Deck 6: Measuring Crime

Question 1

Which of the following is not a general purpose of measuring crime?

A) monitoring
B) agency accountability
C) deterrence
D) research

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The broad questions that influence all measures of crime include all of the following except:

A) what offenses should be measured
B) what units of analysis should be used
C) why offenders commit crimes
D) what the research or policy purpose is in measuring crime

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Which of the following is a fundamental variable in criminal justice and criminology?

A) timeliness
B) applicability
C) crime
D) arrest rates

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Crimes must at a minimum have an offender, because without an offender there is no crime.

Question 5

Different measures of crime tend to focus on different types of crime, primarily because:

A) not all crimes can be measured the same way with any degree of reliability or validity
B) not all crimes can be measured
C) not all definitions of crime are suitable to measurement
D) none of the above

Question 6

In an incident containing multiple crimes, the most serious one is counted in the UCR. This practice is known as the:

A) hierarchy rule
B) multiple offense rule
C) seriousness clause
D) selection method

Question 7

Researchers must decide on offenses, units, and purposes before specifying measures of crime.

Question 8

The NIBRS has a relatively low level of sophistication and cost.

Question 9

Delinquency, victimless crimes, and crimes rarely observed may be measured by self-report studies.

Question 10

Methods of reporting crime are never updated and have been continually used since their inception.

Question 11

Part II offenses of the UCR are counted when:

A) the crime is reported to police
B) crimes resulting in an arrest and criminal charge
C) the crime is observed by police
D) crimes lead to prosecution in the form of a trial

Question 12

A single incident cannot include multiple offenses, but may have one offense and multiple offenders.

Question 13

NIBRS reports each crime incident rather than the total number of certain crimes.

Question 14

One important step in selecting a measure of crime is deciding what crimes will be included.

Question 15

For fear of being sued, governmental agencies rarely keep records that document their actions and areas of responsibility.

Question 16

Which of the following is a data series that has been collected since 1930?

A) USPS
B) DAWN
C) UCR
D) NICVS

Question 17

If a burglar breaks into a house, rapes one of the occupants, and flees in the owners' car, which one of the crimes will be counted in congruence with the hierarchy rule?

A) vehicle theft
B) breaking and entering
C) rape
D) all of the above

Question 18

UCR crime data is reported broken down into how many parts?

A) one whole report
B) two parts
C) four different sections
D) three parts

Question 19

The UCR accounts for all types of crime, even those crimes that are not observed.

Question 20

With regard to measures of crime, the specific entities that researchers collect information about are known as:

A) policies
B) procedures
C) criminal codes
D) units of analysis

Question 21

Which term best describes "one or more offenses committed by the same offender, or group of offenders acting in concert, at the same time and place "?

A) victim
B) offense
C) crime
D) incident

Question 22

The most widely known victim survey is the:

A) NIBRS
B) UCR
C) NCVS
D) DAWN

Question 23

Which of the following crimes are detected almost exclusively by police observation?

A) traffic offenses
B) victimless crimes
C) drug sales
D) all of the above

Question 24

Which instrument asks people whether or not they have been the victim of a crime?

A) self-report survey
B) victim survey
C) computer-based survey
D) random survey

Question 25

The NVCS is based on a nationally representative sample of:

A) arrests
B) offenders
C) households
D) types of crime

Question 26

Which of the following is a weakness of the NCVS?

A) By using a six-month time frame, you decrease the likelihood of subjects forgetting about their victimization.
B) It finds out the number of unreported crimes.
C) People that have been victims repeatedly in a six-month period may not recall each one.
D) all of the above

Question 27

When crimes are selectively reported to police and selectively recorded by police, this falls under which method of reporting crime?

A) UCR
B) Incident based reports
C) NCVS
D) NIBRS

Question 28

Which of the following is referred to as a summary-based measure of crime?

A) UCR
B) NCVS
C) NIBRS
D) ADAM

Question 29

Which of the following are not accounted for by the NCVS?

A) crimes committed upon those 12 and over in a household
B) items stolen from your car
C) crimes that have commercial establishments as victims
D) all of the above

Question 30

In the field of public health, "monitoring" (in order to measure crime) is referred to as a(n):

A) index system
B) surveillance system
C) classification system
D) data system

Question 31

Which of the following are considered to be crime measurement "units of analysis"?

