notes
“Beware of Data”
By Douglas Clement
In the article Beware of Data is went over the Uniform Crime Report and it explained it included four types of Violent crimes, these crimes were murder/nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault, and three types of property crime such as burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft. The Uniform crime report does include arson but that is on a very limited basis. This data base is very impressive with how it collect and records these crimes but at the same time like any data base it does have its flaws. These flaws are that the actual crime levels are not accurate due to not all of the crimes committed are called into police agencies to have reports filed, some of these crimes can be Rape and assaults since victims could know the suspect and they fear retribution from the suspect. To redress the weaknesses in the reports the Bureau of Justice created another data base called the National Crime Victimization Survey. This data base surveys individuals as well as households around the country asking if they have been victims of crimes over the last 6 months and if they had it collects information on what happened. This data base shows that the crime rates are a lot higher than the Uniform Crime report especially for violent crimes. This was a brief summary of what this article was going over.
My personal opinion on this article is that I disagree with it for various reasons. My main reason I would have to disagree with agencies using the Uniform Crime Report because it gives the local communities a false since of hope that crimes rates are lower than they really are, another reason I do not agree with this is that is a voluntary meaning that local agencies do not have to supply any crime data to this report. I think that if we are going to have a data base such as this to show what the crime rates are then we should mandate all policing agencies to supply their crime data on a monthly basis so
By Douglas Clement
In the article Beware of Data is went over the Uniform Crime Report and it explained it included four types of Violent crimes, these crimes were murder/nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault, and three types of property crime such as burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft. The Uniform crime report does include arson but that is on a very limited basis. This data base is very impressive with how it collect and records these crimes but at the same time like any data base it does have its flaws. These flaws are that the actual crime levels are not accurate due to not all of the crimes committed are called into police agencies to have reports filed, some of these crimes can be Rape and assaults since victims could know the suspect and they fear retribution from the suspect. To redress the weaknesses in the reports the Bureau of Justice created another data base called the National Crime Victimization Survey. This data base surveys individuals as well as households around the country asking if they have been victims of crimes over the last 6 months and if they had it collects information on what happened. This data base shows that the crime rates are a lot higher than the Uniform Crime report especially for violent crimes. This was a brief summary of what this article was going over.
My personal opinion on this article is that I disagree with it for various reasons. My main reason I would have to disagree with agencies using the Uniform Crime Report because it gives the local communities a false since of hope that crimes rates are lower than they really are, another reason I do not agree with this is that is a voluntary meaning that local agencies do not have to supply any crime data to this report. I think that if we are going to have a data base such as this to show what the crime rates are then we should mandate all policing agencies to supply their crime data on a monthly basis so
References: Robert M. Regoli, J. D. H. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.jblearning.com/samples/0763742848/Exploring Criminal Justice-Ch 3.pdf James A. Fagin Introduction to criminal justice Custom textbook series for SPC College of public safety