CCJ4500 Bethel University Victimization in United States Paper Answer each question minimum 300 words. Must use provided material (PDF book) along with (2)

CCJ4500 Bethel University Victimization in United States Paper Answer each question minimum 300 words. Must use provided material (PDF book) along with (2) other sources to help answer questions. Reference/site in APA format. Here is the reference for the PDF: Karmen, A. (2016). Crime victims: an introduction to victimology (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. WILL EXTEND TIME LIMIT ADDITIONAL 6 HOURS IF NEEDED.

1.) Using the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR), develop a table that lists the same cities from the map in figure 4.1, page 100. Instead of murder rates, assemble robbery rates from the UCR. Present your results in a table or chart format.

2.) Does the ranking of these large U.S. cities by robbery rates come out the same as for murder rates? Which ones were close and which were not?

3.) Pick another serious crime and rank these cities by that crime rate.

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Victimization in
the United States:
An Overview
T
Putting
Crime into Perspective: The Chances of Dying
I
Violently—or from Other Causes
F
Summary
F
Key Terms Defined in the Glossary
A
Questions
for Discussion and Debate
N Thinking Questions
Critical
Suggested
Research Projects
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CHAPTER OUTLINE
Victimization Across the Nation: The Big Picture
Making Sense of Statistics
The Two Official Sources of Data
Facts and Figures in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
Facts and Figures in the Bureau of Justice Statistics’
National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
Comparing the UCR and the NCVS
A First Glance at the Big Picture: Estimates of the
Number of New Crime Victims Each Year
A Second Look at the Big Picture: Watching the FBI’s
Crime Clock
Delving Deeper into the Big Picture: Examining Victimization Rates
Tapping into the UCR and the NCVS to Fill in the
Details of the Big Picture
Searching for Changes in the Big Picture: Detecting
Trends in Interpersonal Violence and Theft
Taking a Longer View: Murders in the United States
over the Past Century
1LEARNING OBJECTIVES
appreciate how statistics can be used to answer
5Toimportant
questions.
6To become aware of the ways statistics can be used to
8 persuade and mislead.
find out what information about crime victims is
TTocollected
routinely by the federal government’s
Department
of Justice.
S
To become familiar with the ways that victimologists use
this data to estimate how many people were harmed by
criminal activities and what injuries and losses they suffered.
continued
The Rise and Fall of Murder Rates Since 1900
66
9781337027786, Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology, Ninth Edition, Karmen – © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
VICTIMIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES: AN OVERVIEW
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
continued
To explore the kinds of information about victims that
can be found in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s
annual Uniform Crime Report.
To learn how the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting
System is extracting more information drawn from
police files about victims.
L
To appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of this source
I
of official statistics.
To discover what data about victims and their plight can D
be found in the federal government’s alternative source
D
of information, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National
Crime Victimization Survey.
E
To recognize the strengths and weaknesses of this alternative source of government statistics.
L
To assemble official statistics to spot trends, and especially L
whether the problem of criminal victimization has
,
been intensifying or diminishing over recent decades.
To develop a feel for historical trends in the level of
violence in the United States.
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A
VICTIMIZATION ACROSS THE NATION:N
THE BIG PICTURE
Y
To be able to weigh the threat of crime against other
perils by understanding comparative risks.
Victimologists gather and interpret data to answer
crucial questions such as: How many people are
harmed by criminals each year? Is victimization1
becoming more of a problem or is it subsiding as5
time goes by? And which groups are targeted the
most and the least often? Researchers want to find6
out where and when the majority of incidents8
occur, whether predators on the prowl intimidate
and subjugate their prey with their bare hands orT
use weapons, and if so, what kinds? It is also impor-S
tant to determine whether individuals are attacked
by complete strangers or people they know, and
how these intended targets act when confronted
by assailants. What proportion try to escape or
fight back, how many are injured, what percentage
67
need to be hospitalized, and how much money do
they typically lose in an incident?
