Causes of Different Types of Crimes

Causes of Different Types of Crimes Deviant behaviors are those behaviors that society does not like because the society does not see the behavior as a normal behavior for that society. Like gay marriages or cross dressers. Deviant behavior that is criminal is when the behavior becomes harmful to those in the society. Like murdering a person. A behavior that is criminal but not deviant would be driving under the influence or being intoxicated in public. A behavior that is deviant but not criminal would be a teenager with piercings and tattoos all over their body. A behavior that is both deviant and criminal would be spousal abuse. Society determines which behaviors are deviant and which are criminal. Governments or even individuals can convince local authorities that a deviant act is criminal or vice versa. Criminal laws vary because the laws are imposed by the local authorities so the laws will be different from city to city, state to state, or even town to town. Criminologists utilize three primary sources of data t hat provide information on the nature and extent of crime. Identify and explain each of these three different sources of crime data. Also, assess the strengths and weaknesses of each source. Finally, provide an example of a research question that a criminologist may be interested in examining and then explain which source of crime data the researcher would need to utilize to answer his/her question. The three primary sources of data that can provide information on the nature and extent of crime are (1) crimes that get reported to the authorities, this includes the uniform crime reports and the national incident based reporting system (2) victimization surveys which includes the national crime victimization survey and (3) the self-report surveys that include the monitoring the future studies. The uniform crime reports are recorded by the FBI and include all the crimes that have been reported to the authorities and how many arrests are made. The report that the FBI makes is sectioned out by city and county by the most serious crimes that occurred. These are called â€Å"part I crimes and part II crimes† Part I crimes include things like rape, robbery and burglary whereas part II crimes include sex crimes and other types of crimes not defined in the part I crimes. A strength for the UCR is the way that the data is collected makes the UCR a good indicator of patterns in crime. A weakness for the UCR is that many crimes are not reported to authorities and therefore do not get counted. The national incident based reporting system goes a step further than the UCR does in that it requires local authorities to provide a report of the arrest that includes details of the incident and also information on the victim and the criminal. These reports are sent to the FBI for only certain offenses that include not only the offenses that the URC covers but also includes white collar crimes and drug offenses. A strength of the national incident based reporting system is th at it includes more details on the crimes than the UCR does which will hopefully improve how accurate the crime data is. A weakness of the NIBRS is that it only reports crime that have been reported to authorities it does not include crimes that have taken place but not reported by the victim.