crime statistics research paper ideas

135+ Amazing Criminal Justice Research Topics In 2023

Are you a law student or enrolled in law college? Are you looking for criminal justice research topics? Here, in this blog, you can find your criminal justice research topics. Statanalytca.com explains the 135 amazing criminal research paper topic ideas for 2023 in this blog.

When we listen to the word criminal justice, many words come into our mind like “victim,” “enforcement,” “crimes,” “courts,” “prison,” and law sanctions. Criminal justice is a term that governments make to justice for people, reduce and make decisions to prevent crimes. Governments make law sanctions to reduce crimes. Every country has a different criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system in the United States is a complex system of federal, state, and local laws, with state and federal constitutions, international treaties, and customary law. Each layer of government shares responsibility for a different aspect of the process. Federal law enforcement agencies enforce laws that may be broken by people who are not in their jurisdiction.

For example : When an individual from New York City travels to Florida to commit a crime such as a robbery or murder they will be arrested by the Florida police and handed over to federal authorities.

A criminal justice research paper necessarily requires accuracy, attention, and patience. Sometimes students are confused about writing criminal research paper topics, or they have a shortage of time to complete research papers.

Most college students ask for assignments to write criminal justice research papers. If you want criminal justice research paper help, you can take our trusted research paper assignment help .

How To Choose A Good Research Topics

Table of Contents

Choosing a research topic is a very challenging task. You should pick a topic that is both interesting and relevant to your audience. You should analyze the crime report before choosing the criminal justice research topics. Research the types of crimes in your country and where your country ranks in the global crime index.

Some research topics include the following:

The role of law enforcement, prosecutors, and public defenders.
Challenges with eyewitness identifications.
Different types of evidence are used in criminal cases.
The effect of jury selection on trials.
How criminal justice impacts mental health.

What Is a Research Paper in Criminal Justice?

A research paper in criminal justice is an academic paper presenting findings from research on a specific criminal justice topic. These papers typically require extensive research and analysis of primary and secondary sources, such as case studies, official reports, statistics, and academic literature. The research paper aims to contribute new knowledge to the criminal justice field, identify trends or patterns, or assess the effectiveness of interventions or policies.

Research papers in criminal justice typically follow a standard academic format, including an introduction that sets the context and research questions, a literature review that summarizes existing research, a methodology section that outlines the research design and data collection methods, a results section that presents findings, and a conclusion that summarizes the research’s significance and implications.

Criminal justice research papers may focus on various topics, including the legal system’s operations, law enforcement practices, corrections, crime prevention, and victimization. These papers may be used to inform policymakers, practitioners, and academics about the state of the criminal justice system and suggest evidence-based solutions to improve its effectiveness and fairness.

Let’s Discuss The Criminal Justice Research Topics-

Here in this section, we will tell you some of the best criminal justice research topics for 2023:-

Basic Criminology and Criminal Justice Research Topics

Basic criminal Research Topics.
History of Criminal Ethics.
Criminology as Social Science.
Criminology and Public Policy.
Advantages of Private Prisons.
Civil Crimes vs War Crimes.
Offenses Against Religion & Cultural Traits.
Causes of victimization.

Court Cases Criminal Justice Research Topics

Can victims of crime receive help?
How serious are shoplifting incidents?
When do felony disenfranchisement laws apply?
Is organized crime and corruption synonymous?
What is legal help available to victims of date rape?
What is the difference between civil and criminal cases?
Forensic science: how effective is it in modern criminal justice?
Is there a link between substance abuse, crime, and substance use?
Who is eligible for the protection program, and what protection is provided?
Prison rape and violence: What can be done to prevent sexual and domestic violence in prison?

Controversial Criminal Justice Research Topics

Gun control causes.
Struggle with mental health issues.
Police officers’ legal rights are limited.
College Violence Causes.
Gun violence and prevention policies.
Crimes Propaganda and Modern Music Culture.
Race and politics of criminal justice.
An investigation into victim services.
Eyewitness Evidence Importance.
Legal codes used in America.
Zero tolerance policy and crime rates.
Sexual assault.
culture, and gender equality.
What is the best way to reduce recidivism?
pros and cons of prisons in America.
Criminalization of poverty.
Gender and Punishment.
The effects of drugs on children’s development.
Effects of drug addiction on mental health.
Youth offenders and Bootcamps.

Debate Criminal Justice Research Topics

Failures in criminal justice.
Criminal justice system expectations.
Statistical analysis in criminal justice.
Debate on criminal justice act.
criminal justice trend evaluation.
Trends in the criminal justice system.
Criminal justice system corrections in the USA.
Find the solution to prevent crimes.

Criminology Research Topics On Theories

Is employment related to law violations?
What is the relationship between family status and legal violations?
Is gender related to the type of law violation?
What is the relationship between citizenship and law enforcement?
How does education relate to crime levels?
How does gun ownership relate to breaking the law?
Is there a link between immigration status and law violations?
What types of crimes are common at what ages?
How does the type of crime relate to the level of aggression?

Criminal Justice Research Topics Based On Crime and Communities

The impact of community policing on crime prevention in urban areas.
The effectiveness of restorative justice programs in reducing recidivism rates.
The relationship between poverty and crime in urban communities.
The role of race and ethnicity in criminal justice outcomes and disparities.
The effectiveness of community-based interventions in reducing juvenile delinquency.
The impact of gun laws on violent crime in urban communities.
Social media’s role in spreading crime and its effects on communities.
The effectiveness of drug courts in reducing drug-related crimes and improving public safety.
The relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior in urban communities.
The impact of immigration policies on crime and public safety in urban areas.
The effectiveness of re-entry programs for ex-offenders in reducing recidivism and promoting successful reintegration into society.
The impact of community-based victim services on the criminal justice system and crime prevention.
The relationship between neighborhood social disorganization and crime rates.
The role of technology in improving crime prevention and solving crimes in urban communities.
The effectiveness of community-based diversion programs for non-violent offenders.
The impact of neighborhood watch programs on crime prevention and community safety.
The role of community involvement in addressing hate crimes and bias incidents.
The impact of domestic violence on communities and the criminal justice response.
The effectiveness of drug treatment programs in reducing drug-related crime and improving public health.
The criminal justice system’s impact on marginalized communities and efforts to promote equity and justice.

Criminal Justice Research Topics On Racism and Discrimination

Eliminating discrimination in the criminal justice system.
Gender Bias in Eyewitnesses.
African American Legislative Apartheid.
Racial Discrimination in College Campuses.
How criminal justice law is enacted on Migrants.
Inequality in the criminal justice system Research.

General Criminal Justice Research Topics

Police brutality and excessive force
Criminal profiling and investigation techniques
Restorative justice programs
Cybercrime and cyberterrorism
Gun control policies and their effectiveness
The impact of race and ethnicity on sentencing
Juvenile delinquency prevention and intervention
Wrongful convictions and the death penalty
Gender and crime
Drug policy and its impact on crime.
Community policing and trust-building strategies
The effectiveness of rehabilitation and reentry programs for offenders
Domestic violence and its impact on victims
Crime prevention through environmental design
Forensic science and the reliability of evidence in criminal investigations
Corruption in law enforcement and the criminal justice system
Mental health treatment for inmates and offenders
Human trafficking and modern-day slavery
The use of technology in criminal investigations and surveillance
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the criminal justice system.

Types of Criminal Justice Research Topics

Homicide, serial murders, and serial murder are the most popular topics in murder studies.
A case study of robbery crime, unusual daylight robbery in a news article.
Identity Theft and Ways to Protect, the prevalence of identity theft in the community, causes, and effects of cell phone theft.
Analysis and critique of Current fraud cases, Fraud and business ethics, fraud schemes, and investigation.

International Criminal Law Topics

Criminal ethics, criminal law research assignment paper.
Criminal courtroom observation reaction.
Childhood obesity.
Crime Prevention.
International crimes and their laws.
International criminal court.
Human Rights and Inequality.
Rape Cases.

Criminal Justice Research Topics For College Students

The Impact of Police Body Cameras on Law Enforcement Accountability
Violent Crime Reduction Effectiveness of Restorative Justice Programs
Racial Disparities in Sentencing and Their Implications for Justice
The Role of Mental Health Services in Diverting Offenders from the Criminal Justice System
Media Effects on Perceptions of Crime and Criminal Conduct
Examining the Use of Technology in Solving Crimes and Enhancing Investigations
Juvenile Justice Policies: Rehabilitation vs. Punishment
The Intersection of Immigration Policies and Criminal Justice Outcomes
Criminal Profiling and its Reliability in Solving Crimes
The Effect of Minimum Sentence Laws on Incarceration Rates and Public Safety.

Criminology Research Topics

Armed Crime Groups History Motives.
Cyber Criminology Correction Methods.
Art Fraud Cooperation.
Drunk Driving Prevention Ads.
Identity Theft & Social Media.
Topic on Child Abuse & TV Violence.
Aggression Against Homeless People.
Unemployment & Street Situation Analysis.
Forensic Research Identification Methods.
Crime Witnesses PTSD Rehabilitation.

Career With The Criminology Major

There are a variety of jobs you can get with a criminology degree. We sort listed the top 8 trending jobs that you can get with a criminology degree:

Criminologist.
Private investigator
Forensic scientist .
Correction officer.
Jury consultant.
Loss prevention specialist
Clinical social worker.

Tips On How To Write Criminal Justice Research Topics

A step-by-step guide on how to write criminal justice research topics:

Choose a particular topic.
Read the given materials and take some notes.
Come up with a thesis.
Create an outline for your project.
Write down all the information that you have collected.
Start with a cover page, and an intro.
List the technique you used and the results you got.
Include a discussion.
Always write a conclusion.
Don’t forget to correct your grammar mistakes.
Revise, proofread, and if it is incorrect then edit.

Importance of Criminal Justice Research Papers In 2023

Here are some important of criminal justice research papers in 2023:

1. Informed Policy-Making

Criminal justice research papers provide valuable data and insights that policymakers use to develop effective laws and policies, enhancing the fairness and efficiency of the justice system.

2. Evidence-Based Practices

Research papers help identify evidence-based strategies for law enforcement, corrections, and crime prevention, leading to better outcomes and reduced rates of reoffending.

3. Transparency and Accountability

By revealing systemic issues and gaps, research papers push for greater transparency and accountability within the criminal justice system, fostering public trust.

4. Improved Decision-Making

Policymakers, law enforcement, and other stakeholders use research findings to make informed decisions on resource allocation and allocation of efforts.

5. Advancing Knowledge

Criminal justice research papers contribute to the body of knowledge in the field, allowing researchers and academics to build on existing findings and develop innovative approaches to understanding crime and justice.

6. Addressing Disparities

Research papers shed light on disparities in the justice system, such as racial or socioeconomic disparities, prompting efforts to address and rectify these inequalities.

7. Enhancing Public Awareness

Research papers raise public awareness about issues like wrongful convictions, mental health challenges, and the impact of crime on communities, spurring advocacy and societal change.

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This is the end of this post about criminal justice research topics. However, diverse criminal justice research topics offer unique insights into various aspects of the criminal justice system. These research areas are crucial for policymakers, practitioners, and academics to comprehensively understand the system’s challenges and develop effective interventions that improve its fairness and effectiveness.

On the other hand, we mentioned more than 135 criminal justice research topics based on different categories. So that it is easier for you to choose the best criminal justice research topics.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1.what are some criminal justice research topics.

Research Topics in Criminal Justice System: 1. Capital Punishment. 2. Community Corrections. 3. Crime Prevention. 4. Criminal Courts. 5. Criminal Justice Ethics. 6. Criminal Law. 7. Criminal Specialisation. 8. Drug Courts.

