Critique of Official Crime Statistics in Canada: Limitations and Challenges, Study notes of Criminal Justice

Download Critique of Official Crime Statistics in Canada: Limitations and Challenges and more Study notes Criminal Justice in PDF only on Docsity! SOC 3395: Criminal Justice and Corrections: Lecture 8.1: Official Crime Statistics: A Critique Today we will look at Canadian crime statistics from a variety of angles. First, I will give a broad outline of Canadian crime rates and trends, and examine how these play out in major metropolitan areas. Next, I will outline some of the many problems that can be found with official statistics on crime that may render them inaccurate measures of the level of criminality. We will then continue on in this same fashion in a critical consideration of survey research on crime (e.g. victimization surveys). (1) Canadian Crime Rates and Trends: Generally, officially gathered statistics on crime are calculated by dividing the number of times a particular event occurs in a certain time period by the population size for a particular geographical area, and then multiplying this figure by a constant (usually 100,000). Such official police statistics are interesting, and shed light on patterns of crime and victimization in Canada. Indeed they may help us to recognize and classify important properties of deviants, criminals, victims, and crime scenes. This can help clarify popular perceptions, evaluate changes in the risks involved with different locations and time periods, assist professionals in planning, implementing, and assessing programs set up to treat victims, rehabilitate or deter offenders, and aid in constructing sociological theories to explain why some are more prone to offender or be victimized than others. However, the study of crime and victimization poses difficult and unique methodological problems for sociological researchers. We will now review the relative advantages and disadvantages of using official statistics in this regard. Unfortunately, however, there have been radical changes in data collection procedures over the years. For example, until the early 1960's, information on crime in Canada existed only at the municipal and regional levels. Reports of criminal investigations formed the bases of tallies that were compiled at the local level by police detachments across the country. Two major deficiencies plagued these law-enforcement records. First, since they were collected for police purposes only, they lacked sufficient sociological and criminological detail. Second, the procedures by which crimes were recorded differed substantially among police jurisdictions. Therefore, meaningful comparisons of jurisdictions were difficult, if not impossible. However, in 1962, the federal government introduced nationwide the Canadian Uniform Crime Report (UCR) system. The UCR remedied many of these shortcomings in the previous approach. UCR Data (2007) * In 2007 about 2.3 million Criminal Code incidents were reported to police (a 30 year low). These don’t include traffic incidents & other federal statute violations. Breakdown: 13 % violent crime 48% property crime 39% “other” criminal code offences (e.g. mischief, bail violations) * Historically, property crimes have been losing ground to violent & “other” offences (e.g. in 1980 these were 8%, 65% & 27% respectively) The overall crime rate decreased 7% in 2007, driven by declines in virtually all high-volume offences: theft under $5000, mischief under $5000, B & E, common assault, car theft, disturbing the peace, fraud and counterfeiting. There has been a general downward trend in the crime rate since 1991. Historically crime rates were highest in the west/ lowest in the east. Since 2002, while the west retained the highest rates, central Canada had lower rates slightly lower than most Atlantic provinces. Saskatchewan had the highest crime rate, Ontario the lowest. In 2007, Newfoundlander, after having the lowest provincial crime rate for well over 20 years, fell to 5th place.  Declines were reported in most of Canada’s census metropolitan areas, including the nine largest. The biggest decreases were in Kitchener, Montreal and Winnipeg. Most of the 18 smaller cities also reported drops in crime. The only areas to report increases were the smaller CMA’s of St. John’s, Saguenay, St. John and Gatineau. * As in other years, the highest crime rates were in the Western CMA’s, most notably Saskatoon & Regina. The lowest were found in central CMA’s, Saguenay, Toronto and Trois Rivieres. Violent Crime The rate of violent crime fell by 3% in 2007, the lowest rate in nearly 20 years. It has been falling since the mid-1990’s, after increasing fairly steadily for 30 years before that. police to apprehend certain types of criminals. Moreover, some people do not report crime because they fear or distrust law enforcement agents. Secondly, and going hand in hand with the above, many reported crimes are not officially recorded by authorities as "founded." For a crime to be officially recorded, the police must first determine that it is a "founded" crime, one that a police officer, upon investigation, is certain actually happened. Even after people report crimes to police and police determine that they are founded, offences are not always recorded. Patrol officers and detectives have neither the time nor the inclination to complete reports on all offences, especially when the violations are not serious. Complainants may want lawbreakers to be treated leniently. Wives who call police to intervene in family disputes may not want the matter pursued formally. The wishes of complainants or victims are important because if these persons are reluctant to testify, there is little if any chance that a conviction will result. The demeanour of both victims and perpetrators also influences the responses of law enforcers. Victims who are belligerent with police officers and offenders who are respectful increase the likelihood that their cases will be dealt with informally and therefore not be recorded. Again, this is especially true for relatively minor offences. Whether offenders and police are acquainted with one another may also influence a police officer's decision about how to deal with a particular offence. If a drunken motorist is well known to them, small-town police may arrange a ride home or time to dry out in jail rather than proceed with a charge of