CHAPTER 3
DEFINING AND MEASURING CRIME
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
LO1: Discuss the primary goals of civil law and criminal law and explain how these
goals are realized.
LO2: Explain the differences between crimes mala in se and mala prohibita.
LO3: Identify the publication in which the FBI reports crime data and list the two ways
in which the data are reported.
L04: Distinguish between Part I and Part II offenses as defined in the Uniform Crime
Report (UCR).
LO5: Describe some of the shortcomings of the UCR as a crime-measuring tool.
LO6: Distinguish between the National Crime Victimization Survey and selfreported surveys.
LO7: Identify the three factors most often used by criminologists to explain increases
and declines in the nation’s crime rate.
LO8: Explain why issues of race and ethnicity tend to be overstated when it comes to
crime trends.
LO9: Discuss the prevailing explanation for the rising number of women incarcerated in
the United States.
BRIEF LECTURE OUTLINE
I.
Classification of Crimes
A. Civil Law and Criminal Law
1. Guilt and Responsibility
2. The Burden of Proof
B. Felonies and Misdemeanors
C. Mala in Se and Mala Prohibita
II.
The Uniform Crime Report
A. Part I Offenses
B. Part II Offenses
C. The UCR: A Flawed Method
D. National Incident-Based Reporting System
III.
Alternative Measuring Methods
A. Victim Surveys
1. National Crime Victimization Survey
B. Self-Reported Surveys
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IV.
Crime Trends in the United States
A. On the Rise: Crime in the 1960s and 1970s
1. Age and Crime
2. Crime and the Economy
B. Drug Wars: Crime in the 1980s
1. The Impact of Crack
2. The Methamphetamine Scourge
3. An Alternative View
C. Looking Good: Crime in the 1990s and 2000s
1. The Great Crime Decline
2. A “Welcome Puzzle”
3. The Immediate Future
D. Crime, Race, and Poverty
1. Race and Crime
2. Class and Crime
3. Ethnicity and Crime
E. Women and Crime
V.
CJ in Action – Legalizing Marijuana
FULL LECTURE CHAPTER OUTLINE
Correlated to PowerPoints
I.
1-3
Classification of Crimes
A. Civil law and criminal law
1. Two categories of law distinguished by their primary goals
a. Criminal law
i.
Criminal justice system is concerned with protecting society form
harm by preventing and prosecuting crimes
ii.
Crime is an act so reprehensible that it is considered a wrong
against society as a whole
iii.
State prosecutes a person who commits a criminal act
iv.
Persons found guilty of a crime will be punished by government
b. Civil law
i.
Includes all types of law other than criminal law
ii.
Concerned with disputes between private individuals and between
entities
iii.
Proceedings in civil lawsuits are normally initiated by private
individuals (plaintiff v. defendant)
iv.
Disputes may involve terms of a contract, ownership of property,
or an automobile accident
c. Guilt and responsibility
i.
A criminal court determines if a defendant is guilty of the criminal
offense he or she has been charged with
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ii.
4
A civil court is concerned with assigning responsibility (liability)
for the plaintiff’s injury or loss
d. Burden of proof
i.
Two systems, criminal law and civil law, are completely separate
in the modern legal system, but have similarities
 Both attempt to control behavior by imposing sanctions on
those who violate the law
 Often supplement each other, as a victim may file a civil suit
against an individuals who is also the target of criminal
prosecution
ii.
The burden of proof in criminal court is beyond a reasonable
doubt, a much greater standard than what is applied in civil court
iii.
The burden of proof in civil court is preponderance of the evidence
B. Felonies and misdemeanors
1. Crimes are classified as felonies or misdemeanors based on their degree of
seriousness
a. Felonies are serious crimes punishable by death or imprisonment in a
federal or state penitentiary for one year or longer
i.
Capital offenses—maximum penalty is death
ii.
First degree felonies—maximum penalty is life imprisonment
iii.
Second degree felonies—maximum is ten years imprisonment
iv.
Third degree felonies—maximum of five years imprisonment
b. Degrees of murder—specifics vary from state to state
i.
Murder in the first degree—when the crime is premeditated and
deliberate
ii.
Murder in the second degree—occurs when there is no
premeditation or deliberation, but the perpetrator did have malice
aforethought toward the victim
iii.
Homicide—without malice aforethought towards the victim,
known as manslaughter
 Voluntary manslaughter occurs when the intent to kill was
present, but malice was lacking
 Involuntary manslaughter occurs when the actions of the
defendant were careless, but there was no intent to kill
c. Degrees of misdemeanor
i.
Misdemeanors include any crime that is not a felony
 Punishable by a fine or by confinement for up to a year
 If imprisoned, the guilty party goes to a local jail instead of a
penitentiary
ii.
Gross misdemeanors—offenses punishable by thirty days to a year
in jail
iii.