Q2. How do I choose a research topic?

Two main ways to find a research topic: through your academic interests or by self-initiation. You can find a topic through your academic focus, talk to your professors and classmates about what they’re working on, and they can point you in the right direction and introduce you to the process of conducting research. The other option is to start with The idea that interests you.

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256 Research Topics on Criminal Justice & Criminology

Are you a law school student studying criminal behavior or forensic science? Or maybe just looking for good criminal justice topics, questions, and hypotheses? Look no further! Custom-writing.org experts offer a load of criminology research topics and titles for every occasion. Criminological theories, types of crime, the role of media in criminology, and more. Our topics will help you prepare for a college-level assignment, debate, or essay writing.

⚖️ Criminology vs. Criminal Justice
🔬 120 Criminology Research Topics
💂 116 Criminal Justice Research Topics

🔦 What Is Criminology?

👮 what is criminal justice, 🔍 references, ⚖️ criminology vs. criminal justice: topics & fields of study.

Criminology. Criminal justice. The terms are often confused even by the people within the field. Nevertheless, criminal justice and criminology are two different spheres. Therefore, these terms are not interchangeable.

Criminology and criminal justice are indeed related. Say, you are pursuing career opportunities in either of the fields. Then, you need to be able to answer the question: what’s the difference between criminology and criminal justice?

To put it simply, criminology studies the anatomy of a crime. More specifically, it explores the causes, costs, and consequences of it. Criminal justice is different from criminology in the sphere it covers. It is the system established for dealing with crimes: the ways of detection, detention, prosecution, and punishment. In short, think of criminal justice as a part of law enforcement.

This chapter just touched on the differences between criminal justice and criminology. If you wish to learn more about the topic, go to chapters IV, and V. Now is the time to move on to criminology research topics!

🔥 Hot Criminology Research Topics

The role of media in criminology.
Cultural explanation of crime.
Benefits of convict criminology.
Main issues of postmodern criminology.
Is criminal behavior affected by the politics?
How does DAWN collect data?
The limitations of crime mapping.
Personality traits that trigger criminal behavior.
Community deterioration and crime rates.
Does experimental criminology affect social policy?

🔬 120 Criminology Research Topics & Ideas

Here are 100 criminology research topics ideas organized by themes.

General Criminology Research Paper Topics

Criminology as a social science.
Criminology and its public policies.
History of criminology.
Crime commission: legal and social perspectives .

Criminal Psychology Research Topics

What is the nature of criminal behavior?
How does the lack of education affect the incarceration rates?
Childhood aggression and the impact of divorce
The effect of the upbringing on antisocial adult behavior
How do gender and cultural background affect one’s attitude towards drug abuse ?
Forensic psychology and its impact on the legal system
What is the role of criminal psychologists?
Different types of forensic psychological evaluations
What’s the difference between therapeutic and forensic evaluation?
Does socioeconomic status impact one’s criminal behavior?

Criminology Research Topics: Theories

What crimes are typical for what ages?
How does the type of crime correspond with the level of exerted aggression ?
What is the connection between citizenship (or lack thereof) and law violation?
How does education (or lack thereof) correspond with crime level?
Does employment (or lack thereof) correspond with law violation?
What is the connection between family status and law violation?
Does gender affect on the type of law violation?
How does ownership of firearms correspond with law violation?
Does immigrant status correlate with law violation?

Is there a connection between mental health and law violation?
What are the causes of violence in the society?
Does the crime rate depend on the neighborhood?
How does race correspond with the type of crime?
Do religious beliefs correspond with law violation?
How does social class correlate with crime rate?
What are the reasons for the homeless’ improsonment?
How does weather correspond with law violation?

Criminology Topics on Victimization

Biological theories of crime: how do biological factors correspond with law violation?
Classical criminology: the contemporary take on crime, economics, deterrence, and the rational choice perspective.
Convict criminology: what do ex-convicts have to say on the subject?
Criminal justice theories: punishment as a deterrent to crime.
Critical criminology : debunking false ideas about crime and criminal justice.
Cultural criminology: criminality as the product of culture.
Cultural transmission theory: how criminal norms are transmitted in social interaction.
Deterrence theory: how people don’t commit crimes out of fear of punishment.
Rational choice theory : how crime doing is aligned with personal objectives of the perpetrator.
Feminist Criminology: how the dominant crime theories exclude women.
Labeling and symbolic interaction theories: how minorities and those deviating from social norms tend to be negatively labeled.
Life course criminology : how life events affect the actions that humans perform.
Psychological theories of crime: criminal behavior through the lense of an individual’s personality.
Routine activities theory : how normal everyday activities affect the tendency to commit a crime.
The concept of natural legal crime.
Self-control theory: how the lack of individual self-control results in criminal behavior.
Social construction of crime: crime doing as social response.
Social control theory : how positive socialization corresponds with reduction of criminal violation.
Social disorganization theory: how neighborhood ecological characteristics correspond with crime rates.
Social learning theory: how (non)criminal behavior can be acquired by observing and imitating others.
Strain theories : how social structures within society pressure citizens to commit crime.
Theoretical integration: how two theories are better than one.

Criminology Research and Measurement Topics

Citation content analysis (CCA): a framework for gaining knowledge from a variety of media.
Crime classification systems: classification of crime according to the severity of punishment.
Crime mapping as a way to map, visualize, and analyze crime incident patterns.
Reports and statistics of crime: the estimated rate of crime over time. Public surveys.
Drug abuse warning network (DAWN): predicting trends in drug misuse.
Arrestee drug abuse monitoring (ADAM): drug use among arrestees.
Edge ethnography: collecting data undercover in typically closed research settings and groups through rapport development or covert undercover strategy.
Experimental criminology: experimental and quasi-experimental research in the advancement of criminological theory.
Fieldwork in criminology: street ethnographers and their dilemmas in the field concerning process and outcomes.
Program evaluation: collecting and analyzing information to assess the efficiency of projects, policies and programs.
Quantitative criminology: how exploratory research questions, inductive reasoning, and an orientation to social context help recognize human subjectivity.

Criminology Topics on Types of Crime

Campus crime: the most common crimes on college campuses and ways of preventing them.
Child abuse : types, prevalence, risk groups, ways of detection and prevention.
Cybercrime: cyber fraud, defamation, hacking, bullying, phishing.
Domestic violence: gender, ways of detection and prevention, activism.
Domestic violence with disabilities .
Elder abuse: types, prevalence, risk groups, ways of detection and prevention.
Environmental crime. Natural resource theft: illegal trade in wildlife and timber, poaching, illegal fishing.
Environmental crime. Illegal trade in ozone-depleting substances, hazardous waste; pollution of air, water, and soil.
Environmental crime: local, regional, national, and transnational level.
Environmental crime: climate change crime and corruption.
Environmental crime: wildlife harming and exploitation.
Hate crime: how prejudice motivates violence.

Homicide : what motivates one person to kill another.
Human trafficking : methods of deception, risk groups, ways of detection and prevention.
Identity theft : methods, risk groups, ways of detection and prevention.
Gambling in America .
Juvenile delinquency : risk groups, prevention policies, prosecution and punishment.
Juvenile Delinquency: Causes and Effects
Organizational crime: transnational, national, and local levels. Ways of disrupting the activity of a group.
Prostitution: risk groups, different takes on prevention policies, activism.
Robbery: risk groups, ways of prevention, prosecution and punishment.
Sex offenses: risk groups, types, prevalence, ways of detection and prevention.
Terrorism: definition, history, countermeasures.
Terrorism: individual and group activity, ways of detection and prevention.
Theft and shoplifting : risk groups, ways of detection, prevention policies, prosecution and punishment.
Counter-terrorism: constitutional and legislative issues.
White-collar crime: types, ways of detection, prevention policies, prosecution and punishment.

Criminology Topics on Racism and Discrimination

How systemic bias affects criminal justice?
How discriminatory portrayal of minority groups in the media affects criminal justice?
Racial profiling: targeting minority groups on the basis of race and ethnicity.
Racism and discrimination towards African-Americans .
Racial profiling : what are the cons? Are there any pros?
How discriminatory is the UK Court System?
How discriminatory is the US Court System?

🌶️ Hot Criminal Justice Topics

The history of modern police.
Different types of prison systems.
Is situational crime prevention effective?
How to prevent wrongful convictions.
Challenges faced by crime victims.
The advantages of community corrections.
How do ethics influence criminal justice?
Disadvantages of felony disenfranchisement.
Does correctional system in the USA really work?
Possible problems of prisoner reentry process.

💂 116 Criminal Justice Research Topics & Questions

Here are some of the most typical and interesting criminal justice issues to dazzle your professor.

Prison system : the main problems and the hidden pitfalls.
The question of gender: why are there more men who receive capital punishment than women?
Kidnapping and ransom: common features, motifs, behavior patterns.
Crime prevention : key principles.
Firing a gun: what helps professionals understand whether it was deliberate or happened by accident?
Cybercrime : the legal perspective.
Internet vigilantism: revenge leaks.
Hate crime on the Internet: revenge leaks, trolling, defamation.
Crime and justice in mass media .
Parental abduction laws.
Sex offender registry: pros and cons.
The deterrence theory and the theory of rational choice : are they relevant in the modern world?
Sexual assault in schools and workplaces.
Jury selection: how is it performed?
Experimental criminology: the latest innovations.

Wildlife crime: areas of prevalence, ways of prevention.
Felony disenfranchisement laws: when do they apply?
The relation between organized crime and corruption.
Victim services: what help can a victim of a crime get?
Prison rape and violence: the psychological aspect, ways of prevention.
Juvenile recidivism: what are the risk groups?
Forensic science: role and functions in modern criminal justice.
Shoplifting: how to prevent theft?
Witness Protection Program: who is eligible and how to protect them.
Date rape : what are the ways for the victims to seek legal assistance?
Substance abuse and crime: correlation or causation?
Identity theft: dangers and consequences in the modern world.
Online predators: what laws can be introduced to protect kids? Real-life examples.
Civil and criminal cases: how to differentiate?
Domestic abuse victims: what laws protect them?
Elder abuse: what can be done to prevent it?
The strain theory : the unachievable American dream.
Concepts of law enforcement: pursuing criminal justice .
Ethics and criminal justice: the unethical sides of law enforcement.
The top problems to be solved by law enforcement today.
Information sharing technology: how has it helped in the fight against terrorism?
Terrorism in perspective: characteristics, causes, control.
Serial killers : types.
Drug use and youth arrests.
Aggressive behavior: how does it correlate with criminal tendencies?
Community corrections : are they effective?
Sentencing: how does it take place?
Punishment types and the established terms.
Unwarranted arrest: when is it acceptable?
Human trafficking in the modern world.
Human trafficking: current state and counteracts .
The role of technology in modern forensics .
Similarities and differences between homicide , murder, and manslaughter.
Types of offenders: classification.
Effects of gun control measures in the United States .
The role of crime mapping in modern criminal justice.
Male crimes vs female crimes: are they different?
Prisons: the problems of bad living conditions.
Victimization : causes and ways of prevention.
Victimology and traditional justice system alternatives .
Rape victims: what are their rights?
Problem-solving courts: what underlying problems do they address?
Mandatory sentencing and the three-strike rule.
Have “three-strikes” laws been effective and should they be continued?
Criminal courts: what can be learned from their history?
Hate crimes: what motivates people to commit them?
Youth gangs: what is their danger?
Fieldwork: how is it done in criminology?
Distributive justice: its place in criminal justice.
Capital punishment : what can be learned from history?
Humanities and justice in Britain during 18th century.
Abolition of capital punishment .
Criminals and prisoners’ rights.
Crime prevention programs and criminal rehabilitation .
Campus crime: what laws and precautions are there against it?
Criminal trial process: how does it go?
Crimes committed on a religious basis: how are they punished?
The code of ethics in the Texas department of criminal justice .
Comparison between Florida and Maryland’s legislative frameworks .
Fraud in the scientific field: how can copyright protect the discoveries of researchers?
Prosecution laws: how are they applied in practice?
The classification of crime systems.
Cyberbullying and cyberstalking: what can parents do to protect their children?
Forgery cases in educational institutions, offices, and governmental organizations.
Drug courts : how do they work?

