CRJS Exam #3 PDF

Unit #3 Key Terms & Concepts Administrative offences These are offences that involve interference with the administration of justice (p. 97) Adolescent limited offenders (AL) Type of offender (the majority of young offenders) who does not have a childhood history of antisocial behaviour, but engages...

Unit #3 Key Terms & Concepts Administrative offences These are offences that involve interference with the administration of justice (p. 97) Adolescent limited offenders (AL) Type of offender (the majority of young offenders) who does not have a childhood history of antisocial behaviour, but engages in this behaviour only in adolescence, only inconsistently, and only when it is rewarding and/or profitable to do so. Aggregated Statistics on crime and other social behaviour are deemed aggregated when they are grouped into categories that make it impossible to match individuals on other characteristics. (p. 77) Clearance rates Refers to statistics that indicate the rate at which police process criminal incidents as charge offences. (p. 89) Community Change Model Looks at the specific ways in which the community can address inequities and injustices, and has less of a focus on the offenders. (p. 435) Crime index A Statistics Canada categorization scheme for classifying police crime statistics as property of violent, and “other” index crimes. (p. 77) Crime severity index An index that assigns a weight to each offence based on the seriousness of the average sentence and the proportion of prison sentences allotted for that offence. (p. 77) Field research A method in which research is conducted outside of a laboratory, in the setting where the behaviour of interest is occurring. (p. 73) Life course persistent offenders (LCP) Type of offender (about 5 percent of young offenders) who begin with childhood biting and hitting around age 4, and whose behaviour escalates and continues to such adulthood offences as violent assaults; spouse battery; and abandonment, neglect, or abuse of children. (p. 189) Official crime statistics Offender and offence data based on information collected for administrative purposes by justice agencies such as the police, courts, and correctional institutions. (p. 23). Randomized The process of assigning participants to treatment and control groups, assuming that each participant has an equal chance of being assigned by any group. Reliability In behavioural science, refers to the extent to which variable measurements and research findings can be or have been repeated. (p.105). Risk factors for AL and LCP Life Course-persistent: Criminal history, aggressive behaviour, drug/alcohol use most strongly distinguished LCP. Adolescent-limited: Poor school performance, high hyperactivity, low constructiveness, low anxiety, high social activity. Harsh parenting, high parental conflict, single-parent families, and large families. Scared straight Involve organized visits to prison facilities by juvenile delinquents or at-risk kids to deter them from delinquency. Self-fulfilling prophecy A prediction or assumption that, in being made, actually causes itself to become true. Self-report surveys A criminology questionnaire survey in which individuals are asked to report on their involvement in criminal or delinquent activities. Social-control agencies Usually government agencies mandated to perform various functions in the justice system, such as police courts and correctional institutions. (p. 73). Telescoping A problem faced by researchers conducting self-report or victimization surveys. People tend to lump offences that may have occurred several years ago into something that occurred “last year.” (p. 107). Unfounded offences Events investigated by the police as potentially criminal offences that are determined not to be offences. (p. 197). Validity Refers to the extent to which research variables have been measured in a way that is consistent with the theoretical concept, or what was intended. (p. 105). Victimization surveys A survey questionnaire that asks individuals whether they have been victimized over a particular time period, and in what ways. (p.88) Zero-tolerance policies Policies related to the intolerance of behaviour that is considered undesirable. (p. 231). Study Questions: Describe the different ways in which crime is measured, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of each: media, official, self-report, and victimization. The most common source of information on youth crime for many people is the media. The other major source, less accessible to the average person, is statistics provided by social-control agencies. These agencies include police, courts, and various correctional institutions. Other information on youth crime comes from researchers who, over the years, have developed various techniques for measuring youth and adult crime through population surveys and field research. The two most common types of surveys are victimization surveys, which ask people if they have been victimized, and self-report surveys, which ask about a person’s involvement in criminal and delinquent activities. Most field research has been done with “street kids,” school children, and other institutionalized populations. Media: Most people obtain information about youth crime exclusively from newspapers and television news reports. Bortner (1988) argues that often, what appear to be crime waves, may be more accurately described as “media waves.” Official: Police Statistics: Crimes “known to police” refer to crimes for which the police have been provided information through complainants or