CC102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Uniform Crime Reports, Sextortion, General Social Survey
Crime and Victims
Sources of Information About Crime
• Crime data influences policy and development, budget allocation
decisions for criminal justice agencies, and evaluation of criminal
justice initiatives
• 3 major sources of crime data in Canada:
o 1. Official crime rates
o 2. Crime Severity Index (CSI)
o 3. Victimization surveys
• Official sources of information about crime
o Official info about crime in Canada maintained by Canadian
Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) which has collected stats since
1962
o 2 official courses of info about crime
▪ 1. CCJS collects crime stats using Uniform Crime Reports
(UCR)
• Aggregate census of crime in Canada using official
police reports as information sources
• UCR surveys the incidence of crime (# of crimes
reported to police given period of time)
• Based on the aggregated police reported data, crime
rate is calculated to give official estimate of crime
o Crime rate is ratio of number of incidents of
crime reported to police in a population
expressed per 100,00
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▪ I.e. if 500 crimes were reported in a
population of 10 million people, crime
rate would be ([500 crime/10 million
population] x 100,000), or 5 crimes per
100,000 people
o A standardized measure of crime meaning that
it allows comparisons across areas that may
have difference in population size
o 2. CCJS uses Crime Severity Index (CSI), which is a measure of
severity of crime calculated by measuring # of crimes reported
to police relative to the seriousness of the crimes reported
▪ Each criminal code offence was assigned a weight based
on its seriousness with more serious crimes reeving higher
rates
o There are limitations with UCR
▪ One major limitation of UCR data is dark figure of crime
• Dark figure of crime refers to difference between
how much crime occurs and how much crime is
reported to/discovered by police
o Rates of reporting to police dropped over
years with a number of factors influencing
likelihood of reporting crime (including age
and gender)
▪ Another limitation of UCR is seriousness rule of crime
reporting
• Seriousness rule refers to practice of classifying or
recording police-reported crimes according to which
of several offences is the most serious
o UCR tends to underestimate the frequency of
less serious crimes
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▪ Give that crime rate is based on crimes reported to police,
any differences across police services charging practices
could be source of bias
• Some police departments may place greater
emphasis on diversion with young offenders than
other services
• Homicide in Canada
o In 2014, there were 516 police-reported homicides in Canada
▪ Homicide rate for that year was 1.45/100,000 population
(one of lowest homicide rates since 1966)
o In most cases, victims knew perpetrator with 34% of homicide
cases involving a family member and 37% of cases involving an
acquaintance, and ¼ of victims were indigenous peoples
o Media coverage of crime paints different picture, they often
operate according to backwards law of reporting where the
focus is on events that occur less frequently
▪ Media coverage of crime focuses more on policing and
high-profile court cases with significantly less coverage of
corrections or parole
▪ Media tends to focus on more serious offences, where
aspects of the cases (such as victim or offender
characteristics or aspects of how crime was committed)
are unique or salient
• Major supplement to UCR as source of info about crime is use of
victimization surveys
o A victimization survey is a self-report survey that asks
responders whether they have been victimized during a given
time period and whether they reported it to the police
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Document Summary
Sources of information about crime: crime data influences policy and development, budget allocation decisions for criminal justice agencies, and evaluation of criminal justice initiatives, 3 major sources of crime data in canada, 1. Victimization surveys: official sources of information about crime, official info about crime in canada maintained by canadian. Centre for justice statistics (ccjs) which has collected stats since. 1962: 2 official courses of info about crime, 1. 100,000 people: a standardized measure of crime meaning that it allows comparisons across areas that may have difference in population size, 2. 3: self-report victimization data in canada is collected as part of the general social survey (gss), which is administered by stats. Uses official police reports of incidents of crime to calculate a crime rate. Measures severity of crime using # of crimes reported to police to measure relative seriousness; each criminal code offence is assigned a weight based on its seriousness.
