Counting Crime

Uniform Crime Report system UCR

based on crimes reported to the police across the country

methodology

Refers to the study or critique of methods

reliability

Identifies one of the standards (another being validity) against which the tools used to measure concepts are judged. Reliability refers to consistency of results over time

validity

The extent to which a tool or instrument (questionnaire, experiment) actually measures the concept the researcher claims to be interested in and not something else

crime rate

Criminologists calculate crime rates (or rates of incarceration, conviction, or recidivism) by dividing the amount of crime by the population size and multiplying by 100,000. This produces the standard rate per 100,000; occasionally it is useful to calculate a rate per million or some other figure when looking at less frequently occurring offences

population

Refers to all members of a given class or set. For example, adult Canadians, teenagers, Canadian inmates, and criminal offenders can each be thought of as a population

theory

A set of concepts and their nominal definitions or assertions about the relationships between these concepts, assumptions, and knowledge claims

ideology

A linked set of ideas and beliefs that act to uphold and justify an existing or desired situation in society

administrative record

A collection of information about individual cases

levels of aggregation

Refers to how data are to be combined. Do we want city-level, provincial, or national data?

data element

Specification about what exactly is to be collected

counting procedure

A consensus on how to count units \and data elements

Canadian Centre for Justice
Statistics

A division of Statistics Canada, formed in 1981, with a mandate to collect national data on crime and justice

dark figure of crime

The amount of crime that is unreported or unknown

seriousness rule

If there are several crimes committed in one incident, only the most serious crime is counted. UCR1.0 uses the seriousness rule

UCR1.0

collects summary data for nearly 100 separate criminal offences
-seriousness rule

UCR2

method of collecting more detailed information on each incident, the victims, and the accused persons.

UCR2.1

introduced certain efficiencies for police services and lowered the
response burden by eliminating or simplifying variables

UCR2.2

introduced to add new violations and other variables

gross counts of crime

A count of the total amount of crime in a given community, making no distinction between crime categories

Crime Severity Index

calculated by assigning each offence a weight derived from actual sentences given by the criminal courts. The more serious the average sentence, the greater the weight

victimization survey

A survey of a random sample of the population in which people are asked to recall and describe their own experience of being a victim of crime

sample

A group of elements (people, offenders, inmates) selected in a systematic manner from the population of interest

self-report study

A method for measuring crime involving the distribution of a detailed questionnaire to a sample of people, asking them whether they have committed a crime in a particular period of time. This has been a good method for criminologists to determine the social characteristics of offenders