Petty misdemeanors—offenses punishable by fewer than thirty
days in jail
d. Infraction
i.
Punishable only by a small fine and does not appear on a
wrongdoer’s criminal record
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5-6
7-8
9-10
C. Mala in se and Mala prohibita
1. Mala in se
a. Considered wrong even if there were no law prohibiting it
b. Said to go against “natural laws”
c. Against the “natural, moral, and public” principles of society
d. Examples include murder, rape, and theft
2. Mala prohibita
a. Refers to acts that are considered crimes only because they have been
codified as such through statute
b. “Human-made” laws
c. Considered wrong only because it has been prohibited; it is not
inherently wrong
d. Definitions can vary from country to country or state to state
3. The drug dilemma
a. When considering drugs, there are apparent contradictions in the law
b. Licit versus illicit drugs
i.
Some substances, such as stimulants, can be classified as both licit
and illicit drugs depending on their form and based on prevailing
social norms and values
c. Society and the law
i.
Mala prohibita
II. The Uniform Crime Report
A. Crimes known to the police
1. Uniform Crime Report (UCR) released each year since its inception in 1930
as an attempt to measure the overall crime rate in the United States
B. The UCR is produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)
C. UCR is reliant upon the voluntary participation of local law enforcement
agencies, with three measurements – about 17,500 agencies report arrests
1. Number of persons arrested
2. Number of crimes reported by victims, witnesses, or police themselves
3. Number of officers and support law enforcement specialists
D. The UCR presents data in three ways
1. As a rate
2. As a percentage
E. Part I offenses
1. Those crimes that, due to their seriousness and frequency, are recorded by
the FBI to give a general idea of the “crime picture” in the United States
2. There are eight Part I offenses
a. Murder
b. Forcible rape
c. Robbery
d. Aggravated assault
e. Burglary
f. Larceny / theft
g. Motor vehicle theft
h. Arson
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Data reflect those offenses that are “known,” or reported to the FBI by local
agencies
F. Part II offenses
1. All other offenses not included in Part I
G. The UCR: A Flawed Method?
1. Not all crime is reported, and therefore reflected in the UCR
2. Police agencies may underreport crime
3. Offenses may not be consistently defined from agency to agency
H. The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
1. Department of Justice began seeking ways to improve its data-collecting
system in 1980s
2. Local agencies collect data on each single crime occurrence within twentytwo offense categories
3. Data are recorded on computerized record systems provided by the federal
government
4. NIBRS presents a more complete picture of crime by monitoring all
criminal incidents reported to the police, not just those that lead to an arrest
5. Also includes bias motivations of offenders, thus may provide insight on
hate crimes
III. Alternative Measuring Methods
A. Victim surveys
1. An alternative source of data collection attempting to avoid distorting
influences of local police agencies
2. Victims are asked directly about their experiences of crime, using
techniques phone surveys, email, or interviews.
3. Results indicate a higher victimization rate than had been previously
expected
a. Researchers believe that a better understanding of the dark figure of
crime is revealed through victim surveys
b. Dark figure of crime is the actual amount of crime that occurs in the
country
4. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
a. Started in 1972
b. Conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in cooperation with the
Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics
c. An annual survey of more than 40,000 households with nearly 75,000
occupants over 12 years of age
d. Participants are interviewed twice a year concerning their experiences
with crimes in the prior six months
e. Highlighted aspects
i.
Measures both reported and unreported crime
ii.
Unaffected by the police bias and distortions in reporting the crime
to the FBI
iii.
Does not rely on victims directly reporting crime to the police
5. Self-reported surveys
3.
11-12
13-14
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a.
15-16
17-18
Form of data collection, in which persons are asked directly through
personal interviews or questionnaires, or over the telephone, about
specific criminal activity to which they may have been a party
b. Most useful in situations in which the group to be studied is already
gathered in an institutional setting
c. One of the most used self-reported survey is the Drug Use Forecasting
Program which collects data on drug use from arrestees during booking
d. Highlighted aspects
i.
Measures both reported and unreported crime, indicates the dark
figure of crime is larger than reported in the UCR or NCVS
ii.
Can measure how an offender “felt” while offending
iii.
