Assignment:
Issue and Cautions in Study UCR Data
An extensive literature has accumulated regarding shortcomings of UCR statistics. Although the UCR has steadily improved and been refined since its inception 1930, researchers using these data should exercise caution and be aware of certain limitations. Some primary shortcomings of the UCR include the following.
1. The recorded statistics represent only a person of the true crime rate community. Victim surveys suggest that there is possibly twice as much crime committed as appears in official statistics.
2. The big increase in the crime rate beginning in the mid1960s may be explained in the part by better communications, more professional and more efficient police departments, and better recording and reporting of crime. Larger, improved, and professionalized police departments appear to be positively related to rising crime rates. This was particularly the case in larger urban areas where more crimes were being detected. Photo 2.3 shows technology in the patrol car.
3. Increased citizen concern and awareness of crime, higher standards of expected public morality, and greater reporting of and response to ghetto crime may all have had impacts on increasing the recorded crime rate.
4. Most federal offenses, "victimless" crimes, and white-collar crimes do not appear in the UCR.
5. Changes in record keeping procedures (such as computerization), transition in police administrations, and political shenanigans can have a major impact on crime recording. The FBI attempts to monitor and control abuses. In 1999, the Philadelphia Police Department's Sex Crimes Unit was found to have dismissed as non-crimes several thousand reports of crime. In order to attract and host the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta was accused of undercounting crime by as much as 22,000 offenses.
6. A. Arrests do not equal crimes solved or suspects found guilty.
B. Many reported crimes are declared unfounded by police.
C. In the situation involving multiple offenses, only the most serious offense is recorded for UCR purposes.
D. The majority of crimes committed are not index offenses.
7. The crime index is made up primarily of property crimes.
8. The crime index is unweighted; it is a simple summated scale in which a murder counts the same as a bicycle theft. Surprisingly , most bodily injury crimes are nonindex offenses (L.D. Savitz,1978).
9. The existence of the crime index may encourage concentration by police agencies on these offences at the expense of others.
10. The crime rate is calculated on the basis of decennial census population figures. Rapidly growing cities of the Southwest would, under this system, appear to have worse rates because, for example, 1979 crimes would be divided by a 1970 population base.
11. Demographic shifts may provide partial explanations for changing crime rates. Some criminologists had prophesied the crime dip (a decline in the crime rate trend) in the 1980s based on a general aging of the baby boom generation (children born in the post- World War II rea, from 1946 through the mid-1950s). This larger-than-normal population cohort overwhelmed hospital nursery wards, elementary and secondary schools, and later colleges. These establishments, such as schools and colleges, now have extra space. Similarly, the criminal justice system was overwhelmed by a larger-than-normal proportion in the maximal crime-committing ages (15-24), as the job market and housing industry inherit this now "middle age boom."