Controversial Topics in Criminal Justice

Want your work to be unconventional? Consider choosing one of the controversial topics. You will need to present a number of opposite points of view. Of course, it’s acceptable to choose and promote an opinion that you think stands the best. Just make sure to provide a thorough analysis of all of the viewpoints.

You can also stay impartial and let the reader make up their own mind on the subject. If you decide to support one of the viewpoints, your decision should be objective. Back it up with plenty of evidence, too. Here are some examples of controversial topics that you can explore.

Reform vs. punishment: which one offers more benefits?
Restorative justice model : is it the best criminal justice tool?
The war on drugs : does it really solve the drug problem?
Criminal insanity: is it a reason enough for exemption from liability?
Juvenile justice system: should it be eliminated?
Drug testing on the school ground.
Police brutality in the United States .
How to better gun control ?
Why Gun Control Laws Should be Scrapped.
Pornography: is it a type of sexual violence?
Whether death penalty can be applied fairly?
Jack the Ripper: who was he?
The modern justice system: is it racist?
A false accusation: how can one protect themselves from it?
Concealed weapons: what are the criminal codes of various states?
Race and crime: is there a correlation?
Registering sex offenders: should this information be in public records?
Juvenile delinquency and bad parenting: is there a relation?
Assessing juveniles for psychopathy or conduct disorder.
Should all new employees be checked for a criminal background ?
Are delinquency cases higher among immigrant children?
Restrictive housing: can it help decongest prisons?
Homegrown crimes: is there an effective program against them?
Prostitution: the controversy around legalization .
Eyewitness testimony: is it really helpful in an investigation?
Youthful offenders in boot camps: is this strategy effective?
Predictive policing : is it effective?
Selective incapacitation: is it an effective policy for reducing crime?
Social class and crime: is there a relation?
Death penalty: is it effective in crime deterrence?
Extradition law: is it fair?
Devious interrogations: is deceit acceptable during investigations?
Supermax prisons: are they effective or just cruel?
Zero tolerance: is it the best policy for crime reduction?
Marijuana decriminalization: pros and cons.
Marijuana legalization in the US .

Now that you have looked through the full list of topics, choose wisely. Remember that sometimes it’s best to avoid sensitive topics. Other times, a clever choice of a topic will win you extra points. It doesn’t depend on just the tastes of your professor, of course. You should also take into account how much relevant information there is on the subject. Anyway, the choice of the topic of your research is up to you. Try to find the latest materials and conduct an in-depth analysis of them. Don’t forget to draw a satisfactory conclusion. Writing may take a lot of your time and energy, so plan ahead. Remember to stay hydrated and good luck!

Now, after we looked through the topic collections on criminology and criminal justice, it is time to turn to the specifics in each of the fields. First, let’s talk more extensively about criminology. If you are training to be a criminologist, you will study some things more deeply. They include the behavior patterns of criminals, their backgrounds, and the latest sociological trends in crime.

In the field of criminology, the specialties are numerous. That’s why it’s difficult to pinpoint one career that represents a typical member of the profession. It all depends on the background of a criminologist, their education, and experience.

Careers possible with a criminology major.

A criminologist may have a number of responsibilities at their position. For example, they might be called forth to investigate a crime scene. Participation in autopsies is unpleasant yet necessary. Interrogation of suspects and subsequent criminal profiling is another essential duty.

Some professionals work solely in research. Others consult government agencies or private security companies. Courts and law firms also cooperate with criminologists. Their job is to provide expert opinion in criminal proceedings. Some of them work in the prison systems in order to oversee the rehabilitation of the convicted.

Regardless of the career specialty , most criminologists are working on profiling and data collection. A criminologist is another word for an analyst. They collect, study, and analyze data on crimes. After conducting the analysis, they provide recommendations and actionable information.

A criminologist seeks to find out the identity of the person who committed the crime. The time point of a crime is also important, as well as the reason for it. There are several areas covered by the analysis of a criminologist. The psychological behavior of the criminal or criminals is closely studied. The socio-economic indicators are taken into account. There are also, of course, the environmental factors that may have facilitated the crime.

Some high-profile cases require a criminologist to correspond with media and PR managers extensively. Sometimes criminologists write articles and even books about their findings. However, it should be noted that the daily routine of a professional in the field is not so glamorous. Most criminologists do their work alone, without the attention of the public.

The research a criminologist accumulates during their work is extensive. It doesn’t just sit there in a folder on their desk, of course. The collected statistics are used for developing active criminal profiles that are shared with law enforcement agencies. It helps to understand criminal behavior better and to predict it. That’s why a criminologist’s work must be precise and accurate for it to be practical and useful. Also, criminology professionals must have a good grasp of math and statistics.

Thinking of a career in criminology? You will need to, at the very least, graduate from college. There, you’ll master mathematics, statistics, and, of course, criminology. An associate’s degree may get you an entry-level position. But the minimum entry-level requirement is usually the bachelor’s degree. The best positions, though, are left for the professionals with a master’s degree or a PhD.

Just having a degree is not enough. To succeed as a criminologist, you will require all your intelligence, commitment, and the skill of analyzing intricate situations. An aspiration to better the society will go a long way. You will need to exercise your creative, written, and verbal communication skills, too. An analytical mind will land you at an advantage.

Criminology: Research Areas

Times change and the world of crime never ceases to adapt. The nature of criminal transgression is evolving, and so do the ways of prosecution. Criminal detection, investigation, and prevention are constantly advancing. Criminology studies aim to improve the practices implemented in the field.

There are six unified, coordinated, and interrelated areas of expertise. Within each, the professionals are busy turning their mastery into knowledge and action.

The first research area is the newest worry of criminology – cybercrime. The impact of this type of crime is escalating with every passing day. That’s why it’s crucial for the law enforcement professionals to keep up to date with the evolving technology. Cybercrime research is exploring the growing threat of its subject at all levels of society. Cybercrime may impact people on both personal and governmental levels. Cybercrime research investigates the motivation and methodology behind the offenses and finds new ways to react.

The second research area is counter fraud. Crimes that fall under this category include fraud and corruption. The questions that counter fraud research deals with are many. How widely a crime is spread, what method is best to fight it, and the optimal courses of action to protect people and organizations.

The third research area is that of forensics. The contemporary face of justice has been changed by forensic science beyond recognition. Nowadays, it’s much harder for criminals to conceal their activity due to evolved technologies. The research in forensics is utilizing science in the identification of the crime and in its reconstruction. It employs such techniques as DNA recovery, fingerprinting, and forensic interviewing.

What is forensic interviewing? It helps find new ways to gather quality information from witnesses and crime scenes. It also works on developing protocols that ensure the protection of this human data and its correct interpretation by police.

The fourth research area is policing. Police service is facing a lot of pressing issues nowadays due to budget cuts. At the same time, police officers still need to learn, and there are also individual factors that may influence their work.

The fifth research area is penology. It’s tasked with exploring the role of punishment in the criminal justice system. Does punishment aid the rehabilitation of perpetrators, and to what extent? The answer will help link theory to practice and thus shape how criminal justice practitioners work.

The sixth research area is that of missing persons. Before a person goes missing, they may display a certain pattern of behavior. The study of missing persons helps to identify it. The results will determine the handling of such cases.

Now that we know what criminology is, it’s time to talk about criminal justice.

While criminology focuses on the analysis of crime, criminal justice concentrates on societal systems. Its primary concern is with the criminal behavior of the perpetrators. For example, in the USA, there are three branches of the criminal justice system. They are police (aka law enforcement), courts, and corrections. These branches all work together to punish and prevent unlawful behavior. If you take up a career in criminal justice, expect to work in one of these fields.

The most well-known branch of criminal justice is law enforcement. The police force is at the forefront of defense against crime and misdemeanor. They stand against the criminal element in many ways. For instance, they patrol the streets, investigate crimes, and detain suspects. It’s not just the police officers who take these responsibilities upon themselves. There are also US Marshals, ICE, FBI Agents, DEA, and border patrol. Only after the arrest has been made, the perpetrator enters the court system.

The court system is less visible to the public, but still crucial to the criminal justice system. Its main purpose is to determine the suspect’s innocence or guilt. You can work as an attorney, lawyer, bailiff, judge, or another professional of the field. In the court, if you are a suspect, you are innocent until proven guilty. You are also entitled to a fair trial. However, if they do find you guilty, you will receive a sentence. Your punishment will be the job of the corrections system.

The courts determine the nature of the punishment, and the corrections system enforces it. There are three elements of the corrections system: incarceration, probation, and parole. They either punish or rehabilitate the convicts. Want to uptake a career in corrections? You may work as, including, but not limited to: a parole officer, a prison warden, a probation officer, and a guard.

📈 Criminal Justice: Research Areas

The research areas in criminal justice are similar, if not identical, to those of criminology. After all, those are two very closely related fields. The one difference is that criminal justice research has more practical than theoretical applications. But it’s fair to say that theory is the building blocks that practice bases itself on. One is impossible without the other unless the result you want is complete chaos.

So, the question is – what topic to choose for the research paper? Remember that the world of criminal justice is constantly changing. Choosing a subject for research in criminal justice, consider a relevant topic. There are many pressing issues in the field. Exploring them will undoubtedly win you points from your professor. Just make sure to choose a direction that will give you the opportunity to show off both your knowledge and your analytical skills.

Not sure that your original research direction will be appreciated? Then choose one of the standard topics. Something that is widely discussed in the media. And, of course, make sure that you are truly interested in the subject. Otherwise, your disinterest will translate into your writing, which may negatively affect the overall impression. Also, it’s just more enjoyable to work on something that resonates with you.

What can you do with your research paper? Literally anything. Explore the background of the issue. Make predictions. Compare the different takes on the matter. Maybe there are some fresh new discoveries that have been made recently. What does science say about that?

Also, remember to backup all your arguments with quotes and examples from real life. The Internet is the best library and research ground a student could hope for. The main idea of the paper, aka the thesis, must be proven by enough factual material. Otherwise, it’s best to change your research direction.

And, of course, don’t put it all off till the last minute. Make a plan and stick to it. Consistency and clever distribution of effort will take you a long way. Good luck!

🤔 Criminal Justice Research FAQs

Criminological and criminal justice research are the scientific studies of the causes and consequences, extent and control, nature, management, and prevention of criminal behavior, both on the social and individual levels.

Criminal justice and criminology are sciences that analyze the occurrence and explore the ways of prevention of illegal acts. Any conducted personal research and investigation should be supported by the implemented analytical methods from academic works that describe the given subject.

There are six interrelated areas of criminology research:

Cybercrime research makes law enforcement professionals keep up to date with the evolving technology.
Counter fraud research investigates cases of fraud and corruption.
Forensics research utilizes science: DNA recovery, fingerprinting, and forensic interviewing.
Research in policing investigates individual factors that may influence the work of police officers.
Penology explores the role of punishment in the criminal justice system.
The study of missing persons helps to identify patterns of victims’ behavior.

