Criminology Chapter 2
- official sources of crime data: collected by govt and govt agencies
- unofficial sources of crime data: collected by private or independent agencies / researchers
- positivist criminology: collection of data about people follows the same scientific procedures as data in science
- not a perfect view because data doesn’t speak for itself
- uniform crime records: compiled each yr in washington dc by fbi staticians
- most reliable set of crime data
- provides diverse info for 4 violent crimes and 4 property crimes
- provides data about arrest trends by location
- National Incident-Based Reporting System: FBI-coordinated supplementary reporting system
- Evaluation of the UCR
- does commendable job, could do better w more sophisticated methodology
- because of inherent biases, UCR can’t accurately measure crime rate
- a large number of crimes go unreported ➝ can’t show up in UCR
- police participation in UCR is voluntary
- UCR doesn’t include federal crimes
- Criminologists have turned to victimization surveys to understand volume and rate of crime
- examine representative samples of a pop to discover what crimes have been experienced in a given period
- Unofficial sources of crime data
- self-report data
- life-course data - official crime data, self-reports, psych evals, iq tests
- life-history data - lived experiences of individuals
- criminal biographies
- observation research and participant observation research
- comparative and historical research