Crime Canada US
Governments, academics, and journalists often express an interest in cross-national crime comparisons, particularlybetween Canada and the United States. This interest stems from the desire to discover causal explanations forcrime and to develop more effective criminal justice and social policies (Archer & Gartner 1984; Howard, Newman,Pridemore 2000). Unfortunately, methodological complexities have placed considerable barriers to such comparisons.Differences between national data sources, both for police reported and victimization surveys, have hamperedaccurate comparisons. Despite these divergent national data collection systems, the tendency has been to comparecrime rates between countries with little or no attention to these limitations. Recently, the proliferation of the Internethas led to the growth in this type of misinformation.Recognizing the methodological hurdles, along with the benefits of comparing crime rates between Canada andthe United States, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics has undertaken the task of assessing the feasibility ofcomparing police reported statistics between Canada and the United States. This report, which represents the firststep of this study, compares and contrasts t
Many crimes are never reported to or detected by police andconsequently, police reported data under-estimates the amount of crime, especially for highly unreported crimessuch as sexual assault. Similarly, attempted murder is scored independently. Although it isimpossible to estimate its effect, it is important to recognize the jurisdictional variations in the decision to recordreported crimes as actual or unfounded offences. Assaults involving the use of aweapon and attempted murder are included in the American offence. Although these comparisons would not be nationally representative,these analyses would cover a greater population area, given that it is not restricted to the 15% coverage of theAmerican incident-based survey. Although there is a greater number of offences available for comparison at the accused level, there are some majorlimitations. This is because the American aggregate survey contains information on offencespecific details, such as the location of robbery. Similarly, the Uniform Crime Reports in the United States define robbery as "the taking orattempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force or threat offorce or violence and/or by putting the victim in fear" (FBI 1984: 12). 7% of attempted murders also involve a robbery. Neither survey has achieved full national coverage: the Canadian survey has 53% coverage,while the United States has 15% coverage. Not all incidents ofcrime result in the discovery of an accused person. 3% of robbery incidents involve a sexual assault.
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Acceptance Essays
