Discussion 2 Week 1: Measurement of Criminal Behavior

Discussion 2 – Week 1
Name
Institution
Discussion 2 – Week 1
Murder and rape is a serious crime. Murder is a crime in which an individual deliberately kills another (Shackelford, 2002). Rape involves a specific type of sexual violation in which sexual intercourse or any form of sexual penetration occurs without the consent of the other person. Rape and murder occur when a perpetrator rapes and kills the person usually to avoid being identified for the crime (Shackelford, 2002).
One way of measuring murder and rape is through official crime reports by getting the incidents that have been reported to the law enforcement agencies. The official crime reports are recorded as uniform crime reports (UCR) and contain crime counts for the whole country including regions, states, cities, counties, colleges, and also universities Jones, & Bartlett Publishers, n.d.). This means murder and rape reports can be gotten from the UCR including information on age, sex, race, victims, offenders, weapons, and other information of the crime.
Self-reports is another data source that can be used to measure murder and rape. Self-reports inquire from perpetrators of the said crime to indicate how often and why they were involved in these crimes (Krohn, Thornberry, Gibson & Baldwin, 2010).
According to HJhjhj (Jones, & Bartlett Publishers, n.d.), the strength of official crime reports is that they show the prevalence and occurrence of the crime o...