COUNTING CRIMES

AND CRIMINALS
 The Need for Numbers

• There is a lack of knowledge about the types of crimes

and criminals is one issue that hinders the criminal
justice system in the United States
• There has also been difficulty in determining the
actual numbers of crime
• Dark Figure of crime – The unknown amount of crime that occurs
• The dark figure represents the portion of crime about which we
are ignorant
 The Need for Numbers

• Four reasons for counting crime

• _________________
• _________________
• _________________
• _________________

• Counting crime is important in acquiring an accurate picture

of the number and distribution of criminal offenses
• This information is useful for the allocation of resources
• Police patrols, prosecutors and judges needed.
 The Need For Numbers:
Risk Assessment

• Accurate data about crime allows us to make estimates

about the risks of people becoming offenders and of
people becoming victims of crime

• Not knowing how much crime occurs makes it impossible

to predict how much crime is likely to occur
• Impacts ability to reduce criminality
• Helps individuals to avoid becoming crime victims
 The Need for Numbers:
• Program evaluation is an effort that often relies on estimates
of a program effect on crime.
• Evaluations attempt to compare the program’s effects on the
criminality of offenders
• These evaluations usually include a test of impact on crime
• Explanation is the most troublesome of all the reasons why
we need accurate numbers about crime and criminals
• Those who commit the “_____ _________ ___ _____” create
a problem in the explanation of crime
 The Impact of Ignorance
• One result of our ignorance about the nature and extent of
crime is an inability to assess or predict the effects of policy
changes on levels of crime
• Drug Offenses:
• A lack of progress in terms of reducing the number of drug
offenses and offenders is that this crime has been part of the “dark
figure.”
• Presuming data is accurate, 2016 drug arrests affected less than
___% of the population reporting use of illegal drugs that year
 The Impact of Ignorance (2)
• One issue is actively seeking out crimes as
opposed to having little choice but to react to
crime/complaints
• Some offenses are underenforced
• Thousands of agencies collect data
• These agencies often use their own definitions of
crimes and criminals and reporting is voluntary.
 Official Statistics
• Official Statistics – Statistics provided by criminal justice agencies as official
records of their activities
• Uniform Crime Report (UCR) – Published annually by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI)
• Obtained from reports received by the nation’s police departments
• Data describes the volume of business handled by the law enforcement agencies of the
country
• Crimes known to the police: If the crime is reported or a police officer witnesses the crime
• ______________- occurs if the officer decides that your criminal complaint is
“unfounded”; that is, the officer believes that the crime you reported is not supported by
available evidence, and has reason to believe that no crime occurred
• ______________ – occurs when a police officer decides that an offense was less serious
than reported.
 The Uniform Crime Reports
• UCR covers over 29 different crimes
• Crime Index – the total number of eight specific types of offenses that are known to
the police in any given year, as reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigations
• 8 Crime Index Offenses:
• Homicide
• Forcible Rape
• Robbery
• Aggravated assault
• Burglary
• Larceny-theft
• Auto Theft
• Arson
 Uniform Crime Reports:

• Data Limitations:
• Participating police agencies voluntarily report data to the FBI
• Requiring an arrest to be made for non-index crimes is a major limitation to data
• Data masks actual number of offenses and offenders through a reporting procedure often
referred to as the ___________ _____
• Ex: If a number of crimes are committed during a single criminal episode , only the most serious
offense is counted.
• More aggressive department have an official higher level of crime –vs- a less aggressive department
has an official lower rate of crime (however the reality is they both have the same level of crime)
• Crime Rate – A standardized measure of the amount of crime per unit of population. Typically, the
number of crimes known to the police per 100,000 members of the population
• The crime index treats crimes such as homicide and theft as equal
• As long as user is aware of the limitations of the UCR and is cautious in its
interpretation, it is an important source of information
 Improving the UCR:
National Incident-Based Reporting System
• Tracks 46 crimes
• Contains information about arrests in each incident
• Contains information on each incident reported to police, including:
• Characteristics of victims and offenders
• Relationship between victims and offenders
• Crimes committed
• Injuries at the incident scene
• Weapons used
• Arrests made
• Provides information about simple assault
• Requires officers to report multiple offenses, victims, and offenders
 Unofficial Statistics

• Official statistics tell only part of the story of crime in the United States
• Unofficial Statistics – Those measures of the rate and nature of crime
that do not rely on the reporting of official agencies and agents of
criminal justice
• Two basic sources of crime data:
• _______ Surveys
• National Crime Victimization Surveys:
• Self-Reports
• Victimization Data – Estimates of the rate and distribution of crime derived
from survey respondents’ reports of experience of being the victims of crime
 National Crime VictimizationSurvey
• NCVS has the following strengths:
• It measures both reported and unreported crimes
• It is not affected by changes in the extent to which people report crime to
police or improvements in police record-keeping technology
• Collects information not available at time of initial report
• Collects detailed information about victims and characteristics of the
victimization: victims, relationship to offender, was crime a part of a series of
crimes over a 6 month period.
 Victim Surveys
• Victim surveys also have their limitations
• The victim survey’s major problems may revolve around the phenomena known as
“telescoping” and “forgetting.”
• Telescoping – The respondent errs by including an offense that may have occurred, say 7
months earlier
• Forgetting – Occurs when the respondent forgets about a crime that did not occur in the
period under study
• Many crimes may have gone unnoticed by the respondent
 Self-Reports
• Self-report studies attempt to measure the amount of crime
committed and describe the characteristics of criminal
offenders by asking people if they have committed offenses
• Limitations:
• Share the problem of telescoping and forgetting
• Hard to determine whether the respondents are telling the truth
• Study found that arrestees provided relatively truthful
responses to questions of their past drug use
• Truthfulness varied among the types of people responding
 Disparities in The Justice System
• Certain groups are processed more frequently by the justice system
• Age:
• Data suggests that crime tends to be a young person’s game
• Certain types of crime are much more common among adults than youth.
• Juveniles are more likely to use marijuana
• Adults were more likely to use harder drugs (cocaine and heroin)
• Race:
• Four causes often used to explain racial disparity on the justice system:
• Higher crime rates
• Inequitable access to resources
• Legislative decisions
• Overt racial bias
• A large factor also appears to be ____________
• Small discrepancies in the treatment of minorities at each decision point can add up to a significant
cumulative effect and result in higher rates of incarceration
 Disparities in The Justice System
• Gender
• Females are less likely to engage in most crimes than are males, partly because of
socially defined opportunities for women
• Types of offenses women commit and for which the police arrest women were
traditionally less threatening than crimes common to males.
• Robbers, rapists, and assaulters are more likely to be fully processed than crimes such as
prostitution, theft, and drug use.
• Females are however becoming more involved in traditional crimes and taking a more
active role in the crimes they commit
 Criminal Justice In A Democracy
• At its base, the criminal justice system is a legal system
• Characterized as being more or less democratic
• The degree of democracy shown in a legal system has implications for:
• How the law develops
• How it is applied
• What it accomplishes
• Democracy also leads to the development of constraints on powers of
government and the ability of the criminal justice system to affect crime
 Criminal Justice in a Democracy
• Due Process model of criminal justice:
• Focus is on individual rights and liberty
• Crime Control model of criminal justice:
• Concerns for crime control and social order dominate
• These views suggest that the criminal justice system must achieve a
balance between the rights of the individual and society’s need for
order