Question

Sometimes law enforcement leaders interpret data in a manner that is inconsistent with what the data is actually revealing. Why do you think this occurs? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages interpreting data like crime statistics and recidivism rates?

Answer 1

For what purposes are the crime data used.

The uses of crime data include operational and resource allocation decisions by law enforcement, local and state government agencies, and businesses etc.
Crime data are a critical source of information for program and policy evaluations which are used by researchers in government, academia, and the public and private sectors.

They are often seen as the measures of accountability.

And for some of these purposes, existing crime data appear to be adequate, though users often noted many ways that the available data could be improved. For many types of crime, however, the data are incomplete, lacking in consistency, inadequate, or unavailable.

So, who provides the crime data ?

The legal Law enforcement agencies are one of the major providers of the crime data.
Some of the smaller local police departments in the country just simply record the crime incidents that come to their attention and then they simply forward their reports to their state’s Statistical Analysis Center or directly to the FBI.

These reports are then circulated and used to inform the public and government officials about The various local and state levels of crime, and changes in the levels of crime over time.

Along from serving as a general indicator of crime in the communities, crime data that is compiled by the state, the local, and other law enforcement agencies are often used for the strategic decision-making and the operational or purposes for the given problem.

These statistical data are used to discuss the nature of emerging and continuing crime problems in different areas of the jurisdiction and the crime areas are studied to reduce the impact.

Crime statistics typically are released by the FBI in their annual publication respectively.

For instance, the statistics for Crime in the United States takes approximately 10 months after the collection year (for example, crime statistics for 2014 were released during the last week of September 2015).

. A critical limitation of these ad hoc surveys of crime is that they are particularly based on the information of unknown reliability and so as the cities experiencing crime increases are more likely to be over-represented in the data.

Other examples of the frustration over the lack of timely release of crime data are evident when advocacy groups as well as the news or media and academic researchers compile their very own city crime databases using the “real-time” data that are available on the large majority of urban police department websites.

This use of non-systematic gathering of crime data is quiet very problematic, leading to unproductive debates about the various resource needs, the causes of apparent increases and decreases in crime, and accountability.

During the crisis periods, an important problem with the current system which was noted by law enforcement agencies and others was ,

the time delay between data submission to the UCR program and dissemination. The law enforcement leaders interpret data in a manner that is inconsistent with what the data is actually revealing according to their own proffessional commitments and utilities.

Policy makers at the local, state, and federal levels need accurate and timely data on crime to inform budgetary decisions about the amount of resources. This could be another factor which leads to the wrong interpretation of the data.

Crime data are used for many a number of things, and according to each uses requirement the law maker can modify the data according to his favor.

The crime data is used for the following ;

To inform the consequtive projections of the resources needed for criminal justice agencies inorder to investigate the cases,

To often ,prosecute and defend the arrestees,

To Supervise the persons on probation and parole,

And to particularly incarcerate offenders in jails and prisons.

In addition to these things, the policy makers may use the crime and victimization data to estimate the amount of the resources needed for the specific types of crime victims (such as child abuse, intimate partner violence, and elder abuse victims), and the grant agencies often require victim service providers to use such data to evaluate the effectiveness of their programs designed to reduce such crimes.

Federal, state, and local etc legislators often are provided with crime and justice data inorder to assist them with efforts to identify priority areas, design responsive legislation, and hence to help make budgetary decisions for law enforcement and justice agencies in specific locales.

It should be noted, however, that many meeting participants voiced concerns that legislators often fail to use crime data to inform their decisions and legislative actions.

DISADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS :

A problem involves ,being misleading in the way the crime data and recidivism rates are presented.

Firstly, the crime data and the recidivism rates could be unrepresentative whereby only certain groups of people are taken into consideration.

The problem lies in victimisation of the people, by which crimes against the most vulnerable and the less powerful sections of the population have been neglected and under-represented. Dark figures of the crime, which consist of the unreported crimes as well as the undiscovered crime also affect the statistical value to some extent.

Not all of the crimes that are reported readily to the police nor are all of the sufficient significance to involve jurisdiction.

