Why are many crime statistics expressed as rates? How does the use of crime rates instead of simple numerical tabulations improve the usefulness of crime data?
What will be an ideal response?
Expressing crime statistics as rates permits comparisons among areas, across time, and among populations of widely varied sizes. Pure numbers can be grossly misleading. In a city with a population of 7 million, 600 murders would equate to a murder rate of 8.57 per 100,000. If 30 murders occur in a city with a population of 300,000, the rate would be 10 per 100,000. Observers might fixate on the huge number of murders in the larger city—600—and inaccurately believe the city to be more dangerous than the smaller city. In fact, the smaller city, with its higher rate per 100,000, presents a greater risk of someone being murdered.
This ability to evaluate crime data on a universal scale clarifies the true meaning of the hard numbers, defuses emotional responses to large numbers, and enables the researcher to interpret more accurately what those numbers really mean.
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a. True b. False
Usually, violent crime is not highly organized
a. True b. False
Which type of patrol involves placing additional officers in areas where there are concentrations of crime or disorder?
A) stop and frisk B) saturation patrol C) directed patrol D) routine preventive patrol
Supplemental reports are completed:
a. To record information you discover after the original report has been filed. b. To record the amount of time you've spent on the investigation. c. To record the number of similar crimes in the same area.