Crime Statistics Comparison
Comparison of Crime Statistics
Crime statistics endeavour to provide statistical measures of crime in societies. They provide a point of analysis and comparison, allow countries to form long-term patterns and trends and can help to develop and reform criminal justice policies as well as being more meaningful than raw numbers. Using the countries of Bahrain and the United States as a comparison point for the following issues which surround crime statistics such as biases, agendas and general influences like education and religion; this essay will be focused around analysing the statistical factors and wider influences which can allow a country to have low or high crime rates.
Crime Definitions
Definitions of what exactly constitutes being a crime differ not only across countries but even across states. This can be an issue with statistics as in order to measure and compare crime consistently crimes need to be classified and placed into groups of similar offences. While murder is a crime recognized and agreed upon by most nations, what makes up a homicide may be more challenging and then even simply just a ‘crime against the person’ can vary widely. This often means that what makes up a crime for many offences can vary throughout jurisdictions.
This is a problem when categorizing offences for international statistical comparison. An example of this is the way that laws differ state to state within the United States, while ‘offences known to police’ is a statistic seen as quite a high representative figure of the offences, a lot of researches see that no official measure can ever come close to the actual amount of criminality that exists in any form in society (Archer, 1984)
Definitional problems are concerned with whether or not crimes have equivalent meanings between nations, which in most cases a lot of crimes seem not to have. Countries most often vary in behaviours which can sometimes be seen as coming within the space of the law. So for any kind of
Crime statistics endeavour to provide statistical measures of crime in societies. They provide a point of analysis and comparison, allow countries to form long-term patterns and trends and can help to develop and reform criminal justice policies as well as being more meaningful than raw numbers. Using the countries of Bahrain and the United States as a comparison point for the following issues which surround crime statistics such as biases, agendas and general influences like education and religion; this essay will be focused around analysing the statistical factors and wider influences which can allow a country to have low or high crime rates.
Crime Definitions
Definitions of what exactly constitutes being a crime differ not only across countries but even across states. This can be an issue with statistics as in order to measure and compare crime consistently crimes need to be classified and placed into groups of similar offences. While murder is a crime recognized and agreed upon by most nations, what makes up a homicide may be more challenging and then even simply just a ‘crime against the person’ can vary widely. This often means that what makes up a crime for many offences can vary throughout jurisdictions.
This is a problem when categorizing offences for international statistical comparison. An example of this is the way that laws differ state to state within the United States, while ‘offences known to police’ is a statistic seen as quite a high representative figure of the offences, a lot of researches see that no official measure can ever come close to the actual amount of criminality that exists in any form in society (Archer, 1984)
Definitional problems are concerned with whether or not crimes have equivalent meanings between nations, which in most cases a lot of crimes seem not to have. Countries most often vary in behaviours which can sometimes be seen as coming within the space of the law. So for any kind of
Bibliography: Books: Adler, F., (1983) “Nations not Obsessed with Crime, vol Archer, D., Garter, R., (1984) “Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective”, New Haven, Yale University Press. Kalish, B.,(1988) “International Crime Rates” – Bureau of Statistics, Special Report,. Washington DC, United States Department of Justice. Newman, D., Anderson, P., (1993), “Criminal Justice, 5th ED” New York, Macmillan. Reichel, P., (1994) “Comparative Criminal Justice Systems” Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall Career & Technology. Moore, R., (1987) “Courts, Law, Justice and Criminal Trials” – International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice. Souryal, S., (1988) “The Role of the Shari’ah Law in Determining Criminality in Saudi Arabia” – International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice. Vetere, Eduardo, Newton, Graeme. (1977) “ International Crime Statistics: An Overview from a Comparative Perspective.” – Abstracts in Criminology and Penology Reports: Federal Bureau of Investigation (1981-1987) “Uniform Crime Reports” Washington DC, United States Government Printing Office. Ministry of Information (1985), “Bahrain: Profile” State of Bahrain, Government Press. Other: Religion in Schools (2004) retrieved on the 20th November 2010 from < http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/religion-in-schools> State Compulsory Attendance Laws (2007) retrieved on the 20th November 2010 from <http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112617.html>