Читать книгу Criminology For Dummies - Steven Briggs - Страница 52

IN THIS CHAPTER

Gathering crime stats and determining how many crimes occur

Realizing how crime stats affect public policy

Calculating the costs of crime

Documenting how much crime occurs in the United States and calculating its impact on society is an incredibly difficult — some would say impossible — task. Yet, understanding how crime statistics are gathered and how reliable those statistics are is essential because politicians and other policymakers rely heavily on crime stats to make decisions that impact the rest of society.

Should money be diverted from social services to build more prisons? Should inmates be released early from prison to free up money to provide social services? Should schools develop Internet safety programs to protect kids from sexual predators? Crime stats, even imperfect ones, help people answer tough questions like these.

People who rely on statistics without really understanding them can make serious policy mistakes that waste money and may even risk lives. Reading this chapter is a great first step toward truly understanding where crime stats come from and what their flaws may be.