Showing papers on "Crime statistics published in 2000"

Tourism demand and the nuisance of crime

Abstract: The international tourism industry is booming, giving many developing nations unprecedented opportunity in trade. But for some developing nations, law and order problems appear to have obstructed growth in tourism. With little attention in the literature given to the influences of safety considerations for tourist demand, this paper investigates the deterrent effect of crime on tourism in developing island economies of the South Pacific and Caribbean. Using annual time‐series data, a simple country‐specific model is estimated. The empirical results confirm the importance of crime levels as a hindrance to the demand for tourism, the inference being that news of a deteriorating law and order situation in destination countries is being successfully disseminated to potential tourists in source countries despite the general inaccessibility of up‐to‐date crime statistics.

Homicidal Encounters: A Study of Homicide in Australia 1989-1999

Abstract: Mouzos analyses Australian homicide data, using information collected by the National Homicide Monitoring Program for the period 1989 to 1999. The main elements of homicide - the characteristics of the incident, victim, offender, and victim-offender relationship - are analysed. Chapters cover homicide in the course of other crime, mass and serial murders, male to male homicide, partner homicide, homicidal women, infanticide, homicidal children, elderly homicide, and the prevention of homicide.

Crime Statistics as Constructs: The Case of Swedish Rape Statistics

Abstract: Using Swedish rape statistics as a focus, this article aims to empirically describe the way in which different factors affect official crime statistics produced at the national level. It is argued that cross-national comparisons of crime levels are extremely hazardous when based on official crime statistics, since the construction rules vary widely. International comparisons of crime levels should as a rule be confined to findings of international victim surveys. The example of rape statistics in Sweden - about three times higher when compared to other countries in the European Sourcebook - is used to explain what factors can influence statistics. Statistical, legal and substansive factors are to be taken into account. The author shows that changes in statistical routines, the legal definition of rape and changes over time all influence the statistics in a substansive way. This article indicates the great extent to which crime statistics are a construct, whose appearance is very sensitive to the rules applied in the process of construction. In order to employ statistics appropriately, a thorough knowledge of the principles guiding this process is therefore essential.

Crime and Control in Britain

Abstract: This paper explores the possible patterns of crime and control in the twenty-first century, drawing on an analysis of current and recent developments. These suggest a dystopian prospect of permanen...

Criminal Violence and Youth in Sweden: A Long-term Perspective

Abstract: Since the mid-1980s, the Swedish public has become increasingly concerned about juvenile violence. This article confronts the public belief of increasing juvenile violence with systematic criminological data from crime statistics and other sources. Based on police and court statistics, as well as data from victimization studies and cause-of-death statistics, it is concluded that there is good reason to believe that Sweden is currently experiencing an 'enforcement wave' with regard to juvenile violence (particularly in the youngest age brackets), which reinforces the image of dramatic increases in the level of juvenile violence. The reasons why juvenile violence is thought to be on the increase even in the face of a lack of hard empirical evidence are discussed. Four long- and short-term trends are proposed as possible explanations: (i) the well-ordered modern society; (ii) the role of the mass media; (iii) the growth of feminine values; and (iv) the application of an offensive model of crime policy.

Managing Crime: Police Use of Crime Data as an Indicator of Effectiveness

Abstract: The use by the police of crime statistics and crime clearance figures has traditionally been identified as an indicator of police efficiency and effectiveness. However, it has become clear, even in the police literature, that recorded crime can be little more than a relatively sophisticated artifice. This is because crime figures can be, and are, used to demonstrate police efficiency in terms of clearance rates or, alternatively, lack of investment, when crime figures are high and clearance rates are low. The ability of the police to manipulate re- corded crime is now recognized and identified in the literature.

Prevention or repression? The false dilemma of citizen security

Abstract: There is a marked contrast between the growing sense of insecurity among the population and the absence of consolidated statistics that would allow the phenomenon to be measured more objectively. This article seeks to make a contribution to the knowledge of the situation of citizen insecurity affecting the region, taking a comparative view based on the limited and not always reliable information available and looking at the problem from various standpoints, both social and economic. The authors begin by examining some manifestations of criminal violence in the 1990s, especially in urban areas, after which they review the most important theories on the study of violence, the profiles of victims and attackers, traditional and emerging forms of delinquency, the frequent relation between violence and unemployment, the economic cost of violence and delinquency, and the main policies adopted to deal with them. They then go on to examine the measures taken in the region with regard to citizen security, which have shown the need to use more integral forms of prevention (primary and secondary) and control for dealing with criminal violence and to consolidate the systems of crime statistics of the region in order to be able to identify the factors with the greatest incidence on criminal violence and the less visible forms taken by the latter.

