Crime : Crime And Crime

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The UCR data, although it is useful in the sense that it provides a small picture of the large amounts of crime that go unreported in any given city, this crime is undetectable because of a reluctance from victims to report crime. The most important factors which limit our understanding of crime are the dark figure of crime and the crime funnel. The former being the numerical value that represents the discrepancy between crime, which is reported, and crime which is committed (actual crime). The latter is an actual diagram which represents that the total amount of crime may be quite high, but the amount of crime that is detected, reported, prosecuted and punished decreases in proportion respectively. The UCR does not include victimless crime, so even though prostitution is considered a crime, it isn 't reported in the UCR since there is a victim involved. Another limitation of the UCR is that when an offender commits multiple crimes, only the most severe crime is recorded, causing further discrepancies in the UCR data.

6. The data collected from the UCR is not completely useless, because by actively collecting all crime which is reported in a certain area, we are creating data pools which can be used to show crime trends. You can compare crime trends with previous years to see whether the crime rate has risen or fallen. This information is useful to criminologists because they can look at these trends and try to understand what significant changes in society have occurred to account for these changes in the crime rate. Crime rates help identify areas of concern so the proper actions can be taken to stop the crime (more police, stricter laws…). The UCR also helps provide the public with a vague idea of what is going on in their so...

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...he data is imperfect everywhere; since the error is consistent, the data is still useful. However, someone from a structuralist perspective would view the statistics as being a description of the distribution of power in society. They believe that since officials have power, statistics consist of only those events they choose to acknowledge or identify as criminal. Someone from a structuralist point of view would look more closely at law and the definition of crime in society and how its laws are implemented (whether certain groups face advantages or disadvantages). For example, they may look at the rate of violent crimes and notice an increase. However, since crimes, like domestic abuse, were formerly tolerated, an increase in crime could simply mean that the rate of crime hasn 't increased, but the rate of crime that is recognized by the government has increased.

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