CRMN 1000U Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Homicide, Only Crime, White-Collar Crime
13 Jun 2018
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September 29, 2017
Crime Rates, Trends and Perceptions
Lecture 4
National Crime Statistics
• Released annually in the summer
• Analyze/investigate issues such as:
o How much is crime occurring?
o Is crime increasing or decreasing?
o What is the rate of violent crimes?
o Which cities have the highest and lowest rates of crime?
National crime statistics: questions
• What do these statistics mean?
• What are the problems/limitations?
• Can they be manipulated?
Police reported crime statistics
• 2014 – under 1.8 million criminal code incidents reported to the police
• lowest level since 1969
• volume of crime decreased 3% vs 2013
• violent crime – 21%
• property crime – 61%
• 8 offenses made up 81% of all crime
• example: 26% theft under $5000
Crime Severity Index (CSI)
• introduced in 2008
• request by police community
• measures: seriousness of crime
• each offense given a weight
• most serious offenses – higher weight
• 2014 – CSI decreased by 3%
Crime severity index versus police reported crime rate
• PRCR – measures volume – equal weighting
• Crime rate: high volumes, less serious offenses
• CSI – measure severity – weights derived from sentences handed down
Factors affecting police reported crime rates
• Demographics: age structure of population
• Age 15-24: high risk
• Age over 50: low risk
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Leenaars and Lester (2004): proportion of population 15-24 was most significant
predictor of homicide
• Social and economic factors:
o Shifts in inflation – associated with shifts in financially motivated crime (as prices
increase, so do crimes)
o Financially motivated
o Break and enter
o Robbery
o Motor vehicle theft
o Public reporting rates
o Local police policies and procedures
o Legislative changes
o Technological change
Crime statistics
• Do we know what the actual crime rate is?
• Depends on crime data used
Uniform crime reporting system
• what the police say
• Known as UCR
o Began in 1961
o Standard definitions of all offenses
• Classification of crimes through guidebook:
o Uniform crime reporting manual
o Statistics Canada/Canadian association of chiefs of police
• 1961-1988: police depts. forwarded information to statistics Canada
• monthly basis
• 1982: collecting and reporting
• Canadian centre for justice statistics
• Release crime statistics
• Bulletin: Juristat
UCR
• First 27 years – UCR – reported on basis of aggregated statistics
• Still used
• Aggregate UCR Survey:
o Number of reported offenses
o Number of actual offenses
o Number of offenses cleared by charge
o Number of adults/youth charged
o Not included – victim characteristics
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Crime severity index (csi) introduced in 2008 request by police community: measures: seriousness of crime, each offense given a weight, most serious offenses higher weight, 2014 csi decreased by 3% Crime severity index versus police reported crime rate: prcr measures volume equal weighting, crime rate: high volumes, less serious offenses, csi measure severity weights derived from sentences handed down. Crime statistics: do we know what the actual crime rate is, depends on crime data used. Incident based ucr survey: also known as ucr2: new system introduced 1988 fully operation in 1992, key change: collected incident based data, better analysis of crime trends, also includes. Information on victims: age, sex, level of injury, drug/slcohol use, victim-accused relationship, types of weapons causing injury. Information on incident circumstances: types of violation/crime, target of violation, types of property stolen, dollar value of property affected, dollar value of drugs confiscated, type of weapon present, date, time, location.
