Question

Recognizing Crime Trends

Follow this link to the FBI 2014 Uniform Crime Report

Read the “Overview” included on the first page and view the “Five-Year Trend Violent Crime Offense Figure” at the bottom of the page. Next, go to Table 4 on the right hand side of the page and follow the link to additional crime statistics by Region, Geographic Division, and State. Find the area that you live in or an area you are interested in examining and review the statistics. Next, go to Table 6 on the right hand side of the page and follow that link to additional crime statistics by Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Find the area that you live in or are interested in and review the statistics. Feel free to navigate around the website and view any information that interests you.

Once you have reviewed the information, answer the following questions in the form of an essay:

1.    Did anything about the Five Year Violent Crime Offense Figure surprise you?

2.    Think about the information you hear regarding violent crime every day from all forms of the news media, social web site platforms and just in talking to your friends, family and other associates. Does what you hear on a daily basis from all of these sources give you the impression that violent crime has gone down significantly?

3.    Discuss the general trends that you see on Tables 4 and 6 as to where in the country violent crime is trending up or down. Identify the areas such as “Northeast”, “South” or name the states and what the trends seem to be.

4.    Explain in detail what you think causes the differences in perception and reality in regards to violent crime. Use information from your text, the lectures and your personal experiences.

5.    Describe in detail why is it important to have and use complete and accurate crime data. What can it be used for? What mistakes could be avoided if the crime information is accurate and complete? What would the advantage be to an individual or group to misstate crime volume and trends?

Your paper must be formatted in the following manner:

·         The paper must be 500-750 words in length. Only the body of the paper counts towards the length. No information that belongs on a title page or reference page will count towards the length requirement.

Answer 1

• 1.The 5 year violent crime offenses are down. Also, if you look back further on table 1 of the article, you’ll see that violent crime is down a lot from 1995 figures and continues to decrease. If you look at the 2013 and 2014 overall violent crime it’s amazing that the number actually continued to decrease even after a new way of reporting rapes. If these additional rape cases were not included the decrease in overall violent crimes would be more than it currently is.
• 2.In looking at the rate of murders compared to other violent crimes I find it interesting thatthe ones we hear about on the news are the murders. Yet, so many other crimes are being committed.
• I believe this is because murders are the worst of the violent crimes. It’s hard to rank them but if I had to guess, murder is the worst because the other person is no longer here. In other violent crimes the victim is still alive to heal from the crime.
• So, the media latches on to a murder case and people are transfixed with it. It’s like seeing the loch ness monster or big foot. When I watch the news and I see murder, I might think that there are a lot of murders but there really isn’t. I think the news on various channels does a good job of reporting on political, local, positive, and weather stories that it doesn’t get overrun with negativity in regards to crime.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation.