Week 3 Flashcards
(34 cards)
1
Q
Dictionary definitions of crime
A
Cause public harm
Are forbidden by law
Are punishable by law
2
Q
Legal definitions of crime
A
Crimes are acts or omissions that render the person liable to punishment
Omission = failing to do something (e.g. failing to provide the ‘necessities of life’)
3
Q
Problems with legal definitions of crime
A
- Tells us nothing about why the law criminalises some behaviours and not others
- > Why are some behaviours criminalised are others aren’t?
- Focuses more narrowly on street crimes rather than white collar and corporate crimes
- > Possible reasons? (inc. relationship to power, connection, and law making)
4
Q
Harm based definitions
A
- Regards a much broader range of behaviours as criminal conduct
- Regards violations of human rights as crimes
- > Street-level violence
- > Work place injuries
- Harms-based definition would recognise unsafe work practices as criminal long before legislation did
- > Pollution (e.g. Cancer Alley)
- > Corporate neglect
5
Q
Problems with harm based definitions
A
- Conceptions of human rights vary across time and place
(e. g. right to vote; what we perceive as a human right may not be perceived that way in another country) - Importance of various rights is relative
(e. g. my right to peaceful enjoyment of my property -v- neighbours right to have a party at their property) - Finding the right balance is difficult
- Doesn’t help us to understand the criminalisation process
6
Q
Categories of crime
A
Criminal (our main focus in this course)
Civil
Regulatory
7
Q
Types of criminal crimes
A
Crimes Against:
- Property
- Person
- Morality
- The state
- Public order
8
Q
Agreements over definitions
A
More agreement on ‘core crimes’
- Against person and property
Less agreement on relative crimes (i.e., changing perceptions)
- Against morality
- Against the state
- Against public order
9
Q
Changes in crimes over the years
A
- Changing perceptions of relative crimes lead to changes over time as to what behaviours are criminalised:
- > Social change (e.g. ‘domestic discipline’……….’domestic violence’)
- > Technological change (e.g. creation of the internet - offence of hacking)
- > Evolving morality (e.g. homosexuality)
- > Updates and reforms to criminal law
Important: We need to account for these changes when interpreting crime statistics and trends
10
Q
Media influence on crime definitions
A
- Media is more influential in defining relative crimes than core crimes
- Media depictions of crime can lead to the migration of behaviours from being regarded as lawful at one point in time to unlawful at another
(e. g. Queensland’s 2011 criminalisation of Kronic) - Media can impact the social construction of crime
11
Q
Measuring crime
A
- Because the definition of crime includes a broad range of behaviours, measuring crime also must take a broad approach
- Measuring crime includes gathering information from
Official agencies of social control
Offenders
Victims
Observations - Most often measure through admin data/ official data from police, courts and corrections
12
Q
Official crime statistics
A
- Known as ‘administrative data’
- Collected for administrative purposes and published by the agency (police, courts, corrections) and/or passed to other agencies for publication (e.g. ABS)
- Includes information known (ie., detected and/or reported and recorded) crimes
- Quantitative data
13
Q
ANZSOC scheme statistics
A
- ABS’ Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification (ANZSOC) scheme categorises and reports crime according to 16 broad divisions / categories
- A number of sub-divisions and offences under each of the 16 divisions
14
Q
Reporting patterns
A
- Victim reporting patterns vary over time, place and offence type (some offences are more likely to be reported to police than others)
- Changes in victim reporting directly influences the crime statistics
- Offences are recorded at the time they are reported
e. g a sexual assault which occurred in 1970, but was reported to the police in 2018 would appear in the 2018 data - As criminologists we are interested in why changes in reporting occur
- Crime victim surveys tell us about changes in victim reporting behaviour and also the dark figure of crime
15
Q
Changes in police policies
A
- Police are ‘the gatekeepers’ to the criminal justice system
- Changes in policing practices can directly affect crime statistics
e. g. a police ‘blitz’ on specific crimes (e.g. drug crime) will lead to more people being detected and charged. This will be reflected as a ‘spike’ in the crime trend
16
Q
Changes in counting rules
A
- Changes in the way crime is counted can directly affect crime statistics
- Counting rule changes can come about by a range of factors:
- > changes in legal definition (e.g. a change in the definition of assault may change the category of assault)
- > Police can change the way they count offences
17
Q
Quantifying crime
A
Two primary measures of crime:
- Number of offences
- > What we have so far examined
- Rate of offences
18
Q
Offence rates
A
Offence rates are important:
- As a general rule, the greater the population the more offenders and offences
- Different localities have different populations
- Population within a locality is rarely stagnate
- Therefore when comparing different localities and different time periods we need to take into account population changes
19
Q
Comparing offence rates
A
- Offence rates provide a standardised measure for comparing offences over time and place
Offence rate =
Number of offences / Population X 100,000*
- important for comparing different places