Allows research to control aspects of the data collection
themselves
IV. Crime Trends Today
A. Crime rates as measured by the UCR, NCVS, and other reporting instruments
reflect only the tip of the iceberg of crime data
B. Due to the efforts of government law enforcement agencies, educational
institutions, and private individuals, more data is available on crime today than
at any time in the nation’s history
C. On the Rise: Crime in the 1960s and 1970s
1. Two large scale crime increases since the 1960s, one that lasted through the
1970s and another shorter, more dramatic increase peaking in 1991
2. Factors to explain the increase in the 1960s and 1970s
a. imprisonment
b. youth populations
c. the economy
D. Drug Wars: Crime in the 1980s
1. The impact of crack cocaine
a. young, low-income males recruited into the drug trade
b. increase in firearms and handgun related offending
2. The methamphetamine scourge
a. epidemic emerged in the 2000s
b. meth can be produced in home laboratories and provides a cheap high
c. related to increased offending
d. children taken away from parents using meth are referred to as “meth
orphans”
3. An alternate view of drug offending suggests that drugs do not cause crime
per se, but rather crimes take place because drugs are illegal
E. Looking Good: Crime in the 1990s and 2000s
1. In the 1990s the U.S. entered a steep crime decline, referred to be some as
the “golden era”
2. Since the 2000s, crime rates have been “impressively flat”
a. Experts disagree on whether crime rates will continue to decline or rise
again
F. Crime, race, and poverty
1. Race and crime
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a.
19-20
Minority groups are overrepresented in terms of offending, arrest rates
and rates of imprisonment
b. The rate of violent crime is associated much more strongly with family
disorganization than race
2. Class and crime
a. Recent research indicates that family earning power had the only
significant correlation with violent behavior
b. Lack of education, as a handicap faced by low-income citizens, seems
to correlate with criminal activity
c. However, poverty does not cause crime, higher arrest rates may be
related to a willingness on the part of police to arrest those in lowincome neighborhoods
3. Ethnicity and crime
a. Race refers to physical characteristics while ethnicity refers to national
or cultural background
b. There is often a distinct lack of data regarding ethnicity and offending
c. Latinos are the fastest growing minority group and account for 40% of
those convicted of federal offenses
d. Research indicates that strong social ties in immigrant populations
create an environment that is compatible to crime
4. Women and crime
a. Crime is a predominantly male activity
b. While women represent a small number of arrests, the number of
female offenders in the criminal justice system is rapidly increasing
i.
Adler suggests that as women gain equality socially they also
offend at higher rates
ii.
Women are being treated more harshly by the system
V. Criminal Justice in Action – Legalizing Drugs
LECTURE NOTES
Chapter 3 introduces students to both the classifications of crime and its measures. There
are three major ways that crime can be classified. Begin by discussing with students the
differences between criminal and civil law. Criminal law exists to protect society from
crime by punishing criminal offenses. Civil law is designed to resolve disputes between
two parties. While students are primarily interested in criminal law, there are occasions
when criminal behavior is addressed in both courts. Explore with students the differences
between the two systems of law and the occasions when they overlap. A second
classification involves determining whether offenses are sanctioned because they are
inherently wrong, mala in se, or illegal because they conflict with our concept of public
order, mala prohibita. Our views of morality are not fixed, but change depending on the
era, or even the culture being considered. Encourage students to ponder these
classifications and apply them to a variety of offenses. Stalking, for example, was
criminalized as recently as 1990. Is this offense mala in se or mala prohibita? Why did
behavior that was traditionally considered deviant become criminal? Finally, crimes can
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be classified as either felonies or misdemeanors. Chapter 3 provides the most common
degrees associated with these offenses, which may or may not be consistent with the
criminal code in your state. Encourage students to explore the way offenses are classified
in your area. This is a good time to invite a local criminal attorney to class to expand on
your exploration of state and local law.
Crime is measured in three primary ways in our nation. First, official crime statistics are
collected annually and published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI’s
Uniform Crime Report presents data collected by law enforcement agencies all over the
country in the form of aggregates, rates per 100,000 persons, and as percentage change
from the previous year. Encourage students to familiarize themselves with the UCR; you
might spend some time accessing data in class and allowing students to observe. A
second method of collected crime data is shown through victim surveys. This is a good
way to capture crimes that were never reported to police, or that never resulted in a
criminal arrest. Finally, self-reported surveys allow offenders to disclose their criminal
behaviors, even those that have gone undetected. Walk students through the advantages
and disadvantages associated with each of these methods, and explain how, taken
together, the nature and extent of offending can be revealed.
The final sections of Chapter 3 explore current trends in criminal offending. There have
been two large-scale crime increases since the early 1960s. The most recent increase
peaked in 1991. Increases are often attributed to rates of imprisonment, youth
populations, and the economy. Considering these factors, would students expect current
crime rates to remain stable, increase, or decrease? There are a number of factors related
to criminal offending, one of which is age. Young people are most likely to offend, and
that risk decreases with age. Why is the crime rate higher for teenagers? What causes the
decline in offending as individuals age? Are there additional risk factors that would
explain offending in populations under the age of 20? Another correlate is the illegal drug
trade. While the crack cocaine epidemic was strongly related to rising homicide rates in
the late 1980s, today there is much concern over the manufacture and sale of
methamphetamine. Finally, students are asked to consider the links between race, poverty
and crime. Statistically, poor people commit more crimes and are victims of more crimes
than people of a higher socioeconomic status. Why does this occur? What risk factors can
be found in low-income communities that might contribute to increased criminal activity?
