Criminal Justice Research Methods - Essay Example

The reason why NIBRS is preferable is because NCVS is a national sample and that is why it has limited utility. The crime captured by it is also small for instance; Snyder reports that in 1991 there were less than 1,200 violent crime incidents reported in the NCVS (309-315). As a result subpopulation characteristics is limited, as the number of cases within a subpopulation reduces as the detail of the analysis increases. Now we turn to UCR, it provides no information other than homicide and thus it is the opposite of NCVS it does not apply to the nation instead it applies to crime reported to the police.

It was designed to restructure UCR. The elements which are not present in UCR includes property lost and its value, suspected alcohol or drugs used by the offender, type of location of the crime, resident status of the victim, and the nature of victim injuries (Reaves). Reaves used it to identify rape and robbery from 3 states. Chilton used it to identify nonlethal domestic violence data from 1993 NIBRS files (305-315). Snyder used it to support juvenile justice research and Decision-making. Studies from 1970s and 1980s suggest that old aged people were victimized but NCVS data showed that they were not victimized as much.

NIBRS found robbery was the most frequently committed crime against people aged 65 or older and this was four times more for individuals of 64 years or younger. South Carolina was fully compliant; all law-enforcing agencies were to report crime statistics to NIRBS while in the other 8 states this varied. The common identifier feature includes many types of links, for instance adding victim and offending confrontation analysis referred to as victim-offender interaction. Robbery analyses are presented in such a way that it includes the incident, the victim, victim-offense, and the victim-offender interaction.

Then comes a further division into groupings (65–74, 75–84, and 85 or older). Incident profile specifies that individuals over 64 were the victims between the hours of noon and 5 pm. The people below 64 were robbed before 5 am. In victim profile both gender and race show different patterns in the two different age groups recorded, two-third accounted for male robberies but as the age of the victims increase the male percentage decreases while female percentage increases. Male 64 or younger were robbed in a non-residential area while male above 65 were robbed in residential area, people over 65 were not faced with a firearm but people below that age were faced with it.

The physical harm was opposite with both the sex if a male individual 64 or younger risked harm the female individual would face less harm. But in the case of 65 and above males would face less harm while females would face more. In victim-offender interaction older adults were likely to be robbed by other racial group, older adults were robbed by 25 year old offenders while 64 or younger w