Crime Data Comparison Essay

This week in class we were asked to choose two metropolitan areas with different data and write a paper comparing the occurrence of the offense in the selected areas. We were asked to identify the number of occurrences reported to the police for each area, and address the following questions which area had more reported incidents? What were the rates of the crime for each area? Did the rates change over time in either area? What factors might explain the differences in the rates? The information will be presented as it appears above. New York and New Jersey are two metropolitan areas that have had a lot of crime both high profile media grabbing attention and low profile everyday crime occurrences. Therefore these two metro areas can provide for very good demographical crime data as well as have a good base to study from due to the high crime rates in both areas. As such this paper will be comparing forcible rape crime data from both areas to see what is happening in this particular field. So with looking at the FBI.gov web site and looking for info on these two areas and the categories forcible rape it is very clear that this is a very big crime in both areas in new jersey the total for 2011 is 1,006 rape case which the year before in 2010 was at 981 cases which is a 2.5 % increase in this crime. In New York where this crime is a lot higher in totals 2,752 which is 1.6 % less than in 2010’s 2,797 cases. With this data we can see a few things happening here for one we can see that New York has a drop in rap e cases in one year and that New Jersey has increased in this crime, and this could be due to a number of reasons. We know that the two states are almost one in the same and that many people who work in New York live in New Jersey which could mean that these cases could involve residents from both areas and so both would have possibly been reported to. We could speculate that New Jersey has a less severe punishment than New York for rape crime and so the criminals would go to that area to commit the crime due to a less harsh punishment if caught. Another factor on this could be to release times of prisoners within the state that may go to metro areas and commit crimes; this could be a very real factor to consider due to the likely hood of violent criminals repeating their crimes. At any rate not just one factor is the most likely reason as to why we see a drop in New York and an increase in New Jersey. The probability that it has to do with most of if not all stated factors is very real, especially since rape is not a crime that can be predicted nor really deter able unfortunately. And with both metro areas having such high populations it is also possible that many cases were never reported, which is why New York and New Jersey both estimate a total as well as keep records for the actual total. In New York they had an estimate of 2,972 rape case that’s almost three hundred unreported rapes that may have happened. So with knowing that the actual rape cases reported versus the estimated total one could see that even though the statistics are going down and it may look like the crime rate in an area is going down you would still need to see the estimated totals and compare to see what could be unreported and unknown. With the info we have and the estimates on it as well it is clear that although I may appear that New York is getting a handle on its rape crime it may not be as well off as it appears and although New Jersey has had an increase in rape cases it also has lowered its estimate which could be a good sign or bad and unfortunately that is the way crime an statistics go ever changing and adapting. References Uniform Crime Report. (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-4