End your discussion by encouraging students to brainstorm ways that we can use these
variables related to crime (age, gangs, drugs, poverty) to prevent it from occurring.
CLASS DISCUSSION TOPICS
1. Ask students to discuss the three primary forms of collecting crime data: official
reports, victim surveys, and self-report data. What are the advantages and
disadvantages of each method? If students had to identify just one method as
being the most reliable, which would it be?
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2. Have students discuss the concepts of mala in se and mala prohibita. Ask them to
brainstorm a list of offenses that fit into each category. Are there behaviors that
are mala in se but not illegal? Do students believe there are mala prohibita crimes
that are not immoral? Can the classification of mala in se or mala prohibita
change over time?
3. Ask students to discuss the relationship between age and criminal offending. Why
does criminal offending peak during the teenage years? Likewise, why does
criminal offending taper off as the offender ages?
4. Ask students to discuss the relationship between gender and criminal offending.
Why is crime primarily considered a male activity? Why are female offending
rates increasing more quickly than male offending rates? Do students feel that
society views female offenders as less culpable than their male counterparts?
ACTIVITES
1. Ask students to research how felonies are graded in your state. If felonies are
designated in degrees, what are the sentences associated with each degree?
Likewise, how is murder classified in your state? If murder is designated in
degrees, what factors determine whether a homicide is murder in the first, second,
or third degree?
2. Have students collect examples of homicide from the local and national news over
a two-week period. Then ask them to analyze each article and determine the
appropriate criminal charge: murder in the first, second or third degree or
voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. Discuss students’ conclusions in class.
Did everyone agree on the appropriate charge, or are these decisions subjective to
some extent?
3. Have students go online and access the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. Ask them to
analyze the report and prepare a short report on the offending rates in your area.
Once they determine crime rates locally, ask them to compare offending in your
area to offending in other locations nationally. How safe is your city?
4. Invite a local sheriff’s deputy to visit the classroom and discuss the impact that
methamphetamine has in your area. Is methamphetamine a growing problem in
your region? What types of offenses are related to this particular drug? What
impact has increased use had on your community?
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MEDIA TOOLS
1. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yx9dFVa19o to watch a video on the
possible advantages of legalizing drugs as proposed by Boston University
Economist Jeffrey Miron.
2. Go to the website of the White House and read the reports published on legalizing
marijuana: “Marijuana legalization: A non-starter” and “Marijuana Legalization”
http://search.whitehouse.gov/search?affiliate=wh&query=legalizing+drugs&form_
id=usasearch_box&submit.x=0&submit.y=0.
3. Go to the UCR website http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/attorneygeneral-eric-holder-announces-revisions-to-the-uniform-crime-reports-definitionof-rape to read about the changes to the definition of rape.
4. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg4E-n7y8fI to watch a video on the
Goldwater Institute's call for uniform crime reporting for all law enforcement.
WHAT IF?
1. In 2010, 22-year-old University of Virginia men's lacrosse player George
Huguely was charged with first-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend Yeardley Love.
It was later determined that Huguely had been previously arrested for drunken and
aggressive behavior and had threatened to kill a female police officer while he
was drunk. Research has shown that alcohol abuse is correlated with aggression
and domestic violence. It has been estimated that alcohol abuse is a factor in
about 40% of all severe injuries resulting from domestic abuse (Leonard and
Quigley, 1999). There is no relationship between marijuana use and domestic
violence and marijuana has not been shown to cause aggressive behavior. Thus,
some researchers argue that alcohol is a more dangerous drug than marijuana and
should be illegal. What do you think? Should alcohol and marijuana both be
illegal? Should alcohol be illegal and marijuana be legal? Should we keep the
current law?
2. Methamphetamine has had a devastating effect on many communities.
Specifically, methamphetamine destroys the health of individuals, separates
families, forces children into foster care, and poisons the environment because the
waste produced in home cook methamphetamine labs is often dumped in the
immediate neighborhood. Methamphetamine is easy to produce and as a result
many users have labs in their homes or garages where they cook
methamphetamine. The chemicals needed can be obtained in stores and
pharmacies. One of the most important chemicals needed is pseudoephedrine, a
drug contained in cold medications, such as Theraflu. Some policy makers are
calling for a new law that would prohibit the sale of products that contain
pseudoephedrine without a prescription from the doctor. They argue that this is
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the only way to stop the spread of methamphetamine. Opponents state that this
law would increase costs for many people because they would have to go to the
doctors’ office to get a prescription, pay the office fee and then pay for the
prescription. Which side do you agree with more? Should products that contain
pseudoephedrine be available with a prescription only or should we keep the
current laws where everyone can buy these products without a prescription?
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