Tag: crime

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Surveys Serve as Crime Stoppers

Victim surveys and self-report surveys can help ascertain levels of crime rates and victimization, assist with identifying target populations, and help in the development of successful crime prevention policies and strategies.

What Are Crime Reports, Victim Surveys, and Self-Report Surveys?

Let your voice be heard. Stand up and be counted. Your vote counts.

These are all calls for civic participation when there are important community issues and where individuals have the right, and sometimes the obligation, to voice their opinions and concerns, and to shape the direction of these issues. But what about crime? What if you are a victim of crime? How are you able to be recognized or heard, beyond a local police department or court? And what can public policymakers do to address your concerns in order to prevent crime and victimization in the future? One way is through victim and self-report surveys.

Within the United States there are three main categories of crime surveys that inform, educate, and direct actions about crime. Here are the most widely used and recognized examples from those categories:

  1. Crime reports represented by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
  2. Victim surveys identified with the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
  3. Self-report surveys (SRS) most associated with the National Youth Survey (NYS)

Crime Reports

The UCR is a long standing mechanism to formally collect information about crime incidents that are recorded and voluntarily provided by local and state law enforcement agencies. The UCR provides general tendencies in crime statistics categorized by the type of crime in localized jurisdictions in order to give overall pictures of crime trends across the United States. Crime reports such as the UCR lack specific information on offenders, methods, circumstances, and victims, as well as unreported or inaccurately described crimes. To combat this, more formalized victim and self-report surveys have been instituted in order to supplement crime reports and provide more detailed information on specific crime trends.

Victim and Self-Report Surveys

The NCVS is a victim survey wherein households across the United States are surveyed regarding crimes of which they’ve been a victim, or simply observed. In contrast to the UCR, the NCVS collects crime information for crimes not reported to police. The survey collects detailed ‘ ‘victim, offender, and situational context of crimes,’ ‘ such as the time, place, weapons used and actions taken during the crimes. This detailed information provides a more clear, realistic, and detailed view of representative crime rates and circumstances.

Self-report surveys (SRS) are unofficial criminological surveys of individuals who may or may not have engaged in crimes. Generally, these surveys are administered to juveniles who can be accessed through schools or correctional institutes. The NYS is the most well-known SRS; it specifically gauges a wide array of criminal acts and intentions, from drug use to assault. This has provided a more realistic understanding of how pervasive criminal activity is within the youth of the United States.

The Use of Victim and Self-Report Surveys

The NCVS and SRS question individuals directly and collect specific details on offenders, as well as victims and non-victims involved in the crimes. This allows for comparison and analysis of the characteristics that link offenders, victims and situational factors of crime and victimization. The most valuable statistics include:

Victim

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Race
  • Ethnicity
  • Socioeconomic status/income
  • Marital status
  • Education level
  • Home ownership/residence location

Offender

  • Age
  • Race
  • Ethnicity
  • Gender
  • Victim-offender relationship
  • Presence of drugs/alcohol

Crime

  • Location
  • Time of day/month of the year
  • Use of weapons
  • Injuries
  • Economic impacts
  • Victim defensive actions utilized and outcomes
  • Property type lost

Similar to victimization surveys, an SRS will also collect detailed information regarding comparable demographics of offenders. Specifically, there is increased focus on youths’ involvement in crime, allowing juvenile delinquency to be tracked and classified in more useful ways.

Implications of Crime Surveys

Having more accurate information about the volume, depth and nature of crime allows us to focus more on the sub-groups involved in crimes. Victim and self-report surveys highlight such sub-groups as:

Offenders

  • Juvenile delinquents
  • Gang members

Victims

  • Elderly
  • Ethnic minorities
  • Females
  • Suburbanites/urbanites

Understanding the specific characteristics of the sub-groups, individuals, and circumstances involved in all types of crimes allows criminologists and public policy makers to construct new ways to explain, understand, and prevent crimes. This knowledge can also help us develop theories to explain how and why crimes occur.

For example, surveys provide data on victim’s routine activities related to location, time and distance from offenders; this information led to the routine activities theory. This theory was tested and supported the premise that, with a lack of proper guardians (such as the police) at a certain time and location, opportunities for crime and victimization increase. Testing this theory also showed that offenders target individuals who are similar to themselves.

Specific factors that correlate to crime and victimization can also be analyzed to map out strategies to reduce crimes. Public policies such as tougher penalties for specific crimes, police focusing on ‘hot spots’ where most of crimes take place in a city, and using foot patrols or creating neighborhood watch programs all emanated from survey information. In addition, survey data has led to the growth of situational crime policies in which cities increase street lighting, patrols, guards, alarms, and CCTVs at locations identified in survey data pinpointing where and when crimes and victimization occur.

Lesson Summary

Crime reports began by categorizing crimes and crime incidents to give police and public policymakers general information on trends and crime to analyze the use of resources and manpower. Because the of lack of specific information about crimes, offenders, and victims in these reports, and the underreported statistics of crimes, surveys of the individuals involved in crimes have come to supplement these reports.

