SOC 1410 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Arson, Homicide, Price Fixing
Document Summary
Measuring crime- catching the wind with a sieve: correlation and causality. Just because two items are consistently related (correlated) does not imply a casual connection. In order to establish causality 3 criteria must be satisfied: Spuriousness must be eliminated crime results from a multitude of sources: total crime rate is unknown but is tried to estimate, the dark figure of crime . Uniform crime reports (ucr) fbi crime in the united states. 18,000 law enforcement agencies reporting, representing 98% of population. 8 crimes listed index crimes: part i (report): homicide, rape, robbery, assault, part ii (arrest): burglary, theft, mv theft, arson. Results calculated as a rate (# of crimes/ population x 100,000) to standardize. Index crimes are reported as cleared under two circumstances: Crimes are recorded as cleared by arrest if a person is arrested and charged for a part i offense: highest rates are for serious crimes, especially homicide.