The answers to specific questions like these
yield statistical portraits of crime victims, the patterns that persist over the years, and the trends
that unfold as time passes; when taken together,
they constitute what can be termed the big picture
—an overview of what is really happening across
the entire United States during the twenty-first
century. The big picture serves as an antidote to
impressions based on direct but limited personal
experiences, as well as self-serving reports circulated
by organizations with vested interests, misleading
media images, crude stereotypes, and widely held
myths. But putting together the big picture is not
easy. Compiling an accurate portrayal requires careful planning, formulation of the right questions,
proper data collection techniques, and insightful
analyses.
The big picture is constructed by making systematic observations and accurate measurements on
the local level. Then, these village, city, and county
reports must be aggregated so victimologists and
criminologists are able to characterize the situation
in an entire state, region of the country, and ultimately the nation as a whole. (Sociologists would
call this process as going from an up-close and personal micro level up to a more institutional and
systemwide macro level of analysis.) An alternative
path to follow is to assemble a randomly selected
nationwide sample and then ask those people to
share their experiences about what offenders did
to them during the past year. If the sample is representative and large enough, then the findings
from this survey can be generalized to project estimates about what is happening in the country as a
whole. Once the big picture is assembled, it
becomes possible to make comparisons between
the situation in the United States and other postindustrial societies around the world. The similarities are increasing and cultural differences are
diminishing as globalization is fostering a modern
way of life, which involves seeking higher education, commuting over congested highways to
work, shopping in malls, watching cable TV programming, using the Internet, and calling the police
9781337027786, Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology, Ninth Edition, Karmen – © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
68
CHAPTER
3
on smartphones for help, that has spread to even the
most remote regions of the planet.
Until the 1970s, few efforts were made to routinely monitor and systematically measure various
indicators of the plight of the nation’s victims. By
the 1980s, a great many social scientists and agencies
were conducting the research needed to bring the
big picture into focus. Also, all sorts of specialinterest groups began keeping count and disseminating their own estimates about the suffering of a
wide variety of victims, including youngsters
wounded at school, college students hurt or killed
on campus, children reported missing by their parents, and people singled out by assailants who hate
their “kind.”
The statistics presented in this chapter come
from official sources and shed light on the big
picture concerning “street crimes” involving interpersonal violence and theft.
Making Sense of Statistics
Statistics are meaningful numbers that reveal important information. Statistics are of crucial importance to
social scientists, policy analysts, and decision makers
because they replace vague adjectives such as
“many,” “most,” and “few” with precise numbers.
Both victimologists and criminologists gather
their own data to make their own calculations, or
they scrutinize official statistics, which are compiled and published by government agencies. Why
do they pore over these numbers? By collecting,
computing, and analyzing statistics, researchers can
answer intriguing questions. Accurate and credible
statistics about crimes and victims are vital because
they can shed light on these important matters:
?
Statistics can be calculated to estimate
victimization rates, which are realistic
assessments of threat levels that criminal activities pose to particular individuals and groups.
What are the odds various categories of people
face of getting robbed or even murdered during a certain time period? Counts (such as
death tolls) answer the question “How many?”
Better yet, rates (number of persons who get
robbed out of every 100,000 people in a year)
can provide relative estimates about these
disturbing questions.
?
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Statistics can expose patterns of criminal
activity. Patterns reflect predictable relationships or regular occurrences that show up
during an analysis of the data year after year.
For instance, a search for patterns could answer
these questions: Is it true that murders generally
occur at a higher rate in urban neighborhoods
than in suburban and rural areas? Are robberies
committed more often against men than
women, or vice versa?
?
Statistical trends can demonstrate how situations have changed over the years. Is the burden of victimization intensifying or subsiding as
time goes by? Are the dangers of getting killed
by robbers increasing or decreasing?
?
Statistics can provide estimates of the costs and
losses imposed by illegal behavior. Estimates
based on accurate records can be important for
commercial purposes. For example, insurance
companies can determine what premiums to
charge their customers this year based on
actuarial calculations of the typical financial
expenses suffered by policyholders who were
hospitalized last year after being wounded by
robbers.