Influences on the Prisoner Rate: Number of Entries into Prison, Length of Sentences and Crime Rate

Abstract: On the basis of the data contained in the European Sourcebook, this article tries to answer the question: 'What influences the prisoner rate most? The number of entries into prison, the length of sentences, or the crime rate?' The authors show that the crime rate is absolutely not correlated with the prisoner rate. The latter depends principally on the length of the imposed custodial sanctions and secondly on the number of those imposed prison sentences. Nevertheless, there are some indications suggesting that these results could be different from one type of offence to another. Unfortunately, this hypothesis could not be tested on the basis of the European Sourcebook data.

The relative frequency of offensive and defensive gun uses: results from a national survey.

Abstract: Some controversy exists about the relative frequency of criminal and self-defense gun use in the United States Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey of over 1,900 adults conducted in 1996, we find that criminal gun use is far more common than self-defense gun use This result is consistent with findings from other private surveys and the National Crime Victimization Surveys In this survey, all reported cases of criminal gun use and many cases of self-defense gun use appear to be socially undesirable There are many instances of gun use, often for intimidation, that are not reported to the police and may not appear in official crime statistics

The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics: A New Tool in Assessing Crime and Policy Issues in Comparative and Empirical Perspective

Abstract: Theories which suggest a relationship between crime or criminal justice variables on the one hand, and variables related to criminal justice policies on the other hand, cannot be tested without reference to historic or comparative data. Since international comparisons offer the most powerful test of such theories, policy-related research in Europe has suffered, so far, from a lack of valid comparative data. Whether crime data from different countries are comparable, has always been subject to controversies. In the case of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice, a network of specialists was established under the auspices of the Council of Europe in order to assess the validity of the data. Although some problems in cross-country level comparisons could not be settled, the European Sourcebook offers comparative data on 36 Member States of the Council of Europe on a variety of subjects (offences and offenders known to the police; prosecution, convictions, sentences, and corrections; survey data; and indications on manpower and budgets of police forces, prosecutors, and corrections).

The Shots Heard 'Round the World

Abstract: The massacre at Columbine High School last year unleashed a torrent of fresh concern over the threat that violence poses to society. It also energized a government research effort to understand and prevent violence. Ironically, this flurry of activity comes at a time when youth violence, as reflected in crime statistics, is in decline.

The Social Production of Crime Statistics

Abstract: The problems associated with trying to conceptualize and measure crime with crime statistics are widely recognized and well documented. Most often studies have focused on the technical issues of reliability and validity. Recent analyses have also considered how crime statistics are socially constructed or produced. These studies, however, focused on how such statistics are influenced by the decisions and actions of people who participate in the system of criminal justice and have vested interests in how crime is defined or measured. This paper, in contrast, will demonstrate that actions and decisions of individuals engaged in the production of crime statistics but working without any vested interest in the meaning or measure of crime also have an impact on how crime is conceptualized and measured.

Prosecution in Europe: Varying Structures, Convergent Trends

Abstract: Chapter 2 of the European Sourcebook attempts to show the differences as well as the common features of the prosecution services of the Council of Europe Member States. In order to do so the following five categories of statistics were collected: the total number of cases the prosecuting authority recorded as having been dealt with within a particular year; the number of cases brought before a court; the number of cases dropped; the number of cases dropped conditionally; the number of cases ended by the imposition of a sanction. The prosecution statistics of the European countries studied vary because of differences in the input structures. They are also affected by variations in output structures. These are determined by the powers that the prosecution authorities themselves possess. These variations between the prosecution systems within Europe cause significant differences in the resulting statistics and must be borne in mind when analysing the European Sourcebook data.

The Sex Crime: Deterioration more Apparent than Real?

