Uniform Crime Reporting Report

Criminology is a subject that covers an enormous variety of topics, but one common theme that can be found in most is the issue of morality. Personal and societal morals affect what is considered criminal, and the extent of criminality. Most illegal actions are deemed as such because they clash with moral values.

Before the moral and social implications of crime can be thought about, there is the simpler task of tracking crime in general. Crime can be measured in various ways using different methods. In Canada, crime is recorded from two main sources, from the police and from the victims/general population. In 1962, Canada put into place the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR). The UCR aims to provide “police-reported crime statistics that

The majority of issue comes from the fact that the statistics are gathered only from crimes that are reported to the police. However, not all crimes end up in a police department’s records. The discrepancy between the amount of crime that happens, and the amount of crime reported has been given the ominous moniker, ‘the dark figure of crime’ (Morden & Palys, 2014, p. 77). There are many reasons that a crime may not end up being recorded, and subsequently becomes one with the ‘dark figure’. The process through which a crime becomes a crime statistic has many steps, and the process can easy end at any of these points. The process begins when either someone witnesses a crime and calls the police, or the police witness a crime themselves. This already leaves room for many unreported crimes that were never witnessed. Even if a crime is witnessed, it needs to be deemed worthy of reporting before it has a chance of becoming a statistic. Even once the police are involved, there is still no guarantee that the crime will be reported because officers may decide that there are others ways to deal with it, such as giving a warning. If the crime is witnessed by or reported to the police, and they decide the crime is worth filing a report, then it can become a crime

One way of looking at crimes that has persisted for a long while is one based on a sort of moral dichotomy. Some might say that crimes fall under two categories, mala in se or mala prohibita. Certain actions are seen as morally wrong across a majority of societies and time periods, such as murder or rape. It can be agreed that one should not murder or rape in general, whether it is illegal or not. These would be considered mala in se crimes, ones that are ‘bad in themselves’. Other crimes would be considered mala prohibita, meaning they are ‘bad because prohibited’ (Cornell University, n.d.). These crimes often do not have such clear moral implications, or in some cases making them illegal creates an immoral aspect to them. One example would be homosexuality being illegal. Being homosexual is not something that is universally condemned and tears at the moral fibres of society (despite what some people think), however, once it was made illegal it became something that was seen as wrong and bad to everyone. Marijuana is another good example, especially as the legality of marijuana use is currently in a state of flux. Over the past decades, cannabis use has gone from a pandemic to a fairly common occurrence, and is generally only considered bad because it is against the law in most cases. Mala prohibita crimes are not actions that are considered bad across many societies, or even across many time