Criminal Justice Paper on Methods of Reporting Crime in U.S

Methods of Reporting Crime in U.S.

  1. Uniform crime reporting which is a program run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to collect information regarding crime which is necessary for law enforcement in the country. The information is relied on by administration officers to enforce the law as well as students pursuing criminal justice to determine the crime rate in the nation. Information is collected through four main methods which include: National Incident- Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Hate Crime Statistics Program, the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted program and the Summary Reporting System (SRS) (FBI, 2018). The information collected is then analyzed and published in various forms to the public. The indicators are important in gauging the society’s present state and to evaluate the government’s ability to deal with crime. The information from the FBI is reliable and shows the trends over long periods of time.
  2. Self-report surveys of victimization provide data from individuals who report being victims of crime whether property or personal crimes. These surveys have been used to formulate criminology theories and for research on social life (Lynch & Cantor, 2000, p. 87). This measurement method provides information that might not be available in police reports. House hold surveys on the national population gives clear information from victims and non-victims, thus that data is different in nature and depth.
  3. Self- report surveys that report crime incidences from the people who actually committed them. This method is not very common because individuals fear being imprisoned for reporting the crimes. However, the information collected may never have been obtained if the researchers didn’t ask the questions to individuals. This method has given interesting results by showing that show that more people actually commit crimes in the society.

 

 

References

FBI. (2018, September 10). Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Retrieved from https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr

Lynch, J. P., & Cantor, D. (2000). Self-Report Surveys as Measures of Crime and Criminal Victimization. Criminal Justice, 4, 85-138.