Abstract: Public concern about an escalation of sex crime is unsupported by a critical analysis of official crime statistics in England and Wales. Assumptions about the inveterate recidivism of sex offenders are unconfirmed by follow-up studies. A great variety of behaviours is covered by sex crime, from the grave to the trivial. To the traditional offences of predatory aggressors, violent rapists and a small number of dangerous offenders driven by pathological emotions, are now added date rapes and harassments previously little reported. All sex incidents involving children are widely believed to cause lasting damage, despite evidence to the contrary. Female offenders and boy victims are receiving more attention. Adolescent involvement is insufficiently distinguished from paedophile offences and male homosexuals are suspected of paedophile tendencies. The development of constructive therapeutic approaches is impeded by doubts about efficacy and a punitive ethos.

Crime Trends in Europe

Abstract: ARTICLES: 1. Editorial 2. Martin Killias and Wolfgang Rau - The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics: A New Tool in Assessing Crime and Policy Issues in Comparative and Empirical Perspective 3. Gordon C. Barclay - The comparability of data on convictions and sanctions: are international comparisons possible? 4. Jorg-Martin Jehle - Prosecution in Europe: Varying structures, convergent trends 5. Martin Killias and Marcelo F. Aebi - Crime Trends in Europe from 1990 to 1996: How Europe Illustrates the Limits of the American Experience 6. Marcelo F. Aebi and Andre Kuhn - Influences on the prisoner rate: Number of entries into prison, length of sentences and crime rate 7. Hanns von Hofer - Crime statistics as constructs: the case of Swedish rape statistics 8. Frank van Tulder - Crimes and the need of sanction capacity in the Netherlands: trends and backgrounds 9. Jon Vagg and Justine Harris Current Issues: False Profits: Why Product Counterfeiting is Increasing.

Firearm-related deaths in Australia 1998

Abstract: A statistical overview of deaths in Australia for the year 1998 whose underlying cause was reported as being firearm related is provided The report includes statistics on firearms deaths as a whole, as well as statistics on suicides, homicides, fatal accidents, deaths as a result of legal intervention, and also deaths where the injury was undetermined as to whether it was accidentally or purposely inflicted

Etiological Factors Linked to Criminal Violence and Adult Mental Illness

Abstract: Criminal violence is of great concern to our society. Although we are unable to consistently predict which individuals will become violent, research and official crime statistics have suggested that certain individuals may be more prone to engage in criminal offending than others.

Violence in the District of Columbia: Patterns from 1999

Abstract: Violent crime continues to be a major concern in the District of Columbia. In 1999, the District recorded 14,871 violent incidents against 16,372 victims. Nearly 12,000 individuals were assaulted and almost 4,000 robbed. To inform efforts to reduce violence in the city, the Mayor's Office and the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) convened a small data team in mid-July, 2000. Composed of representatives from the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC), the Urban Institute, the Mayor's Office, and the CJCC, the team was charged with analyzing violent incidents in the city by identifying trends and patterns that characterize violent incidents, victims, and offenders.

Developing useful transit-related crime and incident data

Abstract: Transit agencies have an obligation to provide a reasonably safe and secure system for their patrons and employees. Transit management must make decisions regarding the best use of police, security personnel, and other resources to reduce crime and increase the perception of a safe transportation system. This report presents findings about current methods for collecting analyzing and using data on transit-related crime to make decisions on personnel deployment and allocation of security resources. The findings are based on telephone interviews and information collected from 21 transit agencies. These transit agencies use three distinct organizational/management approaches to transit policing and security operations: dedicated transit police department; dedicated transit crime unit within local police force; and contracts with local law enforcement and/or private security companies. This final report includes an assessment of the findings, leading to recommendations for improving the usefulness of transit crime data. The central recommendation of this project is a proposed change in the reporting of national crime statistics to the Federal Transit Administration. Detailed recommendations are presented in the form of a guidelines document--"Guidelines for Transit Crime Data Analysis and Reporting" (Appendix D).

