SOC 1500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: General Social Survey, Juvenile Delinquency, Participant Observation

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1500
• Professor: Ryan Broll

Document Summary

Criminologists focus on 2 things: measuring crime in society & understanding the nature of crime. Measure police-reported crime, uniform crime reporting (ucr) system: violent crime, property crime, & other crimes; ucr2 also includes data on victims and accused (gender, relationship) Reported as: absolute numbers in 2014, there 516 homicides in canada, crime rates in. 2014, the canadian homicide rate was 1. 45 per 100,000. Crime rate = # of reported crimes/total population x 100,000. Official statistics are the most reliable method of measuring crime. What counts as a crime changes over time. Not all crimes are reported to the police: people feel uncomfortable (domestic violence), or as if there"s no point. Dark figure of crime = reported crime vs. unreported crimes: self-report surveys: Questionnaires that ask participants about offences they have committed. Intended to capture information about crimes that may not have come to the attention of the police (dark figure) Participants may not share information/ may lie: worried about consequence.