from their own observations. Crimes “cleared by the police” refer to crimes for which police are satisfied they have a suspect and are prepared to process the case. Cases are processed either through laying charges or through some other action, such as deciding to take a youth home to her or his parents, or referring the youth to a community agency or program. Whether police clear a charge varies considerably by type of offence. Individual police departments produce the majority of statistics on criminal activity in Canada. Police data in Canada were standardized by the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system; these standardized reports are sent to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics where they are aggregated and made available to the public. Police statistics are often reported as general indexes—the violent crime index, the property crime index, and the “other” crime index. UCR surveys (UCR2) has collected detailed information concerning individual incidents from a sample of police departments all police departments were providing incident-based crime data that offers offence, offender, and victim information on all criminal incidents. Court Statistics: Court statistics are kept by individual courts and yield smaller numbers than do police statistics. Not all people who are known to the police end up arrested, and not all arrested people end up in court. The value of court records is that they can provide information about offenders and their offences. Court files can provide detailed information, for example, on whether other people were involved in the offence or who the victims might be. If a report on a young offender has been prepared, information is also available on the young person’s family, school records, prior criminal activity, as is various other information of a social nature that is never available from police records. In addition, court records provide information about sentences. Youth court records are similar to police statistics in that the information is aggregated. Finally, youth court statistics measure only cases going to court and are therefore not a valid measure of youth criminal activity. As such, they are more useful as a measure or indicator of youth justice than of youth crime. Self-report: Under this approach, people are asked about their involvement in criminal or delinquent behaviour; typically, surveys are administered to school population samples. The use of self-report studies originated with Austin Porterfield; prior to this research, the only statistics available on the criminal and delinquent behaviour of young people came from official sources. Some are skeptical about self-report questionnaires because of an assumption that people will not be truthful in filling them out. This is particularly a concern with regard to young people because it is thought that they, more so than adults, may feel a sense of bravado about misdeeds and will want to exaggerate their involvement. Adults, on the other hand, are thought to be more likely than young people to underreport their criminal activities because they fear the consequences of being caught. Victimization Survey: This approach involves asking people if they have ever been victimized by the criminal behaviour of others. Although victimization data do not provide a direct measure of the nature or prevalence of youth crime, they do provide considerable information that is useful in combination with other sources. Young people are less likely to report victimization than are older people. What is particularly useful about victimization surveys, then, is that they allow us to know something about police clearance rates for specific offences and about which offences will be underestimated in police statistics. Comparison of the victimization survey results with police clearance rates generally shows that reporting and clearance rates for crimes against persons are very different from property crimes. We have seen that reporting rates for crimes against persons tend to be lower than household property crimes, but clearance rates for these offences are considerably higher than for property offences. With regard to measuring the offences that young people commit, victimization surveys are not able to give us information about an offender’s age if there has not been any contact between the victim and the offender. Gender is the easiest characteristic for victims to recall, race is somewhat difficult, and age is the most difficult. Nonetheless, they did find that victims’ accuracy rates for estimating the age of an offender was not less than 89 percent for any age group. Some critics have raised concerns about victimization surveys because of the possibility that victim reports may be influenced by popular stereotypes of criminals. Media crime images are such that minorities and young people may more likely be reported as offenders. Describe the types of crime in which youth typically engage, and explain whether these have changed over time (focus on the responses to youth crime under the JDA, YOA and YCJA). Property Crime: As we have seen, according to police statistics, property crime is the most common of all youth offences. A study of male street youth also found that most property crime is of a petty nature and stolen items tended to be things easily concealed and distributed, such as clothes, game cartridges, etc. Not surprisingly, the primary motivation for property crime was purely utilitarian: offenders needed the money. Sometimes their thefts were directly related to their homelessness in that