There are seven research methods in criminology:

Quantitative research methods measure criminological and criminal justice reality by assigning numerical values to concepts to find patterns of correlation, cause and effect.
Survey research collects information from a number of persons via their responses to questions.
Experimental research assesses cause and effect in two comparison groups.
Cross-sectional research studies one group at one point in time.
Longitudinal research studies the same group over a period of time.
Time-series designs study the same group at successive points in time.
Meta-analysis employs quantitative analysis of findings from multiple studies.

The basis of criminological theory is criminological research. It influences the development of social policies and defines criminal justice practice.

Criminological research doesn’t just enable law students to develop analytical and presentational skills. The works of criminal justice professionals, scholars, and government policymakers dictate the way law enforcement operates. The newest ideas born out of research identify corrections and crime prevention, too.

Here is a step-by-step instruction on how to write a criminal justice research paper:

Choose a topic
Read the materials and take notes
Come up with a thesis
Create an outline for your work
Draft the body
Start with a cover page, an abstract, and an intro
List the methods you used, and the results you got
Include a discussion
Sum it up with a conclusion
Don’t forget a literature review and appendices
Revise, proofread, and edit

The most common types of methodologies in criminal justice research include:

Observation of participants.
Surveys and interviews.
Observation of focus groups.
Conducting experiments.
Analysis of secondary data and archival study.
Mixed (a combination of the above methods).

Learn more on this topic:

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The Differences Between Criminal Justice and Criminology: Which Degree Is Right for You? (Concordia St. Paul)
Corporate Crime: Britannica
The Development of Delinquency: NAP
Databases for Research & Education: Gale
A CS Research Topic Generator: Purdue University
A Introduction To The Federal Court System: US Department of Justice
Criminal Justice Research Topics: Broward College
Research Topics in Criminology: Cambridge Institute of Criminology
CRIMINOLOGY: University of Portsmouth
Research: Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Maryland
Criminal Justice: RAND
Research Methods in Criminal Justice: Penn State University Libraries
Research: School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University
Criminology – Research Guide: Getting started (Penn Libraries)
Criminology Research Papers: Academia
The History & Development of the U.S. Criminal Justice System: Study.com
CRIMINAL JUSTICE & CRIMINOLOGY: Marshall University
Criminal Justice: Temple University
Criminal Justice: University of North Georgia
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The schools of criminology seems like such a fascinating field — it’s definitely not for the lighthearted though! Here in the Philippines, criminology as a course is highly underrated; hopefully that’ll change!

I understand. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

What is a research paper in criminal justice?

The best way to gain more data or information is via research. Research is an important tool that can be used in the subject one is studying and criminal justice research paper topics. A paper in criminal justice is comprehensive writing by scholars to argue for a situation, usually criminal. This paper is different from other types of research papers It requires an investigation of case studies and real-life situations. Many research paper topics on criminal justice can help students write their essays.

Research on criminal justice helps students and professionals alike to gain an in-depth understanding of the field. It also helps government officials who work in law enforcement, discipline, and crime prevention to do their job well.

In-depth study or research on criminal justice helps bridge the rift between the existing practice within the profession. The progression in recent knowledge.

Criminal justice research enables students to become critical thinkers. This makes them evaluate policies based on evidence and facts.

Criminal justice research topic ideas also inspire scholars to challenge intrinsic prejudice. Also, assumptions by cross-checking data objectively. Students may not always have the time to write their research papers by themselves. This can be due to loads of other assignments and impending deadlines. They can easily buy a research paper for their coursework in such situations. This article looks at many paper topics in criminal justice.

Here is a list of captivating and provoking criminal justice research proposal topics that students can work on. PapersOwl experts can help with choosing the best topic and writing a stunning paper.

Basic Criminal Justice Research Topics

When it comes to choosing research topics , students can easily run out of ideas. These are easy criminal justice research topics for college students.

How reliable is eyewitness testimony? Should eyewitness statements be allowed in court? Who should be considered an eyewitness?
The relationship between police and people of different races. Does the media present police violence against people of colour appropriately?
Methods for preventing international drug trafficking. How should law enforcement agencies handle trafficking cases? What should be the punishment for drug trafficking?
Crime during emergencies. Do public emergencies give room for criminal activities?
Gender disparity in the criminal justice system. How can both genders be treated fairly? To what extent can gender equality be exercised?
Solitary confinement. What is the impact of solitary confinement on prisoners?
The efficiency of drug courts. Do drug courts help or hurt addicts?
Domestic violence. Why are women more likely to be victims? What should happen to minors of abusive parents?
Capital punishment. Is capital punishment a violation of human rights? What crimes deserve capital punishment?
Bail. What criminal offenses should be granted bail? What is the maximum that can be charged as bail?

Controversial Criminal Justice Research Topics

Certain topics lead to controversies in the field. Controversial topics should be able to lead to extensive discussions on the situation. Students who have a tough time choosing a topic can find research papers for sale online. Some controversial criminal justice topics include:

Cyberbullying. Where should the line be drawn between freedom of speech and cyberbullying?
Jail structures. Why and how should female jails differ from male ones? What are the dangers of mixed prisons?
Hate crime. What is the history of hate crime in the United States of America? How severe should the punishment for hate crimes be?
Serial killers. Should serial killers be tried as mentally unstable? Should serial killers be charged with capital punishment?
Juvenile crimes. Should minors be sent to jail? Should minors be charged with the death penalty? Is an 18-year-old an adult?
Pornography. Can pornography be considered sexual abuse? Can porn sites be sued for pop-up pornographic images and ads?
Police shootings. In what situations are the police allowed to shoot? What is the punishment for shooting an innocent person?
Carrying concealed weapons. Should there be punishment for carrying weapons? What is considered self-defence?
Murder and homicide. What is the difference between murder and homicide? Should the punishment for murder and homicide be equal?
Reform vs. punishment: which one has more benefits?

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Criminal Justice Research Topics to Provoke Debate

There are research topics for criminal justice topic ideas that lead to debate and analysis. Such topics make sense from different angles, depending on your perspective. Examples of topics that spring debates are:

Self-defense. Where to draw the line between self-defense and premeditated crime. Should there be a punishment for self-defense?
Prostitution. Should prostitution be considered a crime? Should there be a minimum wage for prostitutes?
Stalking. Should stalking be considered a violation of human rights? Should stalking punishable by the law?
Child abuse. What is the line between discipline and child abuse? Should the state take minors away from abusive parents?
Sexual abuse. Should BDSM be considered sexual abuse? Can sexual abuse occur between a married couple?
The impact of prison on children of incarcerated individuals. Who cares for the children of incarcerated people? How does foster and kinship care affect these children?
Media. To what extent should the media show domestic violence?
Drunk driving is a serious offense. What should be the penalty for driving when inebriated? Should an intoxicated driver be charged with first-degree murder in the event of a tragic accident?
Body camera. Is the use of body cams by the police an intrusion of privacy?
Homicide and murder. Is homicide murder?

Criminology Research Topics

Criminology topic ideas will help students understand crime theories better. Below are topics are drawn from different areas of criminology.

What have ex-convicts to say about criminology for convicts? Is the state prepared to assist ex-convicts who have completed their sentences?
Is punishment a deterrence to crime in criminal justice theory?
False conceptions about crime and criminal justice are debunked through media criminology. Fake news and how to handle it.
Criminality is a result of culture, according to cultural criminology. What kinds of cultural traditions are compatible with criminal behaviour?
According to cultural transmission theory, how are criminal norms conveyed in social contact?
Does fear of penalty deter individuals from committing crimes? Is that anything that should be taken into account in a court of law?
The rational choice theory explains how the perpetrator’s personal goals are connected with their criminal behaviour.
How prevalent criminal theories marginalize women, according to feminist criminology.
Minorities and people who deviate from social norms are negatively branded.
Life-course criminology is the study of how events in one’s life influence criminal behaviour.

Criminal Justice System Research Topics

This criminal justice research topic enables students to investigate the judicial system and evaluate the current policies. Some of these criminal justice research questions include:

Firing gun: how to determine whether it was deliberate or happened by accident? On what grounds should the police fire a gun.
Cybercrime: what is the legal perspective of cybercrime? Is cyberbullying a cybercrime?
Internet vigilantism: can revenge leaks be considered a criminal offence.
Hate crime on the Internet: what are the policies against revenge leaks, trolling, and defamation?
Crime and justice in mass media. How does the media influence the system?
Kidnapping and ransom: what are common features and behaviour patterns?
Sex offender registry: what are the pros and cons?
The theories of deterrence rational choice: are they relevant in the modern justice system?
Sexual assault. What is the punishment for sexual assault in schools and workplaces?
Jury selection: how is it performed? What is the requirement for selecting members?

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International Crimes Research Topics

This criminal justice research topic has to do with domestic criminal laws and international crimes. Here are examples of international crimes topics for criminal justice research.

International Criminal Court (ICC): The role of the ICC in the fight against crimes against humanity.
International intervention. Define and analyze the effectiveness of intervention with examples.
War crimes. How are other states tried for committing a crime against humanity in another state?
Plea bargaining in international criminal law.
International justice and peace. How can countries and international organizations make the world more just and peaceful? How should international organizations intervene in countries’ situations?
International justice and human rights violations. What is a just society in the global context?
International criminal law. What are the history, source, and objectives of international criminal laws?
Feminism. A feminist’s point of view of international criminal laws.
Child soldiers in Africa. Discuss the facts, history, and why they become soldiers at that age.
International criminal laws treaties. Research various international criminal laws treaties and tell your reader what they entail.

Racism and Discrimination Criminal Justice Research Topics

The issues of racism and discrimination are still prevalent in society. The following topics can be researched to investigate the situation appropriately.

Systemic bias. How does it affect criminal justice as well as the system?
Minority groups. How is criminal justice affected by the discriminatory depiction of minorities in the media?
Racial profiling: how minority groups are targeted based on ethnicity and race.
African-Americans: how are racism and discrimination more towards them?
Racial profiling: The disadvantages.
The UK Court System. Is the UK court system discriminatory?
The US Court System. Is the US court system discriminatory?
Class Discrimination. What is societal class discrimination?
Does the crime rate depend on the neighbourhood?
Corporate crime: who constitutes the ruling class? What are corporate crimes?

Court Cases Research Topics

There are common criminal cases that are tried in court. Some topics about include:

What is the difference between civil and criminal cases?
Felony: when do disenfranchisement laws apply?
Are organized crime and corruption the same thing?
Victim services: can crime victims get any help?
Prison rape and violence: how can sexual and domestic violence be prevented in prison?
Forensics: how effective is forensics science in modern criminal justice.
Shoplifting: how serious are shoplifting cases?
Protection Program: who is eligible, and what type of protection is offered?
Date rape: what type of legal assistance is available to victims?
Substance use, abuse, and crime: does one cause a trigger for the other?

Crime and victimization Research Topics

Crime And victimization are captivating aspects of criminology. Several research and surveys have been done better to understand this field over the last few years. Below are some intriguing crime and victimization research topics for college students to consider.

Crime and victimization among ethnic minorities: this paper will take an interesting look into how minor ethnicities experience crime and victimization in society.
The victimization of females in the workplace: researchers explore the treatment of females in an especially male-dominated workspace and how it affects them.
Political opposition: how the oppositions are victimized. Political oppositions in many countries are seen as threats by the ruling powers.
Criminal victimization of the elderly – the elderly are mostly defenseless and, as a result, the targets of criminals.
Victimization on campus – how college students are victimized on campus.
Victimization in prisons and correctional facilities – are inmates subject to harassment and various form of physical abuse?
Racial profiling and victimization – is racial profiling a thing? How does it affect the individuals of the race?
Domestic violence: the victimization of romantic partners physically or emotionally.
Sexual harassment and stalking.
Cyberbullying, cybercrime, and victimization.