- also important to examine rates over time to account for population changes
20
Q
Courts and corrections data
A
- Demonstrate how offenders progress through the various stages of the criminal justice system
- Most offenders who appear in court do so at the Magistrates Court level
- Offenders in Higher courts more likely to received custodial sentences
- Most offenders sentenced to custody serve community-based orders
- Important to remember that sentencing options available to Courts are set out in legislation
- Discretionary and Mandatory sentences
21
Q
Victimisation data
A
- Includes information about crimes not reported and reporting patterns
- Demonstrates substantial variation in reporting across offence type
- Some property offences are more likely to be reported than some person offences such as assault
- A weakness is that more sensitive crimes (e.g., domestic violence, sexual assault) may be underreported
- > Due to ‘interviewer effects’
- Some forms of victimisation may be difficult to measure
- > Fraud offences where victims are unaware they have been victimised
22
Q
Other sources of data
A
Quantitative surveys and Qualitative interviews of
- Offenders in custody
- Active offenders in the community
- General community members
23
Q
Limitations of quantitative surveys
A
- Incarcerated offenders are not representative of the active offender population
- They may offend at higher frequencies
- Likelihood of detection is greater
- They may be less experienced at avoiding detection
24
Q
Dark figures of crime
A
- Some offences go unreported and undetected
- Some offences are more likely to be reported to police (eg. Residential burglary – driven in part by practices of insurance companies)
- Other offences are more difficult to detect and are more likely to not been reported (eg. sexual assault, fraud, drug offences)
- Therefore, police statistics don’t tell the complete story.
25
Court data
- Tells us how people arrest and/or charged by police flow through the criminal justice system and the penalties they receive.
- Vast majority of offences are finalised in the Magistrates Court (lowest court in the hierarchy).
26
Magistrates court
- jurisdiction is limited to less serious matters (eg. traffic matters, minor property offences, less serious assaults etc)
- Magistrates Courts have penalty options which are less severe (eg. up to short periods of imprisonment)
- Finalisation of the vast majority of matters in the Magistrates Court means the majority of offences brought before courts are less serious and result in less serious penalties.
27
Grey ares in Court data
- number of matters lodged in a given period, number of matters finalised in a given period, average time to finalisation and penalty.
- Time lag between arrest and finalisation can be in different reporting periods.
- also counts prosecutions by other agencies other than police
- police count # of offences reported, courts may count # of defendants or # of charges. Court data may also count only the ‘most serious offence’.
- Court data tends to double count as defendants move through the system. Vast majority of defendants finalised in the higher courts have been counted previously in the Magistrates Court.
28
Corrections data
Tells us the characteristics and sentences of defendants who have received a court imposed sentence which relates to corrective services:
-> Custodial sentence
-> Community-based order
Therefore, only tells us about a small subset of people adjudicated.
Also provides information about the number of people remanded in custody while awaiting trial and/or sentence.
29
Administrative data
Strengths of administrative data include:
-> Readily available source of knowledge
-> Cheap and easily obtained
Limitations of administrative data include:
-> Subject to complex counting rules that need to be understood
-> Fail to provide a measures of the ‘Dark Figure of Crime’, as such they only provide part of the picture.
30
Alternate sources of crime data
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Alternative sources of crime data help to quantify the ‘dark figure of crime’ and provide a rich understanding of crime:
Victim surveys
Offender self-report surveys
Population surveys
Observational data
```
31
Victim surveys
Victim surveys provide a measure of how many people have been victimised (and how many times the have been victimised) and whether they reported their victimisation to police.
- Helpful in estimating the true extent of crime.
- However, different surveys employ different methodologies, which can lead to different results.
- Issues with victim recall
- Rely upon survey participants realising they have been victimised.
32
Offender self-report surveys
Self-report surveys of convicted offenders:
- Assist in quantifying unreported and undetected offences (offenders may commit many more offences than they are prosecuted for)
Qualitative research with convicted offenders can assist in:
- Developing theories of offending
- Understanding the precursors of offending
- Understanding victim selection processes etc
33
Population surveys
Population surveys can assist in:
- understanding how many people commit crime (remembering that not everyone who commit crimes is detected)
- understanding the types and frequency of offending
- understanding the characteristics of people who commit crime.
34
Observational studies
Observational studies involve researchers observing the phenomenon under investigation in its natural setting.
Example: Homel et al (1997) observed and recorded characteristics of violence in and around licensed premises in Surfers Paradise and Mackay nightclub precincts.