New South Wales Recorded Crime Statistics 1999

Abstract: This report presents data on crimes reported to or detected by NSW police from January 1997 to December 1999. The data were extracted from the Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS) of the NSW Police Service in January 2000. The report includes an overview of trends over the most recent two-year period for a selection of serious offence categories. The overview in this year's report indicates that there are now no significant upward trends in recorded crime for these selected offence categories. Furthermore, seven of the sixteen major offence categories are now trending downwards. This compares favourably with the trends reported in recent years. Between 1998 and 1999, substantial decreases were recorded in the numbers of recorded incidents of sexual assault, armed robbery, break and enter offences and motor vehicle theft in NSW. Some of these decreases were foreshadowed in last year's report, which showed a general pattern of improvement in crime trends. The regional information in Section 3 of this report, however, shows that while this pattern of improvement is widespread across NSW, there are still some regions experiencing increases in the numbers of recorded offences, particularly for non-violent property crimes.

Baudžiamųjų bylų kėlimo Lietuvoje bendrosios tendencijos

Abstract: The article analyses the statistics of registered applications about criminal offences and brought cases in all police stations of Lithuania. The author is searching for specific features that indicate the existing of factors distorting criminological presentation. The methods of statistics and probability theory are being used. The factors distorting criminological presentation have been detected in case statistics. The phenomenon of volitional regulation of the case bringing process in police stations is being noticed – in December annually the process of case bringing is speeded up artificially. The estimate of the volitional addition of cases has been calculated. The number of cases brought in 1995 has been decreased by 0,9% because of the difference in the scale of the volitional addition of cases. The number of the registered crimes has been decreased by about 0,9% for this reason. The December distortions are hidden due to the cumulative character of the statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The fluctuation of the case bringing probability in different months is not only accidental, however, their reasons are not clear. The process of case bringing and its change is important to crime statistics. The period 1990-1997 did not see any indications of decreasing registered crimes due to the growing police work in the common statistics of statements and cases. It is necessary to investigate the case bringing process in different police stations.

The Criminalization of "Black Deprivation" in the United Kingdom

Abstract: Is "BLACK DEPRIVATION" CRIME? THIS QUESTION SURFACED REPEATEDLY IN THE author's mind as she observed how the legalities of court proceedings constructed socioeconomic marginalization to be consistent with "blackness" and a condition through which a black person's involvement in crime can be comprehended. This scenario emerged following allegations of a drug offense for which 24 black [1] and 20 white defendants [2] appeared before a London Crown Court during a seven-month systematic observation of drug cases in 1991. It was more salient in drug trafficking offense trials where cases involving 15 black and 16 white defendants prominently produced a descriptive account of how deprivation was appropriated in the criminal justice rhetoric of prosecuting barristers (and judges) to represent a race phenomenon. [3] For this reason, the sample data used for analysis are derived from drug trafficking cases the author observed at the Crown Court. Although the article draws data from cases concerning defendants from black and white racial groups, the focus is not a comparative discussion o f a case outcome premised on race. Thus, the concern is not so much with the contentious subject of the court's racially based discriminatory practices, as notably reflected in sentencing outcomes (see, for instance, Home Office, 1992, 1994, 1998; Moxon, 1988; Hudson, 1989; Hood, 1992), as it is with how the court is established as a site where racial imageries and divisions are reproduced. The article does raise questions as to how courtroom discourse may affect a jury's decision-making regarding a defendant's conviction or acquittal. In juxtaposing the socioeconomic position of white defendants with that of their black counterparts, deprivation is seen to constitute a theme through which race is subjected to a process of construction in the criminal justice discourse of drug trials. Defendants in both racial groups commonly shared a similar socioeconomic background. Almost all of them belonged to the lower class: they resided in inner cities where their arrests were initiated, lived in council or rented accommodation, were unemployed or in irregular self-employment, and received state benefits (see Kalunta-Crumpton, 1998). The dominant class composition of the defendants constitutes a crucial background element here in the sense that it mirrors the class of people commonly associated with crime, a predominance that is replicated in official crime statistics (see Coleman and Moynihan, 1996) and, by implication, in victim surveys (see, for instance, Hough and Mayhew, 1983; Mayhew and Maung, 1992). In academic literature, lower-class devianc e and criminality have similarly remained at the center of sociological and criminological discussions of deviance and crime, within which socioeconomic factors have notably been featured in crime-causation analyses or posited at the level of correlation. The next section briefly explores how this academic theorization of deviance and crime within a class framework is mapped out as an initial angle from which to reason the relevance of deprivation in the courtroom narrative of a drug offense. Subsequently, theorizing the features of crime in the realm of deprivation is shown to particularly embrace race in the popular and academic discourse of crime. This intersection of race, class, and crime is empirically illustrated in a sample part of the research findings, which reveal that prosecuting barristers' (and judges') discursive response to a drug offense case entails tapping into knowledge that has as its vital components elements of racial awareness (see Kalunta-Crumpton, 1999). Thus, comparable conditions of black and white defendants that are supposedly congruent with socioeconomic deprivation were discursively constructed in their criminal link to a drug offense only in cases involving black defendants. Class-Deprivation-Crime Theoretical Justification Theories on crime are extensively covered in the academic literature; the intention here is not to provide an in-depth review or criticisms of the literature, but rather to piece together the lower-class context within which a range of prominent mainstream and contemporary sociological and criminological perspectives have perceived crime. …

