Crime Reporting

William P Obptande Check Point Crime Reporting and Rates Response Write a 200- to 300-word response in which you address the following questions: What is the purpose of major crime-reporting programs? What makes a successful crime-reporting program in the United States? Programs generally report little detailed information about program expenditures and results. Consequently, it is difficult to hold programs accountable for performance. There is also a lack of information about which programs are effective in reducing crime, due to the small number of programs that are evaluated for effectiveness.

In addition, even when information is available, it is not consistently used to modify program design and funding. There is a lack of coordination among the multiple state departments that administer crime prevention programs which results in duplication of effort and inefficiencies. Develop standardized review criteria which can be used to determine funding allocations for new and existing crime prevention programs. Require and fund well-designed impact evaluations that increase knowledge about the types of crime prevention programs which are effective, and therefore should be funded.

Establish a state crime prevention office within an existing entity or new organization to develop a strategic plan to coordinate statewide crime prevention activities. How do crime rates relate to arrest rates and clearance rates? Is there a way to improve the correlation between crime rates, arrest rates, and clearance rates in the effort to combat criminal activity? *  Clearance rate is calculated by dividing the number of crimes that are “cleared” e. g. due to a charge being laid) by the total number of crimes recorded.

These are used by various criminal justice groups as a measure of crimes solved by the police. Clearance rates can be very problematic for measuring the performance of police services and for comparing various police services. This is because a police force may employ a very different way of measuring clearance rates. For example, each police force may have a different method of recording when a “crime” has occurred and different criteria for determining when a crime has been “cleared. One police force may appear to have a much better clearance rate simply because of its calculation methodology. In System Conflict Theory, it is argued that clearance rates cause the police to focus on appearing to solve crimes (generating high clearance rate scores) rather than actually solving crimes. Further focus on clearance rates may result in effort being expended to attribute crimes (correctly or incorrectly) to a criminal, which may not result in retribution, compensation, rehabilitation or deterrence.