Criminal Law: Crime Occurrence Evaluation and Analysis Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of crime in America, beginning with an overview of violent and property crimes, and their respective statistics. It then delves into the factors that influence crime rates, including social and environmental considerations, and biological factors. The report also examines the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) as primary sources of crime statistics, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, it addresses the concept of recidivism, its measurement, and its significance in criminal justice, including its relationship to sentencing, correction, and policy evaluation. The report concludes with a bibliography of cited sources.

RUNNING HEAD: CRIMINAL LAW
Crime Occurrence Evaluation

CRIMINAL LAW
Answer 1
Crime analysis in America is usually divided into two wide classification i.e. violent
crime and property crime. In America, violent crime relates to homicide, rape and sexual assault,
robbery and abuse. Violent crime has dropped in America from last two decades, but the amount
of fierce offences recorded has increased significantly in recent years. Assault is the most
prevalent among the several kinds of aggravated offence recorded in America. In 2017, the crime
rate for aggravated assault was 248.9, which make a substantial impact to the total aggravated
offence rate of 382.9 (Latzer, 2017). Although it is important to note that aggravated offence
levels may not at all times be accurate as offences that stay unreported can often alter rates,
which means that cases of crime can usually be presumed to be more common than recorded
crime statistics indicate. The property crime is presently the nation’s most serious criminal
problem. Property crimes in America include all types of theft or unlawful destruction of
property against a victim in absence of force or threat. Larceny-theft is the most usual crime in
America with over 5.5 million reported cases in 2017 (Sharkey, 2018). New Mexico is one of the
highest level of larceny theft and one of the country’s largest levels of motor vehicle theft.
Answer 2
Factors, which affect the crime rates:
Social Factor:
Our communal arrangement represents what we worth and how we set individuals and
group main concern. Communal root sources of violence include poverty, lack of sharing
authority, lack of help to relatives and neighborhoods, actual or apparent in accessibility to
amenities, lack of community governance, lack of importance to kids and personal well-being,
over exposure to television as recreational tool (Chancer, 2010).
Negative Environmental Factor:
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CRIMINAL LAW
With whom we are around can have an impact on who we are today. Just being in a high
crime neighborhood can improve our own likelihood of becoming a crime. However, being in
criminal’s presence is not the only way our workplace can influence our behavior. Research
shows that merely living in poverty improves our probability of imprisonment. Violent behavior
has always been component of human life, but indistinct sections of the population and over
time, the frequency of violence varies.
Answer 3
Other factors that contribute to criminal behavior and crime rate:
Crime is a vibrant social phenomenon; over moment, it shifts in both amount and quality.
The research of crime patterns is as ancient as criminology itself, yet it is reasonable to claim
criminologists understand less about the variables that affect crime levels over moment than
about linked to personal criminal conduct variations.
Biological factors:
Criminal behavior can be described in terms of sociology or anthropology or as an
answer to biological detriments. It can be also defined as everything that affects the child from
conception to birth. Substance abuse may lead to criminal conduct by biological variables. If
physical traits are transmitted from generation to generation, psychological traits can definitely,
also be transmitted. Some of these psychological features include genes that are immediately
linked to substance abuse, which can often contribute to enhanced adverse criminal behavior.
Biological factors include genetics and heredity. Studies of association show that antisocial
behavior and violence may relate to genetic disorders, for example alcoholism and the fragile-X
syndrome (Raine, 2013).
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CRIMINAL LAW
Answer 4
Research evidence is very essential for decision-making in the field of criminal justice.
One can better study the effect of strategies, programs, and regular procedures through well-
designed and applied studies; one can “see if they function,” for instance, if they decrease
violence. Whereas Theory development has its origin in conventional criminology and positivist
social sciences and surveys and the connection between biological, psychological and social
variables and offences from conception to death throughout existence. A basis hypothesis is that
individuals carrying luggage from the past- the ongoing consequences of previous experiences
such as happy adolescence or sexual harassment- influence the ways they act in the present.
Thus, based on past research of a criminal one can identify the causes and reasons for such
behavior and what led them to commit crime (Withrow, 2013).
Answer 5
Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and National incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
are the two main sources of crime statistics that are commonly used in America.
UCR:
The UCR is the FBI’s commonly used criminal footage and strategy policy-making
scheme. Since 1930 it has been tracking information on seven offences; killing, robbery, rape,
aggravated attack, burglary, theft and theft of vehicles.
Advantages of UCR:
 It is the primary source of America crime statistics,
 It provides a national statistical perspective of crime by contributing government
and local law enforcement organizations.
Disadvantages of UCR:
 In UCR actual number of crimes are underestimated,
 It does not exactly reflect crime rates.
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CRIMINAL LAW
NIBRS:
NIBRS crime data comes from 5271 law enforcement agencies demonstrating about 20%
of the overall population (Krohn, Lizotte, & Hall, 2010).
Advantages of NIBRS:
 Analysts can produce domestic and regional statistics with NIBRS information,
which, are not available using any other sources.
 It provides a more extensive perspective of crime in America and makes
information collection and evaluation more flexible.
Disadvantages of NIBRS:
 It gathers data only about the offences known to the police.
 It gathers data only on offences included in the list of severe criminal offenses of
the NIBRS.
Answer 6
Recidivism is one of criminal justice’s most basic notions. It relates to an individual’s
deterioration into criminal actions, repeatedly after the individual is punished or intervened for a
prior offence. It is measured by unlawful deeds resulting in arrest, conviction, or return to jail
with or without a new punishment for a duration of three years subsequent the imprisonment of
the prisoner (Martin & Friedrich, 2015). It is an integrated study of sentencing, correction and
policy intervention evaluation throughout National Institute of Justice (NIJ) - sponsored studies.
Many community-monitoring surveys funded by the NIJ rely on recurrence assessment to guide
the strategy of probation and parole. It is a significant characteristic when considering the key
issue of criminal justice, specific deterrence, and rehabilitation in criminal justice ( Francesca,
2015). There is a significant link between the notion of recurrence and the increasing body of
criminal desistance studies.
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CRIMINAL LAW
Bibliography
Francesca, L. (2015). Justice beyond Borders: The Operation Condor Trial and Accountability
for Transnational Crimes in South America. International Journal of Transitional Justice,
9(3), 494-506.
Chancer, L. (2010). High-Profile Crimes: When Legal Cases Become Social Causes. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Krohn, M. D., Lizotte, A. J., & Hall, G. P. (2010). Handbook on Crime and Deviance. Berlin:
Springer Science & Business Media.
Latzer, B. (2017). The Rise and fall of violent crime in America. New York: Encounter Books .
Martin, S., & Friedrich, L. (2015). The effects of sexual offender treatment on recidivism: an
international meta-analysis of sound quality evaluation. Journal of Experimental
criminology, 11(4), 597-630.
Raine, A. (2013). The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime. London: Penguin
Uk.
Sharkey, P. (2018). Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the
Next War on Violence. New York: W.W. Norton.
Withrow, B. (2013). Research Methods in Crime and Justice. Abingdon-on-thames: Routledge.
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