Problemy związane ze statystycznym opisem przestępczości w oparciu o dane statystyk policyjnych

Abstract: Crime, like any other social phenomenon, requires a statistical description. That description has been changing together with changes of the criminological paradigms. Today, data from three different sources are use to measure crime: official statistics, self-report surveys, and victimization surveys. The data are difficult to compare (in respect of their type, extent, and manner in which they are acquired); however, they are complementary and permit a multi-dimensional description of the phenomenon. The oldest and still the basic source of figures on crime are the crime statistics. What has changed, however, is the approach to such data. Today, they are evaluated in three different perspectives: realistic, institutional, and radical. The present study signals the problems that arise when trying to provide a statistical description of crime of the 1990s basing on police statistics interpreted (to a varying extent) in all three perspectives. My point of departure is the assumption that just like the other statistics of crime, the police statistics is a social construct. It is a product of social, political and organizational processes. Explanation of the process of statistics-making help towards a qualitative evaluation of the data contained in the statistics. The data from police statistics may be treated as indices of both the functioning of the institutions for social control, and of detected crime that results from such control. Important in the social process of statistics-making is both the occurrence of specific events or behaviors and the social reaction to them. Possessing political power, the state creates the system of laws together with organizational structures that supervise the observance of those laws. The functioning of the formalized legal control may be analyzed from the viewpoint of decisions taken by the legislator in the process of law-making as well as those taken by institutions specially appointed to exercise such control. Fundamental in the process of making of police statistics is the role of decisions taken by the police in the course of prosecution. The police (as well as other prosecution agencies) is authorized by state authorities to detect, qualify, register and count events that are found to be offences and the perpetrators of those acts. It is authorized to gather, process and publish data. The legislative process, that is the legislator's decisions concerning law-making, may be appraised in various perspectives. Important in the context of interpretation of data from police statistics is their evaluation in the perspective of criminalization/de-criminalization and penalization/de-penalization acts, construction of substantive penal law and criminal procedure institution, as well as regulation of the structure and competencies of agencies dealing with public safety and order, the police included. Also monitored should be legislative "steps" in the area of misdemeanors law and penal law concerning offences against the Treasury. In the process of both formalized and informal social control, offences are "disclosed''; evcnts and behaviors idcntified with prohibited acts are distinguished from among the bulk of events and behaviors. To "disclose'' an offence, one needs knowledge as to what is and what is not a prohibited act; the opportunity to recognize that offence; and the awareness of recognizing it. In our system, the institutions appointed thus to "disclose'' offences include the Police, the prosecutor's office, the Office of State Protection, Military Police, Frontier Guards, fiscal inspection agencies, the Customs Inspection, State Sanitary Inspection, State Trade Inspection, as well as other agencies specified in individual laws. As can be supposed, most offences are disclosed by the victims, natural persons, and members of victimized institutions. Disclosure of an offence is not tantamount to its reporting. Self-report surveys confirm the existence of disclosed but unreported offences. As follows from such surveys, people in different countries show different tendencies to report facts of victimization to the police, and those tendencies depend on the type of offence involved. In Poland, it is the citizens' social duty to report offences; that duty becomes legal in exceptional situations and with respect to a specific group of offences only. Not all reported offences are registered. Registration follows strictly specified rules related to the system of information gathering and processing that is currently binding upon the prosecution agencies. Registration of offences proceeds through a prosecution agency's decision to institute preparatory proceedings. Most often, the proceedings are instituted on the citizens' initiative. Once instituted, preparatory proceedings aims at establishing whether a prohibited act has in fact been committed and whether that act constitutes an offence. The event with respect to which qualification of the act as an offence has been confirmed by completed preparatory proceedings is treated as an established offence in police statistics. Preparatory proceedings also aims at detecting the offender, that is at identifying the person who has in fact committed a given act. At the preparatory stage, this person is treated as the suspect. In most cases, identification of the suspect by the prosecution agencies bases on indication made by the person who reported the offence. The process of detection of offenders varies depending on the type of offence, indication or lack of indication of the suspect at the moment of reporting the offence, and the province in which the preparatory proceedings was conducted. The legislator authorized the Police not only to detect, qualify and register offences, to detect offenders, and to take a variety of decisions concerning acts and persons in preparatory proceedings (at the stage of its institution, course, and completion), but also to gather appropriate data about those acts and persons and then to count, process and publish such data. The term "police statistics'' usually means a collection, gathered and published by the Police, of figures pertaining to crime. Such figures make it possible to describe the quantitative aspect of the phenomenon, but may be quite misleading if used in a wrong manner. Data from police statistics may be used mechanically, so to say, simply quoted with no attempt at explanation. They may be manipulated, that is used in a biased way towards specific aims. As we know, figures can be used to prove any hypothesis whatever, provided that they are selected, put in order, confronted and counted. They can also be interpreted; this, however, is where difficulties start to arise. It appears that it is by no means a simple task to provide a statistical description of crime basing on police statistics. The picture of crime that emerges from that statistics is usually described in a language typical of interpretation of such data in the realistic perspective. We speak of the extent of crime, its dynamics, and trends as if we believed that the data gathered by the Police permitted characterization of "real crime". Despite this language of the realistic perspective, the actual analysis bases on all three perspectives, that is also on the institutional and the radical one. This means that using police stirtistics, we at the same time analyze the process of their making. Awareness of the process in which the data emerge determines the manner of describing and interpretation of the phenomenon of crime.