An aspect of the hidden crime varies directly with the economic cycle. it is quiet very difficult to measure high volume crimes such as shoplifting in a consistent manner, which ends up to resulting in imprecise figures being recorded.

In addition, the time-consuming administrative practices may also result in the under reporting of crime.

Along with this, the Biasness of statistics may also exist due to routine actions and decisions that law prosecution officers make.

The satistics are quiet highly influenced by courses of action conducted by the government bodies.

Statistics only provide us with the numbers and it depends on our very own analysis to come up with explanations for the figures, hence , it all falls back on one’s inference.

The use of figures may delude the people into making wrong interpretations from data such that they may think that a higher number of crimes are occurring, but if population was to be considered, and population increase is greater than increased crime rate.

Furthermore, sometimes technical terms understood by the public do not accord with what the crime data and the recidivism rates meant to represent,
leading them towards the wrong direction.

The way statistics of the crime data and the recidivism rates are presented to the public, especially by the media could be misleading.

Besides being misleading, an added limitation To the statistical Crime data and the recidivism rates would be the measurement of ‘total crime’,
which involves is the summation of large numbers involving the different classes of reported offences.

The key advantage in the analysis of existing statistics is that the data is already collected for our use. This data may be local, regional, national or even international. It is a relatively cheap form of research. In many cases one will be able to download existing datasets from data archives, the Internet or from within the organisation itself.
Some statistical data within the organisation may not be available outside the organisation and may have been subjected to only very limited analysis.
As data collection is very time consuming, a big advantage of analysing data that is already collected is that one can concentrate on the analysis. Furthermore, one can build upon the findings of other researchers using the same data set.

ADVANTAGES AND USES:
Despite these limitations, the government bodies continue to heavily rely on statistics for information.

Although many irregularities may exist resulting in inaccuracy,

however, the statistics on the crime data and the recidivism rates are still largely credible based on the efforts and resources invested by the state.

Statistics on crime data and the recidivism rates are highly essential in keepingthe public updated on crime rates, helping with our understanding of the crime and how to create a safer environment for society through the reductions of crime, as well as review the accountability of the government.

In conclusion, we can say that the crime statistics are largely important with the assisting in publics understanding and the establishment in response to crime.

Apart from The numerous ongoing debates about its limitations, there lies a certain level of truism in crime statistics that criminologists rely on to interpret crime.

Official crime statistics provide the public with some sense of overall communal well-being and indication of broad crime patterns which helps them determine the level of safety on the streets.

Statistics not only serve as a guideline for the creation of the many policies which are to be followed up on thereafter later on.

Without it, most of the countries would often fail to distribute their own resources to the maximum potential; neither would they be able to distinguish if any improvements on the various crime rates have been achieved.

Therefore, statistics are very highly significant in determining the publics understanding and the response to combat illegal behaviour which, in turn, allowing the development of theories to understand the actions of various social groups. such that we are able to arrive at a common goal of a secure and dependable society and world peace.

One protection against the problem of reliability in crime statistics ,crime data and the recidivism rates is the awareness, which is knowing that the problem exists.
Being aware and critical of how particular crime statistics are collected, will mean that the public should be able to make some assessment of the relative reliability of the data and its impact on the conclusions that they may end up drawing.

One of the big problems with the recidivism data is that not every ex-offender who gets arrested or goes back to prison has committed a new crime.

Many prisoners get reincarcerated for a technical violation of the terms of their parole.Ex-offenders are also re-arrested for technicalities. Though, One-quarter of all the prisoners released were re-arrested for a technical parole violation at some point or the other during the five years after their release.

While there’s no exact or correct data on exactly how many people were put back in prison because of a technical violation, the data the federal government compiled shows that there were 28.2 % of prisoners who were released in 2005 but ended up getting convicted and sent back to prison, while the 55.1 % of all ex-offenders ended up back in prison on a new sentence or on a technical violation.

Now, that suggests that, as many as a quarter of all ex-offenders end up getting sent back to prison based on technicalities. Which is quiet a matter of debate.
The states are now actively trying to prevent recidivism: As Experts agree that the conditions that ex-offenders face when they re-enter their old communities, such as high unemployment,peer group influence,often make it easier to return to crime.