since the 1960s
• Poverty Changes in the poverty rate can be
  accompanied by wither an increase or decrease in
  the crime rate, depending on what years we begin
  and end with and what other process are operating
  at the same time.

36
Interpreting Crime Trends

• Affluence The affluent society
• offers many targets for criminals to
• aim at, as well as more goods available
• to steal.

37
Interpreting Crime Trends

• Moral Breakdown Societal Well-Being
• Many think that a breakdown in the
• general moral order that occurred in the
• tumultuous 1960s may be the
• explanation for the rise in crime
• through the early 1990s.

38
Interpreting Crime Trends

• The Family Problems of the family, such as
  divorce, can be expected to impact other areas of
  society.

39
Interpreting Crime Trends

• Deindustrialization The workplace transition has
  impacted minorities and whites of low
  socioeconomic backgrounds most severely resulting
  in a lot of frustration and the hardening of
  poverty.

40
Interpreting Crime Trends

• The Prison Boom Advocates of get tough
  policies credit the increased numbers of
  offenders being imprisoned for the decrease in
  crime.
• The Baby-Boomer Bubble When the first cohort
  of baby-boomers became teenagers in the early
  1960s, there would be a rather dramatic increase
  in crime.

41
Interpreting Crime Trends

• Drug Market Stability Just as prohibition of the
  manufacture and sale of alcohol in the 1920s and
  1930s spawned large increases in violent crime as
  violent gangs vied for control of the alcohol
  market, the illicit drug market spawned huge
  increases in the violent crime in the 1980s.

42
Figure 2.6 Incarceration Rates for Selected
Countries in Mid-2004
Source Mauer, M. (2005). Comparative
international rates of incarceration An
examination of causes and trends. Washington, DC
The Sentencing Project. Reproduced with
permission.