impaired driving. Finally, if individual police officers are "on the take" or entire forces are corrupt, offences ranging from parking violations to prostitution, gambling, and narcotics trafficking are unlikely to be recorded even though they have been detected and reported and are known to be founded. Thus, the officially recorded numbers of criminal activities often drastically understate the number of incidents occurring, and this shrinkage continues throughout the entire criminal justice process: Crimes recorded by the police far exceed the number of charges laid. Only a small proportion of charges results in the conviction of an offender. Smaller still is the number of convictions that result in imprisonment. Indeed, increases in official rates may have more to do with increases in detection, reporting, or recording of incidents than with any change in the incidence of crime (e.g. the drastic increase in North American sexual assault rates throughout the 1980's). But there are other problems as well. The amount of crime that a particular police force officially records depends on its size and organization. Not only are larger police forces covering a similar area likely to detect more crime, official statistics on crime are produced by differentially organized bureaucratic organizations, each affected by internal and external pressures. James Wilson (1981), for example, contrasts "watch" style policing with its focus on informal "containment," with "professional" style departments with their formal emphasis on doing things "by the book."The latter produce higher rates of officially recorded deviance. Similarly, Ken Stoddart (1987), in his research on the enforcement of drug laws in Vancouver, observed that changes in the style and quality of enforcement provide for the appearance of an enlarged population of offenders independent of any actual enlargement. These differentials exist both within and between police departments. Such distortions can be exacerbated by "unofficial" practices, such as accepting suspectedly false confessions to "clear" the big case; "overcharging" and "bedsheeting" in the context of plea bargaining; contribution to, and generation of, criminal behavior through escalation, nonenforcement, and covert facilitation; organizational pressures to distort the facts; and police corruption. Third, the perceptual biases of control agents affect accuracy.i Research illustrates the influence of stereotypical conceptions of race, ethicity, gender, social class, age, religion, and even physical appearance influencing one’s chance of being caught and labeled (Pfhol, 1994), and hence included in the production of official statistics. Chambliss (1987) notes that youths whose actions may be relatively harmless, but whose social characteristics are typically linked with serious criminality, are frequently labeled more harshly than those whose acts are more "harmful," but whose social backgrounds are more respectable. Arnold Linsky (1970), William Rushing (1971), and William Wilde (1968) all present data suggesting class and social attribute bias in the official diagnosis of mental illness. Chambliss and Nagasawa (1969) present evidence that ethnic stereotypes lead police to overestimate the criminal activities of Blacks and underestimate the involvement of Japanese-Americans. Such biases "distort the public record regarding the true population of typical deviants," contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy ensuring that control agents will "find what they are looking for," and cover up much "harmful" activity that does not fit the stereotype. Fourth, shifting political enforcement priorities, such as “crackdowns” play a role in the production of official statistics. Official statistics, on the one hand, are generated by organizations with an interest in showing that they are doing a good job - organizations usually responsible to elected politicians who campaign to fight crime. In doing so, police departments may be pressured to deliberately stretch or downgrade, for record purposes, the seriousness of some offences (McCaghy, 1980; Gomme, 1993). Conversely, control organizations may manipulate high crime rates in order to underscore the need for more personnel and equipment, and the inevitable crackdowns as a result of political pressure not only serve this purpose, they further distort official figures. Fifth, the accuracy of official statistics is also limited by the fact that some deviants are more visible than others. Street prostitutes are more noticeable than high-priced escorts, as are their clients. People on welfare are put under intense scrutiny as a condition of obtaining assistance. Moreover, alienation fed by differential surveillance may limit what crimes lower-class persons voluntarily report. Add that white-collar crime can only be engaged in by the relatively privileged, and that such well-hidden crimes are the least reported, prosecuted, and punished in our society, and one gets an idea of the distortion built into official statistics. Sixth, the official recording of crime also depends on the dynamics of the situation in which labeling occurs. (Smith and Klein, 1984). Carl Werthman and Irving Piliavin (1987) note the critical importance of a suspect's demeanor in determining whether youths will be taken into custody by police officers. Albert Reiss (1971) presents evidence that the presence of a citizen complaint demanding arrest is critical in police decisions to arrest an offender, and that such demands are made more frequently by blacks. Such factors distort and confuse the nature and extent of deviance. Seventh, even when crime is recorded, how it is recorded often produces problems. Major changes in 1962 and 1992 add "idiosyncrasies" to comparisons over time and between types of offences. Police count crimes against the person and crimes against property differently (1 victim 1 crime for violent crimes vs. 1 occurrence for multiple theft victims at one household). They also often do not distinguish attempted crimes from completed crimes; record only the most serious offence in a series; utilize differing interpretations for coding information onto standardized government forms; and do not always include the most theoretically relevant matters. Some statisticians calculate official crime rates by counting offences that few people would consider "real" crime (e.g. municipal