CRM 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Official Statistics, Teenage Rebellion, Peer Pressure
21 Feb 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
There are a number of choices to be made about what data we collect: discussing data about crime necessarily uses a legalistic definition of crime not all socially undesirable behaviour. Official data is the end result of a long process decisions about what counts as a crime and what doesn"t. Different stats are available to us and maybe used in different ways for different purposes good reasons for counting different things! All are useful in different ways for different purposes. Dealing with aggregate data can limit our ability to use info over generalization. In some context we may want to focus on local differences. Choosing what not to count: race and the politics of statistics. In canada we do not collect data on the race of those arrested in an effort to keep from racial profiling. We are counting things we believe are relevant in causing criminal behaviour which race is not.