Victims surveys and self-report surveys unveil the true nature of crime by providing understanding of the actual depth of crime and victimization incidence. Specifically, surveys like the NCVS and NYS provide better information and understanding of how much more crime exists and the sub-groups of the population that are the offenders and victims of specific crimes. Furthermore, the specific characteristics of sub-groups and situations of crimes and victimization allow for factors to be identified that can limit and prevent crimes, leading to theories of victimization and situational crime prevention techniques.

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@Followme To The Police Station

Local police departments have attempted many citizen outreach, public relation, and collaboration strategies over the past couple of decades for the purpose of creating improved and productive relationships with communities. This philosophy is designed to engage the public on various fronts with the ultimate goal of becoming a trusted, legitimate, and effective partner in crime and safety.

Think back to when you first started seeing bicycle patrols, citizen police academies, neighborhood watch programs, gun collection drives, youth academies, etc… These are all examples of the police attempting to engage the community on a more basic level for the common and beneficial goal of making their cities and towns safer and more stable… which is known as community policing.

Why community policing?

Because citizens are more likely to trust, feel confident in, and collaborate with police, if police are actively providing time, resources, and information in a transparent manner about local issues. Conversely, if the police understand that they have a collaborative and productive relationship with the community, they will come together with the community to help address specific and important crime and disorder issues they both encounter on a daily basis. Just as beat officers can’t be everywhere for everybody, police have also struggled in the past with actively engaging and encountering a large number of citizens for “positive” outreach.

With the innovations provided by internet technology, and the research conducted on the effectiveness of community policing, police have begun to adopt social media as a new form of communication and engagement with the public. Specifically, police departments view Twitter as an easy, fast, and effective means of getting information to the general public on many levels. Furthermore, citizens can reciprocate the kindness by offering information and updates to police from their vantage points. But what does all of this really mean for you?

Think about it… there’s a massive pile-up on a major road you use to get to work… police tweet about it. A prisoner escapes near a school… police tweet about it. There’s a rash of home invasions in your elderly parents’ neighborhood… police tweet about it. And that’s just simple public safety messages.

How about a scenario where there is a youth academy one weekend where police officers educate and mentor middle school children about bullying, but you and your child could not attend. However, the police staff records the event including the Q&A at the end. Then that video, important downloadable information, as well as a link to the police department’s website (where you can sign up and request a police officer to come to your child’s school to talk about bullying) is tweeted out.

Let’s take this one step further. You witness a crime and you get a picture of the culprit, or perhaps a license plate on a vehicle used in the crime, and message that to the police via Twitter.

These are small examples of how Twitter, other social media platforms and the internet can bring citizens and police closer together. Closer in the sense of communication, but also closer as these collaborative back and forth exchanges begin to build a trust and legitimacy factor between citizens and police.

This begins to hit on the big picture, philosophical take away viewed by law enforcement.

Better relationships equal productive relationships equal working relationships… all of which can be cultivated from something as simple as Twitter. And from that, something much bigger and better can begin to take place.

For example:

A major intrinsic problem within a community requires a lot of time, energy, resources and actions. The police-community relationship is such that there is an ample, representative sized advisory committee of individuals, small businesses, churches, outreach centers and police that come together to stage a four point plan over the next 2 to 3 years to deal with this issue. Based on this collaboration, there will be enough resources and entities to successfully tackle a particular issue.

Law enforcement, as well as academia, view this scenario as plausible, and possible, given the right circumstances. But none of that can even be attempted if there is not a sound partnership between police and community. And this type of partnership cannot exist without police first laying a foundation of beneficial, productive, transparent, and collaborative communication and engagement. This also requires civic responsibility and action on the part of the citizen to attempt to reach out to police in order for this progress to begin to take place.

Even if you are not the type of person that gets really involved in civic issues, following your local police department on Twitter can be personally beneficial.

Here are some documented examples of how Twitter has benefited police department followers.

  1. When individuals can see that police are active in the local community, they feel safer.
  2.  There is a 24/7 line of communication with the police.
  3.   When police solicit help from the public on a case, there are that many more individuals that will be alerted and activated to help. (And this case could involve you or someone you know as the victim of a crime that really needs the public’s help).
  4.  This is another resource to get the word out on fund raisers and community awareness initiatives.
  5. Doesn’t everyone want to know the city’s crime reports, or the published sex offender lists.
  6. Everyone can get a good laugh at the end of the day with “dumb crook news”.
  7. Think of alerting 911 to an emergency via a tweet as well as to family and friends at the same time.
  8.  How about getting a GPS link on evacuation routes in a tornado or hurricane areas.
  9.  Amber Alerts.
  10. Counter-terrorism and Homeland Security efforts at the local level.

So with that I say to you, #followmetothepolicestation.

https://www.elance.com/s/ekeith715/?rid=5386M.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cleveland_Alexander