Criminology Theories Research Topics

Several criminology theories exist. This research covers how these theories are interpreted, used, and discovered. Some topics that cover this include:

Theoretical integration of criminology theories – two criminology theories are better than one and how they can be integrated.
Biological theory; how biological factors affect crime – Are some individuals more predisposed to cringe than others, and do biological factors play an important role.
Deterrence theory: crime and the fear of punishment – are crimes with severe punishments less rampant than those with less punishment; how the freezer of punishment deters crime.
Theory of rational choice – people restore to criminal behaviour because it is the best option.
Advancement of criminology theories – how knowledge of criminal theories could be furthered.
Social theory: how good socialization affects crime – are people around criminals predisposed to crime?
How criminal behaviours are learned through observation: social learning theory: are criminal behaviours learned through observation of criminals or not?
Self-control theory: how effective self-control affects crime rate – are individuals with better self-control less likely to be involved in crime? Is crime a resume of a lack of self-control?
Theory of Routine activities- do daily routines affect criminal behaviours.
Ownership of arms. Is this regarded as a law violation?

Reasonable Criminology Research Topics

Other reasonable criminology topics for students to explore are:

Criminology as a social science – how criminology Is a social science because it deals with social science issues.
Implications of hate crime: hate crime and how it affects the victims and society. Are the punishments effective in deterring hate crimes?
Tracing the roots of criminology from ancient times – a history of criminology.
Of crimes among age groups: how criminal behaviours vary among ages.
Effects of childhood upbringing on the crime rate in society – does a child’s upbringing affect the crime rate in society? Are criminals a result of a bad childhood upbringing?
The Portrayal of Serial killers in media – how serial killers are portrayed in the media and how it affects serial killers.
Crime vs punishment – how punishment relates to crime and its deterrence.
How does society affect drug abuse – is society to be blamed for drug abuse?
Literacy vs Illiteracy and its effect on criminal behaviour: does literacy or Illiteracy affect criminals? Are literates less likely to commit crimes than illiterates?
Gender bias in investigations. Does one gender receive better judgment than the other?

There are quite a number of areas you can conduct research in criminal justice. You may choose to focus on one particular area, or even multiple areas, depending on your research paper’s requirements. You will, however, need to ensure you do sufficient research for your work to be relevant. To make the research process easier, you can enlist the help of a professional writing service to write a research paper for you . They can provide you with the necessary resources and expertise to ensure that your paper is well-researched and accurate.

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Crime Rates in a Pandemic: the Largest Criminological Experiment in History

Published: 16 June 2020
Volume 45 , pages 525–536, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

Ben Stickle ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8561-2070 1 &
Marcus Felson ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3173-072X 2

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The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has impacted the world in ways not seen in generations. Initial evidence suggests one of the effects is crime rates, which appear to have fallen drastically in many communities around the world. We argue that the principal reason for the change is the government ordered stay-at-home orders, which impacted the routine activities of entire populations. Because these orders impacted countries, states, and communities at different times and in different ways, a naturally occurring, quasi-randomized control experiment has unfolded, allowing the testing of criminological theories as never before. Using new and traditional data sources made available as a result of the pandemic criminologists are equipped to study crime in society as never before. We encourage researchers to study specific types of crime, in a temporal fashion (following the stay-at-home orders), and placed-based. The results will reveal not only why, where, when, and to what extent crime changed, but also how to influence future crime reduction.

Social Determinants of Mental Health: Where We Are and Where We Need to Go

Community-oriented policing to reduce crime, disorder and fear and increase satisfaction and legitimacy among citizens: a systematic review.

The Social Learning Theory of Crime and Deviance

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 is unquestionably one of the most significant world-wide events in recent history, impacting culture, government operations, crime, economics, politics, and social interactions for the foreseeable future. One unique aspect of this crisis is the governmental response of issuing legal stay-at-home orders to attempt to slow the spread of the virus. While these orders varied, both in degree and timing, between countries and states, they generally began with strong encouragement for persons to isolate themselves voluntarily. As the magnitude of the crisis grew, governments began legally mandating persons to stay-at-home to reduce the transmission rate of the virus. There were, of course, exceptions; workers who were deemed ‘essential,’ such as those in the fields of medicine, finance, public safety, food production, transportation, and in other miscellaneous industries did not have to abide by these orders to the degree to which the general public did.

Nevertheless, practically overnight, the entire country ceased or significantly reduced day-to-day travels, eliminating commutes from home to work, as well as leisure activities, shopping trips, social gatherings, the ability to dine out, and more. One poll in late March found that 90% of Americans, including essential workers, were ‘staying at home as much as possible’ (Washington Post-ABC, 2020 ). The ‘stay-at-home’ mandates brought about the most wide-reaching, significant, and sudden alteration of the lives of billions of people in human history. Across the United States and around the world, a positive byproduct (Fattah, 2020 ) of these unprecedented events is a dramatic drop in crime rates.

Initial Crime Data

Several researchers have made initial examinations into how crime rates have fluctuated in the advent of COVID-19. The results have been mixed, to say the least, especially when comparing broad categories of crime across different cities and with different methods and periods of study. However, these initial academic studies are intrinsically valuable and deserve to be mentioned here.

One of the earliest studies with perhaps the most striking results was by Shayegh and Malpede ( 2020 ), which identified an overall drop in crime in San Francisco of 43% and Oakland of about 50% following city issuance of some of the most restrictive and early stay-at-home orders in the US, beginning March 16th , 2020 and the two weeks after.

Surprisingly, significant results are also clearly seen when examining specific crimes against retailers in crime in Los Angeles. Pietrawska, Aurand, and Palmer ( 2020a ) found a 64% increase in retail burglary, while city-wide burglary rates were down 10%. Similarly, Pietrawska, Aurand, and Palmer ( 2020b ) identified a five-week change in crimes occurring at restaurants in Chicago, a 74% reduction, while city-wide crime declined 35%. Continuing their study of crime rates in the pandemic outside of a retail focus, Pietrawska, Aurand, and Palmer ( 2020c ) compared crimes against persons and crimes against property in four cities for ten weeks, finding sharp variations from week to week and within different crime types.

Another early study by Ashby ( 2020a ) of eight large US cities during the first few weeks of the crisis (January to March 23rd—before some states and areas implemented stay-at-home orders) found disparate impacts by crime type and location. For example, burglary declined in Austin, Los Angeles, Memphis, and Scan Francisco, but not in Louisville or Boston. Conversely, serious assaults in public declined in Austin, Los Angeles, and Louisville, but not other cities.

Felson, Jiang, and Xu ( 2020 ) examined burglary in Detroit during three periods, representing data before stay-at-home orders were in place and two periods under orders (March 10th to March 23rd and March 24th to March 31st). Their findings indicated an overall 32% decline in burglary, with the most substantial change in the third period. However, the decline was more significant in block groups of higher residential parcels than in mix-use land areas.

Campedelli et al. ( 2020 ) analyzed crime in Los Angeles in two time periods (the first ending March 16th and the second ending March 28th) using Bayesian structural time-series models to estimate what crime would have been if the COVID-19 pandemic had not occurred. Comparing the actual crime data against the estimated ‘sans-pandemic’ data, the first model found an overall crime reduction of 5.6% during the pandemic. Likewise, the second model (ending March 28th) showed a 15% reduction. Specifically, researchers found that overall crime rates significantly decreased, particularly when referencing robbery (−24%), shoplifting (−14%), theft (−21%), and battery (−11%). However, burglary, domestic violence, stolen vehicles, and homicide remained statically unchanged.

While not explicitly measuring crime rates, studies of calls for police service can function as an indirect measure of crime in a given area. Early studies of calls for service during the pandemic present mixed results. Lum, Maupin, and Stoltz ( 2020 ) found that 57% of 1000 agencies surveyed in the United States and Canada reported a reduction in calls for service in March of 2020. Ashby ( 2020b ), on the other hand, found no discernible difference in forecasted calls for service in 10 large US cities between the first identified cases of COVID-19 in the US throughout early March. However, Ashby found that once stay-at-home orders were implemented, calls for service did decline, although not evenly across call types or cities. In another study of police calls for service, Mohler et al. ( 2020 ) examined calls in Los Angeles and Indianapolis between January and mid-April; they concluded there was some impact on police calls for service but not across all crime types or places.

Internationally, Swedish researchers Gerell, Kardell, and Kindgren ( 2020 ) examined crime during the five weeks after government restrictions on activities began, observing an 8.8% total drop in reported crime despite the country’s somewhat lax response (when compared to other countries’ policies on restricting the public’s movement). Specifically, the researchers found residential burglary fell by 23%, commercial burglary declined 12.7%, and instances of pick-pocketing were reduced by a staggering 61% —however, there was little change in robberies or narcotics crime. In Australia, Payne and Morgan ( 2020 ) studied crime in March, finding assaults, sexual violations, and domestic violence were not significantly different from what was predicted under ‘normal’ conditions at the lower end of the confidence interval. They cautioned against early conclusions based on this data as the government orders came only a few weeks into the study.

These initial reports indicate that crime rates have indeed changed, but unequally across different categories, types, places, and timeframes. Among crime researchers, the featured question of this pandemic will be, “Why have crime rates fallen so dramatically?” The corollary is, “What can be learned from this experience to leverage crime reduction in the future?” The data and opportunities before every criminologist will provide near-endless research opportunities at levels never before possible, and every effort should be made to capture data and promote the study of crime. This research note aims to identify and encourage these lines of inquiry, to urge researchers to dive deeply into the data made available from the pandemic, and to provide the impetus for not only discerning why crime fell but also for how to pragmatically utilize this knowledge after the world emerges from seclusion.

Crime in Lock-Down: Theoretical Implications

During the few hours before a legal stay-at-home order was implemented, and throughout the first few weeks that followed, it is essential to note what likely did ‘not’ change. As people around the world returned from frantic and stress-filled trips to stock up on food and other essentials and closed the door to their residence behind them, their biological and physiological conditions changed very little, nor did the labels attributed to them by society, friends, or family. Poverty and inequality did not disappear or increase immediately. It is unlikely that self-control dramatically increased either. There were, however, things that did change; society became more disorganized, and social influences and relationships were suddenly cut, diminished, or otherwise altered. Strain, stress, and anomie likely increased significantly as many became fearful for the future (both financially and physically) and estranged from family and friends whom they could not visit physically. Further, punitive responses to crime (i.e., deterrence) were slowed or ceased altogether as courts closed, police were encouraged to reduce contact with the public, and thousands of prisoners were released early.

With crime declining at such a significant pace and many of the often-attributed circumstances impacting crime staying consistent or in some cases increasing or decreasing in a direction opposite of what many believe drives crime, many criminological theories appear to be struggling to explain the abrupt and sweeping change. We believe the scope and nature of crime changes during the COVID-19 crisis will become a proving ground for the many theories that attempt to explain the etiology of criminal behavior. In the end, this naturally occurring experiment will advance our knowledge of crime and human behavior as no other event has ever done during the era in which criminological data were widely available.

As such, we argue that the single most salient aspect of the steep fall in crime rates during the COVID-19 pandemic are the legal stay-at-home orders (i.e., lock-down, shelter-in-place) implemented to slow the spread of the virus by promoting social distancing. Stay-at-home orders were issued by most states and legally required residence to stay within their homes except for authorized activities. Commonly, these activities included seeking health care, purchasing food and other necessary supplies, banking, and similar activities. The orders either outright closed or by de-facto closed broad swaths of the economy and impacted schools, private social gatherings, religious activities, travel, and more. In short, these orders disrupted the daily activities of entire populations and was the only variable that changed abruptly, just days before double-digit drops in crime around the world. As such, we believe, the Environmental Criminology suite of perspectives including; Rational Choice (Clarke & Felson, 1993 ) and Routine Activity (Cohen & Felson, 1979 ) will emerge as frontrunners in understanding the crime changes during COVID-19 and will provide insight how to influence crime in the future.

