INTRODUCTION Crime is an act or omission prohibited and punished by law (The Collins Concise Dictionary Plus, Collins London and Glasgow 1990). Crime can be committed against a person, place or company. In this essay 4 types of crimes will be explained, defined and measured, along with prevalence and offender/victim characteristics.
How do we define property crimes, violent crimes, white-collar crimes and Internet crimes? • Property crimes are defined and categorised as household and vehicle theft, burglary, arson, theft including shoplifting, pick pocketing, bag snatching, graffiti and vandalism Violent crimes, being homicide, kidnapping/abduction, assault, sexual assault, stalking, domestic violence and child abuse against a person • White-collar crimes defined as crimes or activities that include theft, fraud, deception, embezzlement harmful behaviours, environmental or health and safety hazards • Internet crimes consisting of cyber-crimes, piracy, frauds, identity theft, cyber-stalking, computer hacking and hate/harmful speech and obscene imagery.What are property crimes, violent crimes, white-collar crimes and Internet crimes? Example of property crimes is breaking into a car and the stealing of a mobile phone, trespassing into a property to commit an offence or the setting of fire to property. Unlike Property crimes, violent crimes are committed against a person and as such explained as the indecent assault of a person/s against their will, taking a life with or without intent to kill, taking of a person against their will or threats, force or violence against person. In general there is no agreed definition for white-collar crime. Rather, the term covers a range of criminal activities or breach of regulatory activities undertaken by highly regarded professionals/educated professional in positions of trust such as employer provides inadequate working conditions causing serious personal injury to employees or company director misleads shareholders about its financials and continues to operate regardless of its inability to pay debt.Internet crime is explained as the unauthorised access of and taking of financial records or sabotage of a persons computer, illegal downloading of movies or songs and bogus websites set up to entice the unsuspecting person to give access to their personal details and accounts.
How do we measure property crimes, violent crimes, white-collar crimes and Internet crimes? We can measure detected and reported property crime via administrative data.Administrative data gives a high level of property crime reporting, mainly because there is less fear or shame from reporting of property crimes and also police reports are often required for insurance reporting requirements. Its limitation is it does not encompass undetected and unreported crime known as the ‘dark figure’ of crime (Coleman & Moynihan, 1996). Detected and reported violent crime can be measured using administrative data. Violent crime can also be measured by victimization and researcher surveys where victims do not report crime for various reasons such as victims often knowing the offender and/or fear of reprisal.The Australian Bureau of Statistics Administrative data on crime victimisation can be derived from a number of sources including police, hospitals and community service agencies.
Internet crimes have considerable lower reporting under administrative data due to the non detection or victims unaware they have been a victim of internet crime. We can measure internet crime by surveys such as victimization surveys or measurement against the ongoing extent of the crime.White-collar crime with the exception of fraud under criminal law is extremely difficult to measure due to the complexity of each crime/activity, some activities are regarded as regulatory and not criminal and the interpretations of a crime/activity can be perceived differently among victims. This type of crime/activity is generally picked up through regulatory audits, routine checks and investigation units such as specialized crime departments, police fraud or relevant regulators. Regardless of the different types of data and surveys available, no one reporting measure gives a true indicative picture of crime.How do we gather data on property crimes, violent crimes, white-collar crimes and Internet crimes? Reported property crime and violent crime data can be gathered by using official crime statistics, police reports, corrective service reports, higher, magistrates’ and children’s courts of Australia, reports and insurance reports.
Undetected and unreported data for violent crime data can be gathered via qualitative methods and quantitative surveys. Some examples of such are The National Youth Survey, The Rand Tri-State Inmate Survey, The Liverpool Desistance Study, Snowball sampling, organizational and observational data.Researchers also gather data from past, present and/or incarcerated offenders as well as the general public which provide information not only about the prevalence of undetected and unreported crime but why people commit crimes. Gathering data on internet crime is difficult. Surveys such as the 2005 Australian computer crimes and security survey, conducted by AusCERT, Australian High Tech Crime Centre and various state, territory and federal police agencies provide an indicative sample.Researchers gather data from white-collar crimes through administrative data such as criminal fraud reports, victimization surveys, state and territory police agencies as well as the Australian Payments Clearing Association.
