Measuring Crime
Team D: Alfreda Simmons, Kelly Ashbrook, Lucas Burrington, and Kiavonni Jones
CJA/204 Introduction to Criminal Justice
December 8, 2014
Mary Ellen De Frias
Measuring Crime
The Department of Justice uses two types of programs to measure crime in the United States. The two types of programs are the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (URC) and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Which both have valuable details about the crime problems that are going on in the world.Since both programs are used to do different things and methods, both do focus on different crimes and there aspect. The data that they produce together is used for comprehensive crime problems ...view middle of the document...
The FBI has made some major changes to the UCR and now it is called UCR/NIBRS. There are two groups that are classified under the UCR/NIBRS, Part I offenses, majors crimes, which include the following: murder, aggravated assault, burglary, forcible rape, larceny-theft, robbery and auto theft, and arson. Part II, the following are categorized as:, embezzlement, loitering, curfew, simple assault, forgery, , disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, counterfeiting, drug offenses, liquor, fraud, gambling, offenses against the family, prostitution, drunk in public, runaways, sex offenses, vandalism, stolen property, vagrancy, and weapons offenses.
One of the other programs is The Bureau of Justice Statistics' national Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (formerly known as the National Crime Survey), this agency reports on crimes such as rape, several levels of robbery (personal, household), simple assault, theft (personal and household) and auto theft and their frequency.
The purpose of crime reporting is to keep the governments (local, state and federal levels) aware of the crime levels in areas across the country. This will allow each level of government to determine where and how much funding to a lot each dept. This will also help in determining who may need more man power, task forces, patrols and equipment. In addition, the community can be informed on the crimes that are taking place in their areas so that they can keep a watch and help the police in cutting crime...
Crime rates are determined when the number of crimes; go up or down in a specific area or neighborhood, this also is calculated based on the different crimes. Although murder crime rates may go down, simple assault or rape may go up in that same area. Keeping these types of statistics can help police dept. determine the type of crime and what they need to do to fight it.
The official definition for Arrest rates is: the number of arrests per 100,000
population (1). This basically boils down to the number of arrests that are made for the crimes that are committed. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the arrest that was made was the correct suspect, just that the evidence at the time pointed to that person, other evidence may be found to clear that suspect and leads to another suspect.
Clearance rates indicate how many crimes have been cleared or solved. This is very important, along with protecting the public the police work very hard to make sure they solve every crime that is committed in their district/town/city. This will also help with getting more equipment, funds and officers. The higher the crime rate, arrest rates, the higher the chances are that you will have a high clearance rate. The last thing any officer/detective wants is an unsolved case.
Official Definition of Recidivism Rate is one of the most fundamental concepts in criminal justice. It refers to a person's relapse into criminal behavior, often after the person receives sanctions...