A Call to Examine Crime

Therefore, we offer a call for examining crime before, during, and after a government-imposed stay-at-home order, that coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we advocate for researchers to consider crime in the context of temporal shifts, in a place-based context, to use emerging data sources, and to study crime with specificity.

Crime Specificity

Criminologists tend to overgeneralize about crime while underestimating the enormous specificity in offender decision making (LeClerc, & Wortley, R. (Eds.)., 2013 ). Even within each crime type, the finer particulars of an offense should be studied to understand how crime patterns change and shift. Specificity is even more critical when researching crime in a pandemic as it allows for an understanding of nuanced changes, such as opportunity structure, that would otherwise be missed. For example, the changes in daily activities in the wake of the pandemic tend to decrease the population in non-residential parts of the metropolis, while increasing the population in residential zones.

For example, the broad category of ‘theft’ appears to be down across many cities in the US (Ashby, 2020a ). However, theft is likely not declining evenly across all categories. Consider theft in a retail context. The retail sector has experienced an 85% decline in foot traffic after the stay-at-home orders were implemented (Jahshan, 2020 ); many stores are closed, and thus the opportunity for shoplifting and employee theft are curtailed. Pietrawska et al. ( 2020a ), for example, identified a 24% decline in shoplifting in Los Angeles, compared to a city-wide decline of theft at only 5%. However, theft may persist (and even see an increase) within stores that remain open such as grocers, construction supplies, convenience stores, pharmacies, and other ‘essential’ retailers. These thefts may be the result of a change in offender behavior (i.e., shifting from targeting a specific store—now closed, to another that is open), due to panic buying (i.e., purchasing limits on essential products may result in theft), or impacted by reduced guardianship within the stores (e.g., short-staffed employees are more focused on service than crime prevention).

One of the most exciting illustrations of crime specificity has to do with pocket-picking the covert removal of a wallet from a pocket or purse in a crowded venue. This crime thrives on a crowd, perhaps more than any other form. As noted earlier, Swedish researchers (Gerell et al., 2020 ) found that pocket-picking decreased by 61% in Stockholm during the COVID-affected period when crowd-reduction was especially emphasized. These findings underscore the importance of linking specific changes in routines to specific types of crime.

Theft may also be moving outside of the physical retail structure and developing in areas where officially reported came data is not readily available. For example, before COVID-19 package theft (e.g., packages delivered outside a residence and stolen before the owner can retrieve them) was a growing concern, and few, if any, police agencies kept data on the problem (Stickle, Hicks, Stickle, & Hutchinson, 2020 ). However, with entire populations confined to their homes, shopping has shifted virtually, and delivery of products has risen 74% (ACI, 2020 ). As a result, the opportunity for theft of packages left unattended at a residence may be increasing (Stickle, 2020a ). While more person may be home, daily routine activities have also been interrupted, which impact guardianship. As a result, packages left unattended for extended periods or forgotten altogether (Stickle, 2020b ).

These are just a few examples of why examining specific crime types and situations is vital to criminology. It allows the researcher to identify nuanced changes that are important when developing future prevention techniques and to test theoretical tools. There are, no doubt, many factors that are impacting pandemic crime rates, and only by examining them with specificity can researchers achieve an enhanced understanding of crime.

Temporal Shift

Temporal understanding of crime is essential because the time of day, day of the week, months, seasons, and other time-related factors are commonly known to impact crime; in other words, crime is not evenly distributed across place or time (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1995 ). However, stay-at-home orders that have people living, working, eating, and finding entertainment at home as weekdays merge into weekends may cause time distinctions to blur when speaking of crime. The change in the population’s routine behavior, even at home, is already being seen in online browsing habits and television use; behavior has shifted to higher viewing rates on Mondays than on the traditional Saturday (Comcast, 2020 ). To address these unusual, pandemic-generated changes in routine activities, criminologists need to examine crime rates in a different temporal perspective and consider the context of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. However, there must be more specificity than a pre and post examination of crime trends, and measurements at the state and even community level are needed to ensure accuracy.

We propose the following seven important periods for identification and comparison of crime rate changes related to the crisis (Table 1 ).

These measures must be tailored to individual communities or states to coincide with routine activity trends and government orders. Period 1 should be of sufficient time to establish some base levels of crime rates. Period 2 is where the beginning of voluntary behavior changes is likely to be observable, somewhere around mid-February, and extending until the government ordered quarantines for the general population. During this time, as concern swept across the nation, many people chose to alter their lifestyles; schools closed, and other modifications in society likely began to impact crime slowly. For example, an early study of police calls for service by Mohler et al. ( 2020 ) found routine activities began to change 8 to 10 days before stay-at-home orders were enacted in Los Angeles, California, and Indianapolis, Indiana, as well as other cities and other nations.

Periods 3 and 4 are contingent on the length of the government-ordered closures. For example, if a state was under stay-at-home orders for 4 weeks, we recommend examining an early period (period 3) as well as a late period (period 4) of two weeks. Dividing the length of stay-at-home orders by half (or more if the order is longer than six weeks) will capture the changes in routine activity as the stay-at-home orders continue. Capturing this data in two or more periods is crucial as the longer the order continues, the more likely people will begin to violate the order, and crime rates may begin to change. For example, early reports in Sweden saw a slight decline in vandalism (−4%), followed by a sharp increase after five weeks into the restrictions. There is also likely some relationship between non-compliance and crime as Nivette et al. ( 2020 ) found non-compliance with stay-at-home orders was associated with delinquent behavior. While early reports have not identified the same trends in the US, news reports during the month of May (Koetsier, 2020 ) indicated that a large number of persons were emerging from homes before an official end to the stay-at-home orders. A rise in crime may be detected because it is possible that the longer the orders continue, the less effective they become.

Lastly, periods 5 and 6 are difficult to define as the situation is still unfolding at the time of this publication, as a complete rescinded stay-at-home order has not occurred to date. Moreover, it is also critical to consider that many individuals who live in an area where the stay-at-home orders have been partially revoked may still choose not to return to their daily lives (see a news report by Schaul et al., 2020 ). This is why it will be important to capture data starting at the point of a rescinded stay-at-home order and by measuring crime rates every few weeks after that for an extended period. These periods may coincide with the phased re-opening plan followed by many governments (see CDC, 2020 ) or within a timeframe for several weeks each, which may result in the need to add continued periods of crime data.

Criminologists do not have to rely on the assumption that people follow stay-at-home orders. For the first time, Mobility Trend Reports are being offered free (including in CSV format) by both Google ( 2020 ) and Apple ( 2020 ). These reports offer aggregated movement data based on anonymized cell phone location history at the national, state, and county levels. The data includes daily reports and includes inferred locations (i.e., retail, grocery, parks, transit, residential, workplace). With this data, it is possible to compare societal behavior within these recommended periods and gain a more accurate picture of where people were and importantly when they were there. Combined with the ability to measure compliance with movement restrictions, criminologists have the data to examine the routine activities of whole populations at a level never before possible while overlaying crime rates for both a temporal a place-based evaluation.

Place-Based

Studying crime based at a place is another critical part of understanding not only crime trends but also methods to disrupt crime (Eck & Weisburd, 2015 ). Under the current circumstances with people’s daily routine disrupted, this is even more important as people shift to more time within the home, the opportunities and places for offenders and victims to meet become limited. As a result, there is likely far less crime as people; both victims and offenders are not together in a place for the crime to occur.

To illustrate, consider workplace violence and crime. With a significant number of persons at home, rather than work, there is a reduced opportunity for offenders to assault co-workers. Similarly, there is less opportunity for a victim to have a phone stolen from the breakroom. It is important to remember that during the COVID-19 crisis, variables commonly related to many other criminological theories (i.e., poverty, stress, self-control) have not changed to such a degree to explain the sharp reduction in crime. Instead, the opportunity to be connected to a victim in time and place appears to be the most significant variable that has led to a marked reduction in the workplace and other place-based crimes.

However, in some regards, this place-based shift may result in increased crime rates in other areas (Roberts, 2020 ). For example, while digital, the internet can be classified as a ‘place’ or medium for victimization to occur (Machimbarrena et al., 2018 ). Under the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, people are spending significantly more time online. By late March, for example, cable internet usage, as reported by The Internet and Television Association ( 2020 ), surged more than 30% and continued to grow until mid-April, which appears to coincide with many of the stay-at-home orders. The increased time using the internet likely leads to more opportunities for cybercrimes to occur as the victim’s virtual presence has shifted dramatically (e.g., away from place-based crime at work or school and to place-based crime online). Additionally, offenders may have also been impacted by the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and have increased time to identify victims.

Shifting back to a physical place and crimes, it is also important to evaluate land usage and population density when considering crime trends. There are emerging trends in the new COVID-19 crime data suggesting crime differences in certain places (Ashby, 2020a ). For example, public places such as stores, restaurants, and entertainment areas are experiencing sharp decreases in some types of crime (Pietrawska et al., 2020a ), while crime in the home may be remaining consistent (Campbdelli, 2020; Payne & Morgan, 2020 ; Shayegh & Malpede, 2020 , and mix-land use may see relatively stable or slightly increasing crime rates (Felson et al., 2020 ). Here again, routine activities and rational choice perspectives may explain much of the crime in these places. For instance, entertainment businesses and districts, along with dine-in restaurants, were generally closed during the orders. Thus, with fewer offenders routinely in these places and fewer victims present, crime will naturally decline. However, a reasoning offender (Cornish & Clarke, 2014 ) may choose to target areas with fewer people (i.e., guardians) such as closed malls, business parks, and other places that may see an increase in property crimes. Additionally, mixed land usage, especially in population-dense areas, may allow an offender to travel in areas unnoticed easily and, therefore, present opportunities for crime (Felson et al., 2020 ).

Place, whether virtual or physical, is a crucial factor in crime. The COVID-19 crisis has re-shaped the places that persons routinely visit, increasing some—home and online, while decreasing others—work, retail, school, and entertainment. Highlighting the role that place has played in crime rates during the pandemic should influence how criminologists study crime in a post-pandemic world and lead to further crime reduction through place-based prevention techniques.

Data-Driven

We have listed some initial findings on crime in the COVID-19 era and also described the need to study crime specifically, temporally, and place-based. Next, we will discuss data for measuring crime. One problem in criminology, as in other social science fields, is there are too many variables, too little variation, or an inability to control for specific variables. However, in the current pandemic, these problems decrease dramatically, and criminologists should take advantage of the favorable conditions and abundant data.

First, as described in the introduction, few variables changed during the first several weeks of the pandemic. The most substantial change has been the stay-at-home orders, which impacted the routine activities of entire populations. With so few variables changed, it should be easier to identify and measure significant and substantial changes in crime. Second, the variation in crime rates has been drastic. On the order of 10%, 20%, and even sometimes 60% transformation of crime patterns. These significant measurable changes allow researchers to see ‘past’ other variables that have little impact and focus on the significant variables impacting crime. Third, with entire populations affected by the pandemic, there is little need for controlling traditional variables such as age, gender, education, social status, and more. The impacted population is closer to the entire population rather than a ‘sample population,’ which means it is possible to move beyond inferential statistics and measure the actual change in the whole population.

