CRM/LAW C109 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Motor Vehicle Theft, Cancer, Assault
16 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
A. UCR Crime Data
a. Reported crime
b. Arrests: index and non-index crime
c. Supplementary homicide reports
i. Collected by FBI
ii. Offense which is most known
iii. Homicide data in uniform crime report are thought to be the most valid
and reliable crime data that we have, such as for trends and differences in
crime by area
d. Juvenile courts and corrections data sourcers
e. NIBRS
f. Systematic biases, researchers interested in correlation
B. Uniform Crime Reports
a. Indexed crimes
i. Criminal homicide
ii. Forcible rape
iii. Robbery
iv. Aggravated assault
v. Burglary
vi. larceny/theft
vii. Arson
viii. Motor vehicle theft
b. Violent crimes are the first four and non-violent crimes are last four, also known
as common law crimes/street crimes
c. White collar crimes are left out and drug crimes
d. Non-indexed crimes
i. All others
C. 2010: Five leading causes of death (from highest to lowest)
a. Unintentional injury
b. Homicide
c. Suicide
d. Malignant neoplasms
e. Heart disease
D. Criticism of Official Data
a. Less than ½ of the victims report crime, some are not recorded
b. Police may manipulate data, by design or politically
i. May be unintentional, depend on investigation process
c. Arrests can reflect race, ethnic and age bias, not just behavior
Document Summary
Ucr crime data, reported crime, arrests: index and non-index crime, supplementary homicide reports i. ii. iii. Official data generally good for: many trends: over time especially when large intervals; national, state, large jurisdiction. Cross national comparison: large comparison (place, like areas of city, urban/rural, region of country, some demographics, esp. Items and time periods vary: few nationally representative samples, monitoring the future since 1978, substance abuse trends ii. iii. Add health: the validity of self reported data, despite the fact that. i. ii. Sampling problems may exist: vast majority of studies, are undertaken in schools, but most delinquents may not even be at school iii. Some items may be trivial: self reported data has tested well for reliability and validity, lots of work on reliability and validity of self report, major review is terence thornberry and marvi krohn i. ii. iii. Can include a wide variety of behaviors (serious and non serious)
