For this scholarly activity, conduct research on patterns of offenses and victimization. Research the crime rates in both your
local area and nationally. You must use your textbook and the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) and National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS). Links to these two sites are provided here:
Bureau of Justice Statistics. (n.d.). Data collection: National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Retrieved from
https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245#Publications_and_products
Federal Bureau of Investigations. (n.d.). UCR publications. Retrieved from https://ucr.fbi.gov/ucr-publications
Be sure you are using the most current years. You also must go to the Waldorf Online Library and use the Criminal Justice
database to find an article related to this activity.
Include responses to the following points in your scholarly activity:
1. Research the most recent murder and aggravated assault data within the past 4 years. Find national data as well as
data in your current city or town or the closest nearby that reports.
2. Describe the national and local rates. Have they gone up or down? How do they compare? Do you see trends? What
do you attribute to the differences?
3. Explain the terminology and definition of each crime. How do they differ?
4. Describe the characteristics of the crime, including the types of offenders, the types of victims, and the event (e.g.,
location, weapon, when it occurred).
5. What are the differences in arrest and clearance rates?
6. After learning more about these crimes, pick a theory from an earlier unit and use it to explain the possible reasons for
why people commit these crimes in your area.
Your scholarly activity must be a minimum of two pages in length, not counting a title and reference page. All sources used,
including the textbook, must be cited in the text and included on the reference page in APA style.
Information about accessing the grading rubric for this assignment is provided below.
CRJ 2501, Criminology 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit VI
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
3. Relate ideas addressed in the study of crime to present-day crime issues.
3.1 Identify possible theories that explain changes in crime trends and patterns.
6. Illustrate patterns of offenses and victimization as related to crime rate changes.
6.1 Derive types of offenders for specific crimes.
6.2 Derive types of victims for specific crimes.
Reading Assignment
Chapter 10:
Crimes against Persons—What We Fear
Chapter 11:
Crimes against Property—It’s What We Lose
The website below, through the FBI.gov website, provides a review of the proper use and potential pitfalls of Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2011). Uniform Crime Reporting statistics: Their proper use. Retrieved from https://ucr.fbi.gov/ucr-statistics-their-proper-use
This website below will assist you in understanding the importance of crime data as well as review the crime data tools you learned about early in the term.
Sibley, R. (2015). The benefits of criminal justice data: Beyond policing. Retrieved from https://sunlightfoundation.com/2015/05/01/the-benefits-of-criminal-justice-data-beyond-policing/
Unit Lesson
This unit focuses on crimes against persons and property as covered in both Chapters 10 and 11 of your textbook. In other criminal justice courses, you have likely been introduced to these types of crimes, so for this unit, focus on how these relate to criminology.
First, let’s look at the different types of violent crime in the United States; then we can cover more about property crimes. As you read through these in your textbook, be sure you are thinking about all of the criminological theories we have discussed. Try to think about the following:
Why someone would commit these crimes?
What theory relates to people committing these crimes?
What theory relates to people being victimized in these crimes?
How can we prevent these types of victimizations?
Remember, in criminology, sometimes there is no right or wrong answer. As you learned earlier in this course, criminology is a gray area. You and a classmate could have different theories you pick to explain crime, but the explanation is what is important. There is not always a wrong answer in how we apply theories to crime. This does not mean you cannot be wrong, but it does mean we may all view a situation or crime differently.
UNIT VI STUDY GUIDE
What We Fear and What We Lose