Reflection:
You can never expect a governmental body to police itself. Our government system in the United States has checks and balances in order for one body to not become to powerful. This is why they sometimes have congressional committees put in charge of oversight for the president’s office. The same goes for law enforcement in the country in their honesty in reporting statistics.
We get data on crime from three main instruments: The Uniform Crime Reports, The National Victimization Survey and Self Report Survey. The problem with all of these three tools comes down with they lean on trusty the reporters for their accuracy. The Uniform Crime Reports relies on trust on the police department, which as the Youtube video “FBI: US crime rates fell again in 2010” has special interests in meddling with the numbers. The other two collection systems are flawed because they rely on a victim’s honesty and memories which could likewise be tainted due to self interest or remembering wrong.
It is important to have an agreed upon definition, so that crime theory can be based on real numbers to depict real trends, rather than based on numbers flubbed by corrupt police officials.
Response to post 1:
This was a thought out reflection on the flaws of crime data collection in our country, pointing out the basic problems and the criticizes of these ways of collecting data. It also expounded on how data could be tainted, by reclassifying serious crimes into less serious offenses.
Response to post 2:
While this response listed the problems, it did not get to the heart of explaining why they exist. It mentions that some crimes are reported in the data collected as something lesser, but it does not give, like Post 1, the thinking behind why this might be the case. It could be improved upon by instead of just listing the symptoms, getting to their underlying causes. It also failed to address why it is important for criminologists to have an agreed upon definition of crimes.