A) households
B) businesses
C) victims of assault
D) all of the above

Question 32

Which term best describes "an individual act of burglary, auto theft, or bank robbery"?

A) victim
B) offense
C) crime
D) incident

Question 33

The main difference between the UCR and NIBRS is:

A) the name of the crime report
B) reporting each crime incident rather than reporting the total number of certain crimes for each law enforcement agency
C) the method of gathering data
D) nothing; they are the same report

Question 34

Which of the following surveys has been conducted since 1971, surveys households, and is designed to monitor nationwide patterns?

A) UCR
B) NIBRS
C) NSDUH
D) NCVS

Question 35

It is fair to say that the UCR is:

A) a mutually exclusive measure
B) not a truly reliable measure
C) an exhaustive measure
D) all of the above

Question 36

Telescoping refers to:

A) when respondents may not accurately recall when an incident occurred
B) when only certain victims are interviewed
C) when only certain crimes are reported
D) none of the above

Question 37

According to the textbook, which two series of crime measures seek to assess the magnitude, nature, and impact of crime in the nation?

A) UCR and NIBRS
B) UCR and NCVS
C) UCR and Part I Crimes
D) UCR and ADAM

Question 38

A major issue of the NCVS is that only residents over the age of __________ may be interviewed.

A) 18
B) 12
C) 10
D) 5

Question 39

Unlike the UCR, NIBRS does not implement:

A) a higher level of sophistication in reporting
B) the hierarchy rule
C) single-time reporting
D) all of the above

Question 40

The most effective method of accounting for certain crimes such as delinquency and victimless crimes is:

A) anonymous surveys
B) self-report surveys
C) observation surveys
D) uniform crime reports

Question 41

With regard to limitations of a crime measure, self-report studies can tell us something about shoplifters , but it would be difficult to use this method to measure:

A) total shoplifting incidents
B) total theft incidents
C) effectiveness of probation for shoplifters
D) none of the above

Question 42

What is one of the chief advantages of measuring crime through victim surveys?

A) cheaper cost to collect data
B) assists with obtaining counts of incidents not reported to police
C) more honest and detailed incident reporting
D) police reports tend to use legal jargon that is hard for evaluators to understand

Question 43

The main purpose of ADAM was to provide an ongoing assessment of the prevalence of drug use among:

A) high school seniors
B) persons enrolled in drug addiction rehabilitation
C) persons arrested for criminal offenses
D) persons under the age of 18

Question 44

A victim's insistence that the police not arrest a suspect results in no documentation of the incident (i.e., the police officer does not file a report on the incident). This circumstance supports the idea:

A) that crime is subjective
B) that discretion in police work is inappropriate
C) that police measures of crime are problematic
D) none of the above

Question 45

One of the primary reasons for conducting crime surveys was to illuminate unreported crimes; this concept is called:

A) the dark figure of crime
B) crime measure falsification
C) false-positive reporting
D) shadow reporting

Question 46

Monitoring the Future is a survey that targets a specific population, namely:

A) high school teachers
B) high school seniors
C) parents of high school seniors
D) high school counselors

Question 47

Measures of crime are said to be selective. In what way is the ADAM program selective as a measure of drug use?

A) it operated in a relatively small number of cities
B) it includes only arrested persons
C) it includes voluntary interviews and testing
D) all of the above

Question 48

Drug episodes are defined as:

A) excessive use of drugs during a certain time frame
B) withdrawal from a certain drug that lasts for an extended period
C) visits to a hospital emergency room that are produced by or directly related to the use of illegal drugs or nonmedical use of drugs
D) lengthy periods of drug use exceeding one year

Question 49

With regard to the UCR, one of the reasons that Part II offenses are counted only if an arrest is made is:

A) that individual states have different definitions of crimes
B) that crimes are only relevant to researchers if an arrest is made
C) that the arrest serves to validate the criminal activity
D) none of the above

Question 50

UCR data suffers from:

A) clerical problems
B) data-processing problems
C) political problems
D) all of the above

Question 51

DAWN is based on units of analysis that are:

A) directly related to the use of drugs
B) indirectly linked to criminal offenses
C) directly reported to the survey by the offender
D) indirectly related by the victim

Question 52

If a researcher wanted to determine the amount of cocaine use in an inner-city area of Chicago, which type of study would he most likely use?

