Understanding criminal patterns and victimology would be very difficult if the ability to collect and analyze data was impossible. With the help of many primary and secondary sources, Criminologists make it possible to help get a better understanding of victims that are at loss of crimes, where, demographically, crimes are more likely to occur, and some sources even try to understand why crimes go unreported (Siegel 2012). The primary sources include: The Uniform Crime Report, The National Incident-Based Reporting System, The National Crime Victimization Survey, and Self-Report Surveys. The secondary sources include: meta-analysis and systematic review, data mining, and crime mapping.
Uniform Crime Report, or UCR, gathers their data from …show more content…
This primary source allows victims to talk about crimes committed on them that were not reported. A drawback of NCVS is that it is very expensive and takes more time because they go around and interview people in certain demographic areas (Dolliver, 2010). The NCVS could ask about a crime that happened many years ago, an individual’s memory might be a little vague when they recall the event or events that happened. A person could also exaggerate a story to make it seem more exciting or they could be seeking sympathy from the person asking question. The person giving this information might not trust the individual they are telling, so they could lie and say they have never been a victim of a crime. All of these things can lead to invalid results. There are strengths with the NCVS as well however. It allows Criminologists to better understand why crimes go unreported. NCVS can allow the victim to explain his/her relationship with the criminal. (Regoli & Hewitt …show more content…
It is used by police fairly often. It uses software that helps police better understand where crimes occur. It places diagrams, tables, and pictures and places it with that region of the map. This type of secondary source is very beneficial to police officers to paint them a visual of that area and who all is living there, what the past crimes have been, and will show any potential “hot spots” (Manning, 2008). This source is only beneficial to seeing where crimes are and what type of crimes surround that area. It does not, explain why that individual committed that crime or all the facts that happened in that crime, which can be seen as a weakness for some
Uniform Crime Report, or UCR, gathers their data from …show more content…
This primary source allows victims to talk about crimes committed on them that were not reported. A drawback of NCVS is that it is very expensive and takes more time because they go around and interview people in certain demographic areas (Dolliver, 2010). The NCVS could ask about a crime that happened many years ago, an individual’s memory might be a little vague when they recall the event or events that happened. A person could also exaggerate a story to make it seem more exciting or they could be seeking sympathy from the person asking question. The person giving this information might not trust the individual they are telling, so they could lie and say they have never been a victim of a crime. All of these things can lead to invalid results. There are strengths with the NCVS as well however. It allows Criminologists to better understand why crimes go unreported. NCVS can allow the victim to explain his/her relationship with the criminal. (Regoli & Hewitt …show more content…
It is used by police fairly often. It uses software that helps police better understand where crimes occur. It places diagrams, tables, and pictures and places it with that region of the map. This type of secondary source is very beneficial to police officers to paint them a visual of that area and who all is living there, what the past crimes have been, and will show any potential “hot spots” (Manning, 2008). This source is only beneficial to seeing where crimes are and what type of crimes surround that area. It does not, explain why that individual committed that crime or all the facts that happened in that crime, which can be seen as a weakness for some