Policing efficacy: Socioeconomic destiny or effective information analysis

Abstract: Tlie efficacy of new policing techniques has called in to question a long held canon of criminologists: that vast social forces (such as poverty, racism and demographics) beyond police control are the primary determinants of criminal activity. A new approach to policing called COMSTAT (computerized analysis of crime statistics) has resulted in a significant re­ duction in criminal activity within the cities that have adopted it according to FBI Uniform Crime Report data. These results were achieved by quickly identifying and targeting minor social disorders crimes (such as graffiti, loitering, and vandalism) before they lead to major social disorders (such as robberies, rapes, and homicides). This paper discusses the informa­ tion and management theory underlying the COMSTAT approach to policing. INTRODUCTION For decades, criminologists have argued that tlie key predictors of criminal activity are vast social forces (such as poverty, racism and demographics) beyond police control (Pederson, 1996 & 1997). The crime reduction results of a new approach to policing called COMSTAT (comput­ erized analysis of crime statistics) seems to refute this basic tenet of criminologists. COMSTAT does not argue that social forces do not have the potential ti impact crime rates. Rather, COMSTAT suggests that proactive policing, based on solid information analysis and the resultant policing strategies, can reduce the impact of these societal artifacts. Advanced analytical techniques (such as pattern matching and identification) that empower management to make more informed decisions form the theoretical foundation of the COMSTAT process. The COMSTAT process seeks to reduce criminal activity and by extension to enhance a community's quality of life. An advanced computer-based decision support system to aid decision making provides the technological infrastructure of the COMSTAT approach. This technological foundation is used to facilitate more modem decision-makmg techniques based on (near) real time information within the day-to-day activities of a police organization. More specifically, the technological and deci­ sion making techniques permit constant monitoring of policing practices, which facilitates con­ tinuous improvements in police productivity. Early results indicate that the COMSTAT approach has merit.