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8
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?
Statistics can be used for planning purposes to
project a rough or “ballpark figure” of next
year’s workload. Law enforcement agencies,
service providers, and insurance companies can
anticipate the approximate size of their caseloads for the following year if they know how
many people were harmed the previous year.
Statistics also can be computed to evaluate the
effectiveness of criminal justice policies and to
assess the impact of prevention strategies. Are
battered women likely to lead safer lives after
their violent mates are arrested, or will they be
in greater danger? Do gun buyback programs
actually save lives or is their impact on the local
murder rate negligible?
Finally, statistical profiles can be assembled to
yield an impression of what is usual or typical
9781337027786, Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology, Ninth Edition, Karmen – © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
VICTIMIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES: AN OVERVIEW
about victims in terms of their characteristics
such as sex, age, and race/ethnicity. For
example, is the widely held belief accurate that
most of the people who die violently are young
men from troubled families living in povertystricken, big-city neighborhoods? Portraits
based on data can also provide a reality check
to help ground theories that purport to explain
why some groups experience higher rates of L
predation than others. For example, if it turns I
out that the frail elderly are robbed far less
D
often than teenagers, then any theory that
emphasizes only the physical vulnerability of D
robbers’ targets will be totally off-base or at best
incomplete as an explanation of which groupsE
suffer the most, and why.
L
However, statistics might not only be used,L
they can also be abused. Statistics never speak for,
themselves. Sometimes, statistics can be circulated
to mislead or deceive. The same numbers can be
interpreted quite differently, depending on whatT
spin commentators give them—what is stressed
and what is downplayed. Cynics joke that statisticsI
can be used by a special-interest group just like aF
lamppost is used by a drunkard—for support rather
F
than for illumination.
Officials, agencies, and organizations withA
their own particular agendas may selectively
N
release statistics to influence decision makers or
shape public opinion. For example, law enforce-Y
ment agencies might circulate alarming figures
showing a rise in murders and robberies at budget
hearings to support their arguments that they need1
more money for personnel and equipment to bet-5
ter protect and serve the community. Or these
same agencies might cite data showing a declining6
number of victimizations in order to take credit for8
improving public safety. Their argument could be
that those in charge are doing their jobs so well,T
such as hunting down murderers or preventingS
robberies, that they should be given even more
funding next year to further drive down the rate
of violent crime. Statistics also might serve as
evidence to argue that existing laws and policies
are having the intended desirable effects or,
69
conversely, to persuade people that the old methods are not working and new approaches are
necessary.
Interpretations of mathematical findings can
be given a spin that may be questionable or
debatable—for example, emphasizing that a shelter
for battered women is “half empty” rather than
“half full,” or stressing how much public safety
has improved, as opposed to how much more progress is needed before street crime can be considered
under control. As useful and necessary as statistics
are, they should always be viewed with a healthy
dose of scientific skepticism.
Although some mistakes are honest and
unavoidable, it is easy to “lie” with statistics by
using impressive and scientific-sounding numbers
to manipulate or mislead. Whenever statistics are
presented to underscore or clinch some point in
an argument, their origin and interpretation must
be questioned, and certain methodological issues
must be raised. What was the origin of the data,
and does this source have a vested interest in shaping public opinion? Are different estimates available
from other sources? What kinds of biases and inaccuracies could have crept into the collection and
analysis of the data? How valid and precise were
the measurements? How were key variables
operationalized—defined and measured? What
was counted and what was excluded, and why?
Victimologists committed to objectivity must
point out the shortcomings and limitations of data
collection systems run by the government. They try
to interpret statistics without injecting any particular
spin into their conclusions because (it is hoped) they
have no “axe to grind” other than enlightening
people about the myths and realities surrounding
the crime problem.
