soc 225- ch3
Terms
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- what we know about crime depends on what?
- -depends on the quality, coverage, reliablility, and validity of our measures of crime
- counting procedures
- -how to count units and elements
- crime rates
- -divide the amount of crime by the popn size and multiply by 100 000
- methodology
- -the study or critique of methods.
- population
-
-all members of a given class or set.
(difficult to examine, so use a sample) - administrative record
- -information that can be the basis of statistics
- Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
- -division of statistics Canada, formed in 1981, that mandates what national data to collect on crime and justice
- seriousness rule
- -if there are multiple crimes committed in one incident, only the most serious crime is counted
- why must sample sizes be large?
- -b/c crime is relatively rare and undistributed
- police statistics
- -most commonly used, but are biased b/c inconsistencies in reporting and recording
- formal labelling process
-
a. arrest
b. charge
c. conviction - what issues must be addressed about records before they can be converted into statistics?
-
a. unit of count
b. levels of aggregation
c. definitions
d. data elements
e. counting procedures - data on prisoners
- -doesn't tell us much about crime and criminality, only tells us about the criminal justice system
- gross counts of crime
- -the total amount of crime in a given community, with no distinction between crime categories.
- self-report study
- -used to measure crime with a questionnaire asking ppl details about a crime they have committed (used to understand social characteristics of offenders)
- administrative records can be the basis of statistics
- -if clear procedures with units of count....
- reliability
- -the consistency of results over time
- crime theories
- -are built simultaneously and are mutally dependent
- units of count
- -what it is we are counting
- dark figure of crime
- -crime that is unreported or unknown.
- victimization survey
- -a random sample of a popn questioned to recall and describe their own experience of being a victim of crime
- use of good statistics
- -for planning, policy-making, and administration
- since 1991
- -crime rates have dropped
- theory
- -a tool used to explain
- levels of aggregation
- -how to combine data
- how are the "dark figure crimes" accounted for?
- -with the use of victimization surveys
- enterprise crime
- -organized crime or organizations and the state
- corrections data
- -most reliable and valid (b/c counting prisoners can be accurate)
- validity
- -whether what claims to be measured actually is what is being measured
- ideology
- -explanations and justifications of features of society
- definitions
- -how to define what is being counted
- use of UCR
- -to provide uniform, comparable, and national statistics
- UCR & Victimization surveys
- -generate seperate databases, based on different populations and assumptions
-
UCR
(Uniform Crime Report System) - -the most commonly used measure of crime that is based on crimes reported to the police across the country.
- crime causation
- -what aspects of a community create pressures for more criminality
- 3 broad types of criminal justice statistics
-
a. statistics about crime and criminals
b. statistics about the criminal justice system and its response to crime
c. statistics about perceptions of crime and criminal justice - data elements
- -what specific information should be collected
- why are crime classifications easier in Canada than USA?
- -Canada operates under a common criminal code, and more police departments
- social map
- -identifying the social characteristics of victims, offenders, or inmates
- soc lecture 2
- midterm 2