Comparing The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Survey And General Social Survey

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Statistics Canada releases an annual report summarizing the crime that has happened and it presents the public with information about incidents of crime that have occurred in the past year (Allen, 2016 & Keighley, 2017). The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Survey and General Social Survey (GSS) on Victimization are the two main sources that are used in collecting data on crime that has happened in Canada (Allen, 2016 & Keighley, 2017, pg. 4). The UCR Survey includes incidents that have been reported to the police and how it was dealt with, while the GSS Survey on Victimization includes both incidents that have been reported as well as ones that have not. Both surveys are used to collect data and form the annual report that Statistics Canada release. …show more content…

This viewpoint displays unbiased measures, it demonstrates what society believes is criminal as well as values, and it has since become more detailed and informative due to an increase in agencies providing data (Morden & Palys, 2015). Using this perspective, the UCR seems to be unbiased but because it only has data that is recorded by the police, it is not all that fair. Police officers do not record all reports that are reported and if it is not recorded, then it is not reflected in the UCR. This is an issue in the UCR, and in some part, Statistics Canada for not having the most accurate data being collected and presented to the public. As a result, there are many crimes that also go unreported and is also not reflected in the UCR or in statistics. This refers to the dark figure of crime, which is the “number of crimes that occur and the number of crimes that are actually reported to the police” (Morden & Palys, 2015, pp. 77). The dark figure of crime is a big factor in the amount of crime presented in statistics and the actual amount of crime happening. Data that has been collected by agencies and then sent to Statistics Canada are incomplete and it becomes hard to tell if crime rates are declining or if it is increasing and individuals are just not reporting incidents. This is one of the weaknesses that the police-reported crime statistics