Another challenge for criminologists is crime data. We encourage the use of four broad categories of data, including official police reports, victim and other self-report surveys, private or anecdotal data, and public data. Police data is an essential source during the pandemic. However, with many agencies experiencing workforce-related issues during the pandemic and purposely reducing the person-to-person contact to reduce the risk of virus spread, the official police data may underreport crime more than usual. Further, with more persons staying inside and not venturing out to school and work, other crimes, such as intimate partner violence and abuse of children, may not be captured through traditional reporting means. Therefore, it will be important that victim and self-report surveys continue to be used to help capture data that official reports do not (see Krohn, Thornberry, Gibson, & Baldwin, 2010 ).

Other sources of direct crime data and ancillary sources are often overlooked. Ancillary sources of data can take the form of calls to abuse hotlines, reports on consumer spending, internet traffic, police call for service, hospital mandatory reporting on specific injuries, and the Bureau of Labor Statics ( 2020 ) data on injuries resulting from violence at the workplace. Additionally, sources from private companies also provide insight into crime not always reported through official channels. For example, many retail organizations release data on crime within their stores, credit card companies release fraud statistics, and insurance organizations publish claims related to crime victimization. These sources may be particularly important as many areas where crime is occurring during the COVID-19 crisis are within private spaces, and obtaining non-police data is essential to understanding the crime shift. Lastly, other publicly available resources should be included in the analysis as well. Specifically, Mobility Trend Reports by Apple and Google, which provide detailed information on population location daily that the county level. This data set, never before publicly provided, should be used to overlay with other data (see Mohler et al., 2020 ).

Moving beyond the data to the methods, the circumstances of the COVID-19 crisis has led to a naturally occurring quasi-random control trial. Because each state-issued stay-at-home order at different times, under different circumstances, and rescinded them at different dates, it is possible to compare crime across many population groups. For example, Kentucky issued an order on March 26th and entered phased re-opening on May 11th (47 days) while neighboring state Tennessee waited seven more days, issuing a stay-at-home order on March 31st, and began a phased re-opening on April 27th, fourteen days ahead of its neighbor. These states, which share many demographic similarities, are ideal for comparison.

In addition to the unequal start and stop dates for state-wide lock-downs, the activities limited by the orders varied as well; for instance, some states kept parks open while others closed them. Similarly, some states outlawed gatherings of 10 or more, while other states established different criteria. The response to alcohol also creates a valuable point in data analysis. Examples abound of states that relaxed laws on alcohol sales, such as Kentucky, which allowed for the first-time home delivery of alcohol and service of alcohol with food take-out orders during the crisis (Minton, 2020 ). On the other end of the spectrum, some states deemed alcohol ‘non-essential’ but changed course after public backlash. For example, Pennsylvania initially closed liquor stores and created a cascade of persons traveling outside the state seeking alcohol (Thomas, 2020 ). Conditions such as these either between states or even within states are plentiful and provide essential data points that allow for an excellent comparison of crime and related factors.

The Largest Criminological Experiment in History

There is little doubt that the COVID-19 crisis will impact history on a scale not seen since WWII. Provisional insights indicate that a substantial drop in crime is occurring around the world and within the US. However, these reports also indicate the changes are not even across time, place, or crime type. Therefore, we encourage criminologists to study this crisis through the use of new and existing sources of crime data, with a specificity of crime types, in a temporal fashion, and placed based.

Moreover, the leading feature of these crime changes will be that the government ordered stay-at-home mandates, which impacted the routine activities of entire populations. The variation in these orders by state and community regarding when the orders were implemented and rescinded and what restrictions were in place has provided a naturally occurring, quasi-randomized control experiment. For example, researchers can compare states and communities that released prisoners early, increased or reduced alcohol availability, began lock-downs early, crime in public places as opposed to residential and mixed land use, and operationalize many variables that were previously intangible or inarticulable.

The findings emerging from the COVID-19 crisis will impact criminological theories for the next several decades. We encourage researchers to embark on in-depth explorations of the data made available from the pandemic and to search for not only why, where, when, and to what extent crime fell, but also how to use this knowledge for practical applications after the world returns to ‘normal’ and concludes this experiment in crime reduction and extraordinary test of human determination and resiliency.

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Stickle, B., Felson, M. Crime Rates in a Pandemic: the Largest Criminological Experiment in History. Am J Crim Just 45 , 525–536 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09546-0

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Crime reports and statistics.

Crime reports and statistics convey an extensive assortment of information about crime to the reader and include topics such as the extent of crime and the nature or characteristics of criminal offenses, as well as how the nature and characteristics of crime change over time. Aside from these big-picture topics related to crime, crime reports and statistics communicate specific information on the characteristics of the criminal incident, the perpetrator(s), and the victim(s). (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

I. Introduction

Ii. what are crime reports and statistics, and why are they important, iii. who publishes crime reports and statistics, and how do they do it, iv. the federal bureau of investigation and the ucr program, a. what crimes are measured in the ucr, b. the future of the ucr program: the national incident-based reporting system, c. advantages and disadvantages of ucr data, v. the bureau of justice statistics and the ncvs, a. ncvs methodology, b. crimes measured in the ncvs, c. the future of the ncvs, d. advantages of the ncvs, e. disadvantages of the ncvs, vi. ucr data and the ncvs compared, vii. conclusion.

The purpose of this research paper is to provide an overview of crime reports and statistics. Crime reports and statistics convey an extensive assortment of information about crime to the reader and include topics such as the extent of crime and the nature or characteristics of criminal offenses, as well as how the nature and characteristics of crime change over time. Aside from these big-picture topics related to crime, crime reports and statistics communicate specific information on the characteristics of the criminal incident, the perpetrator(s), and the victim(s). For example, crime reports and statistics present information on the incident, such as weapon presence, police involvement, victim injury, and location of the crime. Details such as the age, race, gender, and gang membership of the offender are also available in many of these reports. Also, details gleaned from statistics regarding the victim, such as, but not limited to, income, race, age, relationship with the offender, education, and working status, are made available. Crime reports can convey information that affects the complete population of individuals and/or businesses, or they can convey crime-related information on a subset of victims, such as males, the elderly, businesses, or the poor. Crime reports and statistics can focus on a short period of time, such as a month, or they can cover longer periods, such as 1 year or many years. In addition, these reports can offer change in crime and its elements over time. Statistics offered in crime reports may describe crime as it pertains to a small geographical region, such one city; one region, such as the West or the Northeast; or the entire nation. Finally, on the basis of statistics, these reports can describe crime in a static, point-in-time way, and they can provide a dynamic perspective describing how crime, its characteristics, or risk change over time.

Topics covered in this research paper include a discussion on what crime reports and statistics are as well as why they are important. Information presented includes what agencies publish crime reports and statistics as well as a brief history of these bureaus. Because crime reports and statistics are social products, it is imperative to present information on the data used to generate them. Two major data sources are used to generate crime reports and statistics: (1) the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and (2) the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The data these reports yield, as well as the methodology and measurement they use, are described. Because no data are perfect, a description of their advantages and disadvantages are presented. Because these data are the two primary sources of crime information in the United States, the research paper explores a comparison of these data. Given that entire textbooks can be devoted to the topic of crime reports and statistics, this research paper provides readers with a relatively short overview of the major topics related to these important items. For readers who wish to delve into the topic in greater detail, a list of recommended readings is provided at the close of the research paper.

To fully appreciate the information found in crime reports and the statistics used to summarize them, one must be aware of what is meant by crime reports and statistics, why this topic is important, who is responsible for the creation of reports and statistics, and how the reports and statistics are created. To address these important issues, the research paper is structured around these significant questions. It first addresses the question “What are crime reports and statistics, and why are they important?” Next, it asks, “What agency is responsible for crime reports and statistics?” In answering this question, the research paper presents past and current information about the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Next, the research paper moves to addressing the closely related question “How are crime reports and statistics generated?” This portion of the research paper is the lengthiest, because it offers information on the nuts and bolts of the UCR and the NCVS, including a look at the history of the programs as well as future directions. Included also is a discussion of the methodology, advantages, and disadvantages of each program.

Crime reports describe information about crime and cover an almost endless array of crime topics. They can focus on specific crimes, types of victims, types of offenders, and/or characteristics of the offenses. A useful tool in conveying information about crime in crime reports is by using statistics. Statistics are merely numerical measures used to summarize a large amount of information—in this case, information on crime. For example, if one noted that on average in a particular year that 50% of violent crime was reported to the police, that person has simply summarized crime data and presented a simple meaningful number (50%) about that particular phenomenon (crime reporting).

Crime reports and statistics are vital to the study of criminology. Without these tools, our understanding about what kind of crime is occurring, how often crime is being committed, who is committing crime, who is being victimized, and the characteristics of offenses would be little more than guesses. Aside from a pure information utility, crime reports and accompanying statistics serve as an important indicator of the “health” of society. A rising crime rates suggests that society is ailing. Unequal victimization risk among groups of individuals suggests a societal ill in need of attention. Conversely, a reduction in crime conveyed by these reports and statistics is one indicator of an improved quality of life. An equally important function served by crime reports and statistics is to assist researchers in the development of and testing of crime and victimization theories. Another important function of crime reports is providing policymakers valuable, empirically based information so they can design policies to further reduce crime, better assist crime victims, and effectively deal with offenders.Without reliable information on crime, policies designed to reduce all crime and victimization would not only be ineffective but would also represent misappropriated or wasted valuable resources.

In general, the federal government publishes crime reports and statistics.The department within the federal government responsible for these publications is the U.S. Department of Justice. And within the Department of Justice, publications are generated by two bureaus: (1) the FBI and (2) the BJS. Because these documents are generated using taxpayer dollars, more recent crime reports (i.e., since about 1995) are available free to the public online at the respective bureaus (http://www.foi.gov and http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs).

Most individuals are aware of the crime-fighting responsibilities of the FBI. Fewer know that the responsibilities of the FBI include those of crime data compiler, crime data analysis, and publisher of crime reports for the United States. These responsibilities are accomplished through the UCR program, which compiles crime reports submitted voluntarily either directly by local, state, federal, or tribal law enforcement agencies or through centralized state agencies across the country. Although there are some exceptions, in general, UCR data are submitted to the FBI on a monthly basis. The crime information gathered via the UCR program comprises the nation’s oldest unified national crime data. Although the crime data may be the nation’s oldest, it took approximately 50 years of calls for such data before the UCR program started collecting crime data in 1930, and even then the crime report collection did not occur in the Bureau of Investigation (the precursor to the FBI); instead, a collective of police chiefs are responsible for the commencement of one of the nation’s two major crime information sources.

Calls for unified national statistics on crime were first made first in the 19th century. Although crime data had been collected for a long time, this collection was conducted at the state and local levels by some jurisdictions only. This was problematic, because no two states defined crimes in the same way. Neither did each jurisdiction necessarily collect information on the same crimes. Because of this, there was no way to aggregate this information in any meaningful way to get a unified picture of the national crime situation, and without standard offenses, officials could not make comparisons across jurisdictions. In 1870, the Department of Justice was established. At this time, Congress mandated the reporting of annual crime statistics. A short time later, in 1871, an appeal for unified national crime information was made at the convention of the National Police Association, an organization that later became known as the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). Unfortunately, neither the establishment of the Department of Justice nor the call of police chiefs resulted in the collection of national crime information.

About 50 years later, in the late 1920s, the IACP established a Committee on the Uniform Crime Records to resolve this gap in crime information. The purpose of the committee was to develop a program as well as procedures for collecting information about the extent of crime in the United States. The product of this work was the UCR. Initiated in 1927, this program was designed to provide unified, reliable, and systematic information on a set of serious crimes reported to law enforcement agencies across the country. Using these data, police chiefs could compare crime across jurisdictions and time. The IACP managed the UCR program for several years, until the responsibility moved to FBI in 1935.

