Phase 1 Individual Project
CJUS141-1204A-13
Colorado Technical University
Robert C. Lawrence
10/15/2012
What can crime statistics tell us about the extent of crime in America today? Explain?
I think that crime statistics tells us the variation of crimes that are being committed. Each year the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the Uniformed Crime Rate Program (UCR) collects information from law enforcement agencies throughout the United States, giving a total of how much crime is committed in each state. Crime statistics tells us that crime is up and on the rise, and more law enforcement to me is the only way to keep the crime rate down. The government is building more and more jails/prisons daily to house these criminals. Crimes like homicides, rape, drug, thief, gun, gang, and culturally motivated (terrorism) crimes are up. Statistics tells us that we are not combating this war on crime like we should be, and that without crime statistics we cannot pinpoint or target what group is committing the most crimes.
Compare and contrast the different crime reporting measuring systems. Which system do you find more useful in addressing the true crime problem? Explain in details?
The UCR (Uniform Crime Reporting) is an hierarchical reporting system that report serious crimes to Law Enforcement and used to assessing crime data. Whereas the NCVR (National Crime Victimization Survey) are survey’s given by an interviewer to individuals whom has been victimized by various types of crimes. And this case I think that the NCVR is more accurate. Because it is like a private investigation seeking out families whom have been victimize by a severity of crimes such as: motor vehicle thief, burglary, assault, and etc. Many crime of these types are not reported to the authority and is therefore not submitted into the UCR database.
How has the public’s perception of the U.S. crime problem changed over time? Why?
The public of perception