Deck 3: Measuring Crime

Question 1

Crimes reported to or detected by police are examples of administrative data.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

What is the 'dark figure of crime'? Why is it important?

Answer 2

Responses could include:
-The amount of crime that is undetected, not reported and not recorded.
-In order to measure crime and understand its impact on individuals, it needs to be reported and recorded.
-Without such information, it is difficult to obtain information for policy and procedure development.
-Data is also important for determining and allocating resources.
-The information gained from surveys about the dark figure of crime allows some identification of the crimes that go unreported and why.
-Crimes like domestic violence and sexual assault are significantly underreported suggesting that informal and formal responses to these crimes may be inadequate.

Question 3

Identify some of the factors that influence the reporting and recording of crime.

Answer 3

Responses could include:
-Variations in law enforcement activity across police commands.
-Variations in state laws as to what constitutes a crime.
-Counting rules, that is, what does and does not get counted into a category of crime.
-Variations between states and territories in laws, policing and recording practices.
-Variations in a victim's understanding of what is and what is not a crime.
-Victim's determination that the matter is not serious enough or too common to report or they knew the offender.

Question 4

What are the advantages and disadvantages of face-to-face interviews and mail-out surveys?

Question 5

Describe a situation in which a researcher would choose to gather qualitative data instead of quantitative data.

Question 6

Provide examples of qualitative data and explain why they are an important source of information.

Question 7

What is 'snowball sampling'?

Question 8

Outline how observational data is obtained.Provide an example of research that has used this method.

Question 9

What is the main difference between quantitative and qualitative studies when it comes to crime?

Question 10

Administrative data are available from corrective services.

Question 11

Outline the research methodology used in the Liverpool Desistance Study.

Question 12

Which of the following is not an example of organisational data?

A)Insurance companies
B)Security providers
C)Regulatory agencies
D)Licensed premises