Laws week 2

Why is crime so variable and hard to measure?

Interpretation and reaction is influence by various factors.

• legislators define certain events to be criminal

• up to the individual to report behaviour to crime, and people may have different classifications

• arbitrary.

Reporting behaviours

reporting behaviours may go up if police changes reporting process to be easier/harder.

affected by perceived social obligation, perception of culpability, and victim/offender relationship.

e.g. Queensland popos added an option to report online, so it increases reporting.

How should we interpret crime then?

• essential but imperfect, but we can tentatively compare it over time place and demographics.

• be critical of stats

• assess adequacy and reliability of stats.

• are absolute levels of crime possible to determine?

Ways to measure crime

1) Police data

2) Crime surveys/victimisation surveys

3) Self report offending research

4) Service data: Calls to police

5) Who gets arrested

6) Drug use as a proxy

7) Hospitalisation rates

Police data advantages

Voluminous and detailed, highlights relative trends over time and between areas

standardised against populations, info collected lives in the record management system.

Police data disadvantages

• variance in jurisdiction across diff places

• rate of reporting differs depending on estimated gravity and diff people

• presence of external ‘neutral’ factors that give the illusion of crime change liek covid

• longitudinal variations in record management.

Why do people tend to report theft of vehicles and burglary the most?

because you can get insured only if you report to popo

Why dont the police record everything!?

• multivictimed crimes- may not be regarded as a single incident

• smth deemed not serious enough

• incident was handled through unofficial channels

• recorded as different category of crime.

but observed change is still useful and doesnt void police data,

Advantages of Crime/Victimisation surveys.

• argued by realists to be a better way to measure

• Valid regardless of definition of crime

• Bypasses jurisdictional variations

• insight into prevalence + incidence rates, risk factors, and changes in reporting temporally.

• random representative sample, and common language.

Disadvantages of surveys

• immense variation across surveys

• covers a small selection of offence

• dubious recall of respondent

• level of education in participant

• biases

• incorrect classification of crime

• TELESCOPING

Telescoping

tendency of respondent to be like. “my house got broken into 18 months ago even when the survey asks what happened TWELVE months ago”, you illiterate freak.

Advantages of Self-report offending research. (2% of people who commit 80% of the crime)

• primary source of info

• unbiased

• avoid problems of non-reporting and non-recording and TELESCOPING

• longitudinal changes in offending behaviour

Disadvantages of self-report offending research.

• issue of telescoping and general problems associated with surveys.

• memory issue

• confabulation

• estimates are more conservative as frequent offenders might wanna gatekeep.

Disadvantages of Police data: calls to police

Usually calls are a mixed bag. theres people who call up for welfare checks, sussy people, and stray cats. usually not emergencies.

Advantages of Measuring who gets arrested

• greatly influenced by police who arrest

• reveals police attitudes towards minorities/political agendas.

disadvantages of measuring who gets arrested

• influenced by police:population ratios. more police may result in more arrests

Measuring drug use as a proxy explained

DUMA Drug use monitoring in australia survey was an annual census of police detention lock-ups where drug screening was undertaken.

Advantages of measuring drug use as a proxy.

• longitudinal assessments of drug use

• gauging correlation between drug use and crime (meth is the most commonly associated with crime.)

Hospitalisation

• estimates the range of violent events that may not have been reported to popo

• hm, interesting, young men are quite overrepresented in this, coupled with a general lack of education, unemployment and poverty.

What do we do with these crime measurements?

Once triangulated, reveals that

• repeat victimisation is a huge problem

• refers to total no. of offences experienced by a victim/target.

Repeat Victimisation

Previous victimisation os the best predictor of future victimisation.

10% of the population experience 74% of the victimisation (prevalence)

10 % most victimised experienced 35% of victimisation (frequency)

Victimisation frequency

We know it doesnt happen randomly in time. When england plays footy, domestic violence increases.

e.g. DV 26% increase when England
play
- 38% increase when England lose
- 41% increase in NSW on State of
Origin days

Extent of crime

1) mindfulness when interpreting trends.

2) comparison across areas

3) crime rates matter

4) triangulation of multiple sources

5) correlation does not imply causation

Interpretation of trends

Coverage can change

counting rules can change

actions can change

behaviour could be different

recording decisions may change

reporting rates may change,

Coverage

what crime types are counted

Counting rules

no. offenders, no. offences/incident

Actions can be redefined

whats a theft and a burglary

Behaviour

is fraud the same as it was in 1962 vs 2015?

Recording decisions may change

manipulation of recording up and down

reporting rates may change

public consensus on why we should report.

Emerging tech and crime

current ways of measuring crime, such as victim surveys may elude such contemporary crimes.

• what do we consider to be crime changes?

• how do wwe measure to keep up to date!

policies and law may lag behind,

so keeping up is hard,