they would often break into houses or buildings in order to sleep or steal food. Cars were sometimes stolen so that goods from burglaries could be moved, but most of the motor vehicle thefts involved joyriding. Violent Offences: As with property crime, the vast majority of violent crime charges are for minor assault (assault Level 1), that is, assault resulting in little to no physical injury. Administrative and YOA/YCJA Offences Administrative offences, which occur after a person has been arrested, involve interference with the administration of justice. Some of these offences appear in police statistics, others in court data. This category includes failure to comply with a disposition; failure to appear (in court); escape from lawful custody; being unlawfully at large; failure to comply with a probation order, and less common offences, such as breach of recognizance or contempt against the youth court. Administrative offences occur at different stages of the judicial process. Offences that take place after the court disposition include escape from lawful custody, being unlawfully at large, and failure to comply with a probation order. Some administrative offences, such as failure to appear or escape from lawful custody, are Criminal Code offences. Other offences involve charges under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. YCJA administrative charges, such as failure to comply, are connected with release conditions or extrajudicial sanctions that are ordered under the authority of the YCJA/YOA. According to Statistics Canada the number of cases involving offences against the administration of justice under the YOA and the Criminal Code almost doubled, including offences against the administration of youth justice; bail violations alone increased for girls and tripled for male youth. The Violent Crime Debate In the mid-1990s, when youth crime rates were reaching record high levels, especially for violent crime, and the media and conservative politicians were fueling a moral panic about youth and violence, the academic community was divided on the question of whether violent crime was, in fact, on the rise. The main concern for criminologists then and now stems from an awareness that levels of reported or official crime are “a political as well as an empirical issue.” Determining how much crime we have in our society depends on which statistics we look at, on how police are behaving in relation to legislative requirements and public pressures to clamp down on criminal activity, as well as on people’s willingness to define or report activities as criminal. It is not useful to use police charges as a method of comparing changes in crime rates over time. Police charging practices are susceptible to changing public attitudes and zero-tolerance policies. Rate comparisons should be based on crimes reported to police rather than on crimes charged by police. PROFILING YOUTH CRIME Since the introduction of the YCJA, the youth crime rate has declined, largely due to decreases in charge rates for non-violent offences, a trend that began in the 1990s under the YOA. The section that follows focuses on more specific details of property, violent, and administrative offences. Crime under the YOA and YCJA versus Crime under the JDA Many people were concerned and convinced that the YOA was responsible for increasing youth crime, and now many are convinced that the YCJA is responsible for increasing the levels of violent crime. A majority of academics disagree that the laws were responsible for raising levels of youth crime. Formal processing refers to cases handled through the courts, in which the accused enters a plea and has their case adjudicated by the judge. Informal processing refers to cases handled outside of courts, in which youth are not charged but are instead released to the custody of their parents or a social agency. An important exception to rate decreases is administrative and YOA/YCJA offences, the majority of which are failure to comply (FTC) with conditions of probation or pre-trial release conditions. The most important conclusions to be drawn from the comparisons of crime rates from the JDA, YOA, and YCJA are, first, contrary to public discourse and the Conservative federal government’s claims, youth crime has not increased progressively, and, second, crime rates, especially rapid changes, are a function of changes in law—crime rates did increase with the YOA and decrease with the YCJA—not changes in youth behaviour. Discuss the relationship between gender and offending among youth. - One of the facts of crime and delinquency that is most consistent and least disputed is that boys are far more involved in crime and serious criminal activity than are girls of any age, as seen by the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) crime rate differences. The consistency of these statistics notwithstanding, certain aspects of the “fact” of gender differences are debatable. At issue is the magnitude of the difference between boys and girls, whether the types of offences they are involved in differ, and whether girls are becoming more like boys in their behaviour. Official Data on the relationship between gender and offending among youth: For both boys and girls, the most frequent offences are minor in nature. The most frequent offence that brings them into contact with the police is theft with most of these theft charges involving shoplifting. The next most common offences for girls are minor assaults and administrative offences (most commonly bail violations and failure to appear), followed by mischief