THE TWO OFFICIAL SOURCES OF DATA
As early as the 1800s, public officials began keeping
records about lawbreaking to gauge the “moral
health” of society. Then, as now, high rates of interpersonal violence and theft were taken as signs of
social pathology—indications that something was
9781337027786, Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology, Ninth Edition, Karmen – © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
70
CHAPTER
3
profoundly wrong with the way people generally
interacted in everyday life. Annual data sets were
compiled to determine whether illegal activities
were being brought under control as time passed.
Monitoring trends is even more important today
because many innovative but intrusive and expensive
criminal justice policies intended to curb crime have
been implemented.
Two government reports published each year
contain statistical data that enable victimologists to
keep track of what is happening out on the streets.
Both of these official sources of facts and figures
are disseminated each year by the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Each of
these government data collection systems has its
own strengths and weaknesses in terms of providing the information victimologists and criminologists are seeking to answer their research questions.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform
Crime Report (UCR): Crime in the United States
is a massive compilation of all incidents “known”
to local, county, and state police departments
across the country. The FBI’s UCR is a virtual
“bible” of crime statistics based on victims’ complaints and direct observations made by officers. It
is older and better known than the other official
source, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National
Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS): Criminal
Victimization in the United States. The BJS’s
NCVS provides projections for various regions
and for the entire country based on incidents voluntarily disclosed to interviewers by a huge
national sample drawn from the general public.
Facts and Figures in the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
The UCR was established in 1927 by a committee
set up by the International Association of Chiefs of
Police. The goal was to develop a uniform set of
definitions and reporting formats for gathering
crime statistics. Since 1930, the FBI has published
crime data in the UCR that was forwarded voluntarily to Washington by police departments across
the United States. In recent years, more than
18,000 village, town, tribal, college, municipal,
county, and state police departments and sheriff’s
departments in all 50 states, the District of
Columbia, and several territories that serve about
97 percent of the more than 300 million inhabitants of the United States participate in the data
collection process, usually by sending periodic
reports to state criminal justice clearinghouses.
Several federal law enforcement agencies now
L
contribute
data as well (FBI, 2014).
The
FBI
divides up the crimes it tracks into
I
two listings. Unfortunately, both Part I and Part II
D the UCR have been of limited value to those
of
interested
in studying the actual flesh-and-blood
D
victims rather than the incidents known to police
E
departments
or the characteristics of the persons
arrested
for allegedly committing them.
L
Part I of the UCR focuses on eight index
L
crimes,
the illegal acts most people readily think
about
when they hear the term “street crime.”
,
Four index crimes count violent attacks directed
“against persons”: murder, forcible rape, robbery,
and
T aggravated assault. The other four monitor
crimes “against property”: burglary, larceny (thefts
I
of all kinds), motor vehicle theft, and arson. (The
F
category
of arson was added in 1979 at the request
of Congress when poor neighborhoods in big cities
F
experienced many blazes of suspicious origin.
A
However,
incidents of arson are still unreliably
measured
because
intentionally set fires might
N
remain classified by fire marshals as being “of
Y
unknown
origin.”) These eight crimes (in actual
practice, seven) are termed index crimes because
the FBI adds all the known incidents of each one
1 these categories together to compute a “crime
of
index”
that can be used for year-to-year and
5
place-to-place comparisons to gauge the seriousness
6 the problem. (But note that this grand total is
of
unweighted;
that means a murder is counted as
8
just one index crime event, the same as an
T
attempted
car theft. So the grand total [like “comparing
S apples and oranges”] is a huge composite
that is difficult to interpret.)
The UCR presents the number of acts of violence and theft known to the authorities for cities,
counties, states, regions of the country, and even
many college campuses (since the mid-1990s; see
9781337027786, Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology, Ninth Edition, Karmen – © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
VICTIMIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES: AN OVERVIEW
Chapter 11). For each crime, the FBI compiles
information about the number of incidents reported
to the police, the total estimated losses in billions
of dollars due to property crimes, the proportion of
cases that were solved, and some characteristics of
the suspects arrested (age, sex, race)—but, unfortunately for victimologists, nothing about the people
who suffered harm and filed the complaints.
In Part II, the UCR only provides counts ofL
the number of people arrested for 21 assortedI
offense…
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