A) police data
B) in-person interviews
C) self-report survey
D) victimization survey

Question 53

The core sample of Monitoring the Future is:

A) households
B) high school seniors
C) college students
D) jail inmates

Question 54

With regard to the UCR, Part I offenses are counted only when:

A) the offenses are reported to police
B) the offenses are recorded by police
C) both a and b are correct
D) none of the above

Question 55

The Drug Abuse Warning Network gathers data from which of the following?

A) samples of hospitals
B) samples of medical examiners nationwide
C) drug episodes
D) all of the above

Question 56

Police measurement of crime is imperfect because:

A) people do not always report crimes to the police
B) police do not always record crimes that become known to them
C) police do not always record crimes that they observe
D) all of the above

Question 57

One of the most interesting aspects of ADAM was that it combined urinalysis and:

A) self-report measures of drug use
B) brain scan images
C) conviction rates
D) confessions

Question 58

Every local and state enforcement agency:

A) shares records among themselves
B) maintains its own records
C) transfers all information and data to the Internet
D) destroys all information not pertinent to crime studies

Question 59

Surveys are especially useful for learning about which of the following?

A) crimes reported to police
B) crimes not reported to police
C) crimes resulting in conviction
D) crimes with multiple offenders

Question 60

Which of the following is a characteristic of directed observations of crime?

A) has a fairly specific research or policy purpose
B) focuses on a relatively small sample
C) the expected incidents made observation an appropriate way to measure crime
D) all of the above

Question 61

Most of us have committed traffic offenses and have not been caught. This statement reinforces the fact that:

A) crime is not measurable
B) crimes known to the police are not a good measure for some offenses
C) most traffic offenses are not crimes
D) none of the above

Question 62

Which technique is best for measuring crimes that do not have easily identifiable victims?

A) NCVS
B) UCR
C) NIBRS
D) Self-report surveys

Question 63

UCR crime data is compiled by the __________ .

Question 64

The victim in crimes such as prostitution, drug use, and bookmaking is __________ .

Question 65

At a minimum, crimes need to have a(n)  __________  to be considered a crime.

Question 66

What is considered a major drawback to the accuracy of NCVS data?

A) it does not explain all crime that goes unreported
B) it does not allow the estimate of victimizations for individual cities
C) it is not a thorough as UCR
D) all of the above

Question 67

When crimes happen at home and/or against persons, what is the best measure to use if the crimes are not reported to police?

A) NCVS
B) DAWN
C) UCR
D) NIBRS

Question 68

Like __________ reporting, NIBRS is voluntary; no agency is required to submit crime reports to the FBI in any form.

Question 69

The challenge of developing reliable and valid measures of such offenses as drug use has prompted researchers and policy makers to search for __________  approaches.

Question 70

Data that is based upon households has which of the following as potential problems?

A) they are inherently inaccurate
B) law enforcement cannot use them
C) they are difficult to generalize to other populations
D) they are not that different from official measures like NIBRS

Question 71

__________ of crime are important for many criminal justice research purposes.

Question 72

When compared with UCR, which measure has the chance to provide greater detail to a broader range of offenses?

A) NCVS
B) Monitoring the Future
C) NIBRS
D) DAWN

Question 73

Two methods that police come to know about crimes are  __________  and reports by others.

Question 74

__________ is an effort to convert the UCR to a more comprehensive crime report.

Question 75

Which of the following is used to gather data for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health?

A) households
B) schools
C) doctors
D) prisons

Question 76

Delinquency, __________ , and crimes rarely observed may be measured by self-report surveys.

Question 77

The most widely used measures of crime are based on police records and are commonly referred to as:

A) crimes known to police
B) victimless crimes
C) unreportable crimes
D) none of the above

Question 78

According to your text, what do police cite as a main problem in the enforcement of drug laws?

A) the laws are too complicated
B) drug use/sales are normally not witnessed by the police
C) drug users/seller will not tell on one another
D) all the above

Question 79

One purpose for measuring crime is to:

A) anticipate correctional facility populations
B) predict future crime trends
C) monitor potential threats to public safety and security
D) estimate the economic costs associated with crime

Question 80

The four elements of a crime for reporting purposes are offender, victim, __________ , and incident.