Apart from fraud, gathering data on white-collar crime is extremely difficult as most victims don’t report. What crime/activities have occurred is gathered via reports from police and security agencies and government reports. Some activities are written off by the victim in the hope that the behaviour/incident is not repeated.What do we know about the typical offenders and victims of property crime, violent crime, white-collar crime and Internet crime? There appears to be overwhelming evidence from research that supports the conclusion that age is a factor within property crime characteristics. There is a significantly higher representation that occurs in middle to late adolescence and subsides in early adulthood for property crime.
This is thought to be associated with “adolescent rebelliousness”. An overlooked characteristic of youth is that they are also more likely, statistically, to be victims of crime.The majority of crime victims are male under the age of 25. This is different to the popular belief that would suggest otherwise. It is often perceived that older people have a greater risk however, surveys have identified that older people, and in particular women appear to be more fearful of crime not victims of crime.
Violent crime has a gender differentiated nature. Data suggests that approximately 80% of crimes are committed by males and 90% of violent crimes are committed by males. This is supported by convictions and prison populations. To understand the victims, it needs to be broken down to more specific categories of violent crimes.For example, males tend to be victims of murder or attempted murder and assault, female are disproportionately represented as victims of sexual assault, kidnapping/abduction.
Although males appear to be highly represented in both offenders and victim categories of violent crime, this does not appear to be the case within categories of white-collar crime such as fraud. The ratio of female offenders to male offenders is higher than that of any other category with ratio of two thirds male to one third female. There also appears to be an unusual relationship between repeat offenders and repeat victims.Many victims are victimised repeatedly. It is suggested that residencies with low occupation rates are often the target of repeat burglaries.
Prison populations also suggest a disproportionately higher population of repeat offenders. There appears to be little data that describes the victims or offenders in relation to internet crime. However, it could be hypothesized that a great proportion of male offenders would also be represented within this category. How much property crime, violent crime, white-collar crime and Internet crime is there in our community?Crime statistics for our local community has been drawn from Victorian Police region 4 statistics. Statistics for postcode 3129, within this region for 2008 and 2009 using per 100,000 population suggests property damage, theft of and from motor vehicles and residential burglary had reduced substantially but violent crimes including crimes against the person and assault had increased. Internet crimes and white-collar crimes were not available.
Statistics for the state of Victoria indicated property crime such as robbery, burglary and theft or and from motor vehicles was down where as violent crimes such as assault had increased.Is property crime, violent crime, white-collar crime and Internet crime on the rise, is it stable or is it declining? Allowing for variations within reporting methods and survey results, there appears to be stable evidence that recorded crime statistics show property crime declining for recorded break and enter or burglary and other theft including pick pocketing, bag snatching, shoplifting and bicycle theft. There also appears to be an increase in motor vehicle theft between 1996 and 2001 followed by a decline from 2001-2008.Recording rates for other theft in 2008 as with previous years suggests that it remains the most commonly reported property crime.
Violent crime statistics indicate assaults as the most recorded since 1996, kidnapping statistics fluctuated from 1996 – 2008, homicide statistics also fluctuated but continued to be the 2nd lowest recorded and although the least recorded, there has been an overall increase on sexual assault since 1996. CONCLUSION There appears to be no uniform measurement system for measuring crime. This leads to inconsistencies within the gathered data and the inability to compare between categories, regions and states.Notwithstanding the inaccuracies within the measurement system, property crime is largest represented category and at this stage internet crime has little representation within the data. Whilst we would love to agree with the typical media characterization of an offender, we cannot due to large variations within the data. However, we can suggest the most likely offender would be a young male adolescent committing a property crime.
References Collins London and Glasgow (1990) The Collins Concise Dictionary Plus p. 299 Victoria Police News. My Police Crime Statistics for Your Area. Retrieved from http://www.
icpolicenews. com. au/index. php? option=com_statistics&task=search Hennessey Hayes and Tim Prenzler (2009) An Introduction to Crime and Criminology 2nd Edition Pearson Education Australia Australian Institute of Criminology.
Selected Crime Profiles. Retrieved from http://www. aic. gov.
au/en/publications/current%20series/facts/1-20/2009/2%20selected%20crime%20profiles. aspx Last modified 18 August 2009 Australian Institute of Criminology. Recorded Crime. Retrieved from http://www. aic.
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