and drug offences. For boys the most common offences, after minor thefts, are mischief, drug offences, administrative offences (most commonly bail violations), and minor assaults. While rates for boys are consistently higher for all offences except prostitution, boys are far more involved in violent offences than are girls, especially sexual assaults. Describe each of the crime prevention programs covered in your readings for this unit. After-school programs (ASPs) rose to prominence in the late 1980s, largely out of concern for ‘‘latch-key’’ children facing after-school self-care while parents finished the work day. ASPs were touted as a way to address the unsupervised time of youth as well as provide extended time for academic enhancement. Although programs vary by type, size, and focus, many serve a similar purpose of increasing the amount of time participants are supervised, providing shelter from unsafe neighborhoods, and reducing the amount of time youth spend socializing with delinquent peers. Additionally, ASPs are believed to engage youth in learning new skills or building upon existing interests. In some of these programs, the prevention of externalizing behavior problems remains a primary objective. ASPs can provide a unique platform by which community members, families, and schools can unite to provide prosocial opportunities for youth. Formal Supervision: The after-school hours have been implicated as a peak time for juvenile delinquency. Following the final bell, students are released into the community approximately 2 hours before their parents or guardians have completed their own workdays and are often left to care for themselves. This unsupervised time provides youth with the opportunity to associate with delinquent peers or engage in any number of negative behaviors. Having these youths in a controlled environment with structured activities and a pair of watchful eyes can reduce risky activities through formal supervision. It has also been suggested that ASPs alter criminal opportunities by influencing the routine activities of the participating youths. Highly structured programs can reduce unstructured and unsupervised socializing and reinforce socially acceptable behaviors. Academic Achievement and Social Skills: Other programs that include structured activities specific to a particular skill set provide children with additional resources and time to develop positive attributes, knowledge, and social networks that may also act as protective factors against delinquency. In targeting individual risk and protective factors, the community utilizes ASPs to model appropriate behaviors and values in its youth. The purpose of ASPs is not solely to reduce unstructured time, but rather to fill the time with educational or recreational programming. Research has provided some support for the effects of ASPs on academic achievement and the development of social skills. ASPs of varying types show overall positive effects on grades and test scores and lower rates of aggression and negative behaviors, improved school bonding, and reduced perceptions of hostility. Conversely, in a review of four studies, found ASPs to have no impact on overall academic achievement, and systematic review found evidence of null effects for school attendance and problem behaviors. Limiting Features: Some studies have found ASPs to be associated with increased rates of delinquent or violent behavior. This may be due to the potential association or ‘‘deviancy training’’ of students with one or more delinquent peers through proximity in the controlled environment. ASPs might also suffer from self-selection, limiting their ability to reach those in greatest need. Often, ASPs are voluntary and, although aimed at reducing delinquency involvement of higher risk youth, some youth may already be pursuing a non delinquent path. In other cases, at-risk youth who do participate in ASPs might self-select themselves into less structured activities. This allows them to socialize more freely, and potentially more negatively, with other peers. Describe the failure of “scared straight” programs. Scared Straight: In juvenile awareness programs, juvenile delinquents or youths at risk of delinquency participate in an organized visit to a prison facility. The main goal of such programs is to deter youth from future criminal behavior by exposing them to realistic depictions of life in prison and presentations held by inmates. It was concluded in a meta-analysis that juvenile awareness programs provoke rather than prevent delinquency. Nevertheless, these programs remain in use worldwide. The supposed underlying mechanism of juvenile awareness programs is grounded in deterrence theory. Deterrence is based on the theoretical notion that offenders learn from the negative experience of (fear of) punishment, and thus will deter from further offensive behavior. Both the certainty and severity of punishment are perceived to be important concepts in preventing and deterring people from involvement in crime. Following this theory, the rationale of juvenile awareness programs is that experiences and realistic depictions of life in prison scare at-risk youths and juvenile offenders, deterring them from future involvement in crime. However, the claimed positive results of juvenile awareness programs, such as Scared Straight, were quickly rejected in multiple experimental studies. In fact, some studies even concluded that the program produced an adverse effect, because delinquency rates were significantly higher among program participants than among nonparticipants.