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KempaLecture4--CountingCrime.pptCounting Crime 1
The Truth, The Media and the Popular Imagination
Uses and Abuses of Crime Statistics
- The Enlightenment and Science
- Reflexive Science
- Theory and policy require statistics about the decisions of those who break the law; about the decisions of those who maintain it; and about what people think of all this
The basic principles of measurement
- Reliability: consistency of results over time
- Validity: the extent to which a tool or instrument actually measures the concept a researcher claims to be interested in
- Crime rate = amount of crime / population size x 100,000 = standard rate by 100,000
Official crime statistics
- Administrative records can be compiled to form statistics: you must first decide upon your data elements; your levels of aggregation; and your counting procedures
- Canadian Criminal Justice Statistics – compiled by The Canadian Center for Justice Statistics ( CCJS) – provide good national data on criminal justice inputs such as resources and expenditures; weaker data with respect to output such as incidents, arrests, charges, convictions and dispositions
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The further you that you go into the criminal justice system, the more confident you can be that the count is accurate and reliable BUT that it is a decreasingly valid representation of all criminal behavior. why is that? Because it tells us more and more about how the criminal justice system operates and what it considers to be important, rather than what people actually do out there in society. You are essentially counting decisions about crime and criminals, not crime and what criminals do themselves.
Data element: what is to be collected?
Levels of aggregation: how data are to be combined -- Are we sure we are putting together the same things when we do our aggregations?
Counting procedures: there must be consensus on how to count units and how data elements are to be defined and included/excluded
e.g., how do you count a « break and enter spree » where two people break into 5 homes together – as one incident or multiple incidents or multiple incidents times two offenders? Is this ONE, TWO, FIVE or TEN instances of B and E?
Canadian Uniform Crime Reports
- Common crime classifications across Canada render national aggregation feasible – but how are we grouping crimes?
- Seriousness rule: only the most serious crime is scored in an incident involving multiple crimes
- A good picture of what the criminal justice system is doing; some indication of the overall crime rates – These numbers give us absolutely no indication of the « dark figure of crime ».
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Since 1961, Canada has had the uniform crime reporting system developed by statistics Canada and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. The system is designed to provide a measure of reliability for crime statistics through providing police agencies with a standardized set of procedures for collecting and reporting crime information.
Problems with the seriousness rule: deflate the total crime count; inflate serious crimes as a proportion of the total; the way in which seriousness is scored is problematic because not enough qualitative data about the crimes are recorded to use a sophisticated scale of seriousness
Victimisation surveys
- Give us a snapshot into the dark figure of crime
- Reporting problems: stigma; lack of awareness; mistrust of state authorities
Self-report surveys
- Give us a window into victimless forms of crime
- reporting problems: reluctance to self-report on serious forms of deviance
Crime in Canada
- Gross counts of crime have increased massively over the course of the last half-century – but overall rates have been declining for violent crimes (especially) and also property crimes since 1992.
- Prison rates have increased from 21,834 in 1978-1979 to 39,679 in 2012-13 (keeping pace with population growth, approx. 118/100K)
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The example of cannabis: Source of data = UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS
Recorded cannabis offences increased during the 1990s while cocaine and heroin offences declined. In 1997, cannabis offences accounted for 72% of all drug crimes, compared with 58% in 1991. In contrast, cocaine accounted for 17% of all cases in 1997, down from 28% in 1991, and heroin accounted for only about 2% of all cases, down marginally from 1991.
Nearly half of all drug offences were therefore for possession of cannabis – and total recorded drug offences increased by 15% during this period, while most other crimes were declining. Why? Has an increase in cannabis charges been caused by actual increased in cannabis use or have the priorities of law enforcement agencies shifted over time? Has a decline in the use of harder drugs led police to focus on cannabis users?
One factor contributing to the increase has been the effort to shut down marijuana growing operations across this country as hydroponic growing techniques have enabled Canadian growers to supply an increasing share of the domestic market. Cultivation charges have thereby increased dramatically as the police have focused upon shutting down these lucrative illegitimate businesses…and since, of course, cannabis has been decriminalised, and the trend is towards policing agencies and Crown prosecutors being more reluctatant to prosecute minor drug offences (e.g., simple « possession ») as criminal offences.
- Violent crimes have consistently been a small proportion of total crimes: about 13% as opposed to the more frequent property crimes at 50% of the total
- 2013: Canada had 505 homicides and 642 attempted murders: less than half of 1% of reported violent incidents
- Fear of crime is massively disproportionate to the risk of victimization
- Victimology: young unemployed males who go out a lot are the most likely to be victimized; the elderly are the least likely to be victimized, but the most likely to be fearful.
- The media: if it bleeds it leads
- Trends in governance and privatisation: crime is big business and it pays for people to be frightened!
