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Overview Of Behind The Scenes: UCR Edition

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Behind the Scenes: UCR Edition
Any criminal act in Canada is regulated by the Criminal Code therefore, any discussion about “The typical starting point for any discussion of crime in Canada involves the Criminal Code. is the Criminal Code.” (Morden and Palys, 2015, p. 74) A contradiction is apparent within the Criminal Code that crime is objective and the Uniform Crime Report is subjective.
The UCR may indeed be based on crimes reported by the police but those reports are lower than the actual number of crimes committed due to the dark figure of crime and the dark figure of recording, making the UCR subjective to the officer’s interpretation of crimes. However, the General Social Survey is based off the public’s perception of their own victimization …show more content…

The Uniform Crime Report can be perceived from numerous different standpoints: structuralist, constructionist, positivist, and integrationist. People may argue which perspective best represents the UCR, but it is not definite. The structuralist perspective is based off of conflict theories, such as feminist and Marxist theories where they demonstrate the “unequal distribution of power in society” (Morden and Palys, 2015, p. 75). Structuralists would also interpret the data from the records and analyze it with the intent to determine the distribution of societal power instead of the fact that it is simply data based off societal misconduct reported by the police (Morden and Palys, 2015). Essentially, individuals who follow the structuralist form, focus more on the qualitative facts rather than the quantitative facts as shown within the UCR’s, thus the structuralist perspective is not an accurate depiction of the …show more content…

Positivists simply believe that there is a general consensus among the public in regard to what is and is not criminal because they base it off consensus theories (Morden and Palys, 2015, p. 76). This would then relate back to the UCR because the data is simply collected from police reports and those reports are defined criminally. For example, if there was a report of a murder, that would then be a part of the UCR as the general population agrees that murder is a crime. Such incidents that are not reported in the UCR, the public would also agree they are not criminal (for example, riding a bike to school without a helmet is not criminal thus the police do not write a report and it is not charted in the UCR). This in turn, would make the UCR, in the eyes of the public, unbiased and the positivist perspective a largely agreed on approach when analyzing the

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