SOC-3340 Lecture 1: SOC section 1 notes
8 Mar 2017
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Why study criminology: criminal activity is a serious social problem with numerous consequences. Property crime costs us citizens approximately billion per year. Crime rates: in the last 2 decades, crime rates have fallen dramatically. Murder rates have also fallen: peak in 1980, 56% decline since 1980, recent data shows a potential increase in crime. Taken from 63 large us cities for the first quarter of 2016 (not the full picture: crime is not evenly distributed across geographic space. Just because crime is happening in one place, does not mean its happening everywhere. It also makes sense to look at comparable countries to see whether patterns are unique to the us: to discuss crime rates, you must look at trends. One year of data can be misleading or even wrong. Interpretations of trends can change when temporal context is considered: trend within a single year can change rapidly.