The UCR program initially included crime reports from 400 law enforcement agencies from 43 states, describing crime for approximately 20% of the population. Over time, the program has grown, and it now gathers crime reports from approximately 17,000 law enforcement agencies from all states, the District of Columbia, and some U.S. territories. Furthermore, the UCR program now describes crime as it occurs in almost the entire nation. The purpose of the UCR program started as, and continues to be, serving the needs of law enforcement agencies.

The UCR program gathers information on a wide variety of criminal offenses. Since 1985, these crimes have been partitioned into Part I and Part II crimes. Part I offenses include eight crimes that are considered to be serious and occur regularly. The frequency of these offenses means that enough information can be gathered to enable comparisons regarding crime across time and across jurisdiction. The eight Part I offenses include the following: (1) murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, (2) forcible rape, (3) robbery, (4) aggravated assault, (5) burglary, (6) larceny–theft, (7) motor vehicle theft, and (8) arson.

Part II crimes are also considered serious offenses; however, they differ from Part I offenses in that they occur relatively less frequently. Because of the infrequent nature of these events, reliable comparisons between jurisdictions or over time for these offenses are not often possible. The following are Part II criminal offenses:

Other assaults (simple)
Forgery and counterfeiting
Corporate fraud
Embezzlement
Buying, receiving, and possessing stolen property
Possession and carrying of a weapon
Prostitution and commercialized vice
Drug abuse violations
Nonviolent and unlawful offenses against family and children
Driving under the influence
Liquor law violations
Drunkenness
Disorderly conduct
All other violations of state or local laws not specified (except traffic violations)
Suspicion, that is, arrested and released without formal charges
Curfew violations and loitering

The UCR program offers more than simply counts of each crime. Depending on the crime, it also offers details of the criminal incident. The crime for which there is greatest detail in the UCR is murder and nonnegligent manslaughter. Using Supplemental Homicide Reporting forms, the FBI gathers information on the homicide victim’s age, sex, and race; the offender’s age, race, and sex; weapon type (if any); victim and offender relationship; and the circumstances that led to the homicide. For other crimes, some, but not many, details are available. For instance, one can ascertain whether a rape was completed or attempted, whether a burglary involved forcible entry, the type of motor vehicle stolen, and whether a robbery included a weapon.

Since the UCR program was launched, little has changed in terms of the data collected. One exception is the addition of arson as a Part I crime. Over time, it became clear that change was needed in the UCR program. For example, the lack of incident-level detail for offense data gathered was viewed as a significant limitation. In fact, most scholars refer to the UCR program as the UCR summary program, because it collects only aggregate-level information on the eight Part I index crimes over time.Another problem is that some crime definitions had become dated. In response to these and other concerns, evaluations by the FBI, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the IACP, and the National Security Agency in the late 1970s and early 1980s concluded that the UCR program was in need of modernization and enhancements to better serve its major constituency: law enforcement. The final report of these evaluations and recommendations are available in Blueprint for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

The resulting redesign, introduced in the mid-1980s, is the UCR program’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). As the name indicates, data submitted to the FBI include the nature and types of crimes in each incident, victim(s) and offender(s) characteristics, type and value of stolen and recovered property, and characteristics of arrested individuals. In short, the NIBRS offers much more comprehensive and detailed data than the UCR.

The NIBRS, like the traditional UCR summary program, is voluntary, reflects crimes known to the police and gathers data on the same crimes as the summary program. Although the two systems share some characteristics, major differences exist. A significant difference is that the NIBRS has the capacity to collect incident-level details for all crimes covered. Another difference in the two programs is that the nomenclature of Part I and Part II offenses was discarded in favor of Group A and Group B classes of offenses in NIBRS. Group A crimes are substantially more inclusive than Part I offenses and consist of 22 crimes covering 46 offenses, some of which are listed here:

Homicide (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, negligent manslaughter, justifiable homicide [which is not a crime])
Sex offenses, forcible (forcible rape, forcible sodomy, sexual assault with an object, forcible fondling)
Assault (aggravated, simple, intimidation)
Burglary/breaking and entering
Larceny–theft
Motor vehicle theft
Sex offense, nonforcible
Counterfeiting/forgery
Destruction/damage/vandalism of property
Drug/narcotic offenses
Pornography/obscene material
Prostitution
Extortion/blackmail
Gambling offenses
Kidnapping/abduction
Stolen property offenses
Weapon law violations

Group B comprises 11 offenses and covers all crime that does not fall into Group A offenses:

Curfew/loitering/vagrancy
Family offense/nonviolent
Peeping tom
Trespass of real property
All other offenses

In the NIBRS, law enforcement agencies are categorized as full-participation agencies or limited-participation agencies. Full-participation agencies are those that can submit data without placing any new burden on the officers preparing the reports and that have sufficient data-processing and other resources to meet FBI reporting requirements. Fullparticipation agencies submit data on all Group A and B offenses. Limited-participation agencies are unable to meet the offense-reporting requirements of full-participation agencies. These agencies submit detailed incident information only on the eight Part I UCR offenses.

Yet another departure from the traditional UCR summary system is that although the NIBRS collects data on many of the same crimes, it uses some revised and new offense definitions. For example, in the traditional UCR summary program, only a female can be a victim of a forcible rape. The NIBRS redefines forcible rape as “the carnal knowledge of a person,” allowing males to be victims of these offenses. A new offense category of crime included in the NIBRS is called crimes against society; these include drug/narcotic offenses, pornography/obscene material, prostitution, and gambling offenses. An important difference between the UCR and the NIBRS is that the NIBRS enables one to distinguish between an attempted versus a complete crime. Previously, no distinction was available. A significant improvement of NIBRS data is the ability to link attributes of a crime. For instance, in the traditional system, with the exception of homicide, one could not link offender information, victim information, and incident victim information.With the NIBRS, one can link data on victims to offenders to offenses to arrestees.

In the NIBRS, the hierarchy rule was changed dramatically. In the traditional system, the hierarchy rule prevented one from counting an incident multiple times due to multiple offenses within the same incident. Using the hierarchy rule, law enforcement agencies determined the most serious offense in an incident and reported only that offense to the FBI. With the NIBRS, all offenses in a single incident are recorded and can be analyzed. Some researchers have reported that the hierarchy rule has been completely suspended in the NIBRS, but this is incorrect. Two exceptions to the hierarchy rule remain. First, if a motor vehicle is stolen (motor vehicle theft), and there were items in the car (property theft), only the motor vehicle theft is reported. Second, in the event of a justifiable homicide two offenses are reported: (1) the felonious acts by the offenders and (2) the actual nonnegligent homicide. In the NIBRS, the hotel rule was modified as well. The hotel rule states that where there is a burglary in a dwelling or facility in which multiple units were burglarized (e.g., a hotel) and the police are most likely to be reported by the manager of the dwelling, the incident is counted as a single offense. In addition, the NIBRS has extended the hotel rule to self-storage warehouses, or mini-warehouses.

The traditional UCR summary reporting system is characterized by many advantages. First, it has been ongoing for more than eight decades with remarkably stable methodology. This aspect allows meaningful trend analysis. Second, the UCR allows analyses at a variety of levels of geography. One can ascertain crime information for cities, regions, or the nation. Third, this system offers broad crime coverage, ranging from vandalism to homicide. Fourth, instead of focusing only on street crimes (i.e., homicide, robbery, and assault), the UCR offers information on other crimes, such as embezzlement, drunkenness, and vagrancy. Fifth, the UCR summary system has broad coverage from law enforcement agencies. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and some U.S. territories report data to the FBI. Sixth and last, the UCR collects crime information regardless of the age or victim or offender. Some crime data collection systems (e.g., the National Crime Victimization Survey) gather crime data on restricted ages only. The NIBRS enjoys many of the UCR’s advantages and more. The greatest additional advantage of the NIBRS is that it offers incident-level details for every crime reported. With greater detail, one can disaggregate data by multiple victim, offender, and incident characteristics. One also can link various components of the incident.

Both the traditional summary system and the NIBRS have limitations that are important to recognize. First, both systems reflect only crimes reported to the police. Evidence is clear that many crimes are reported to the police in low percentages. For example, only about half of all violent crime comes to the attention of the police. In some cases, such as rape, fewer than 30% of the crimes are reported to the police. Second, because the data come from law enforcement agencies, they can be manipulated for political and societal purposes. Although this is not considered to be a widespread problem, it can and has happened. Third, because the UCR reporting systems are voluntary, they are subject to a lack of, or incomplete, reporting by law enforcement agencies. When information is not submitted or the submitted information does not meet the FBI’s guidelines for completeness and accuracy, the FBI uses specific protocols to impute data to account for this issue. The degree to which UCR data are imputed at the national level is sizeable and varies annually.

The NIBRS is characterized by some disadvantages not shared with the traditional UCR system. First, the NIBRS has limited coverage. It requires a lengthy certification process, and scholars have suggested that a result of this is slow conversion to the system. As of 2007, 31 states were certified and contributing data to the program. This represents reporting by 37% of law enforcement agencies and coverage of approximately 25% of the U.S. population. Furthermore, not all agencies within certified states submit any NIBRS data. In 2004, only 7 states fully reported NIBRS data. The agencies that do participate tend to represent smaller population areas. As recently as 2005, no agency covering a population of over 1 million participated in the NIBRS. Given this, it is clear that the NIBRS does not utilize data that constitute a representative sample of the population, law enforcement agencies, or states.

The second major publisher of national crime reports and statistics is the BJS, the primary statistical agency in the Department of Justice. This bureau was established under the Justice Systems Improvement Act of 1979. Prior to this, the office was recognized as the National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service, which was a part of the Law Enforcement Agency within the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Currently, the BJS is an agency in the Office of Justice Programs within the Department of Justice. The mission of the BJS is to gather and analyze crime data; publish crime reports; and make available this information to the public, policymakers, the media, government officials, and researchers.

Although the BJS collects a wide variety of data related to all aspects of the criminal justice system, its major crime victimization data collection effort is currently the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The NCVS is the nation’s primary source of information about the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of victimization of individuals age 12 and older and their households in the United States. The survey was first fielded in 1972 as the National Crime Survey (NCS). The NCS was designed with three primary purposes. First, it was to serve as a benchmark for UCR statistics on crime reported to police. Second, the NCS was to measure what was called “the dark figure of unreported crime,” that is, crime unknown by law enforcement. Third, the NCS was designed to fill a perceived need for information on the characteristics of crime not provided by the UCR.

Shortly after the fielding of the NCS, work toward improving the survey began. Beginning in 1979, plans for a thorough redesign to improve the survey’s ability to measure victimization in general, and certain difficult-to-measure crimes, such as rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence, was started. The redesign was implemented in 1992 using a split-sample design. It is at this time that the NCS changed names to the NCVS. The first full year of NCVS data based on the redesign was available in 1993. Following the redesign, the NCVS measured almost the identical set of crimes gathered in the NCS. The only exception is that, after the redesign, data on sexual assault were collected.

In general, and as anticipated, the NCS redesign resulted in an increase in the number of crimes counted. Increases measured were not uniform across crime types, however. For example, increases in crimes not reported to the police were greater than the increases in crimes reported to the police. One reason for this is that improved cues for certain questions caused respondents to recall more of the less serious crimes—those that are also less likely to be reported to law enforcement officials. As a result, the percentage of crimes reported to police based on the redesigned survey is lower than the percentage calculated based on data collected with the previous survey design. This difference is particularly significant for crimes such as simple assault, which does not involve the presence of weapons or serious injury.

NCVS crime data come from surveys administered at a sample of households in the United States. Households are selected via a stratified, multistage, cluster sample. The samples are designed to be representative of households, as well as of noninstitutionalized individuals age 12 or older in the United States. The NCVS is characterized by a very large sample size. In recent years, approximately 80,000 persons in 40,000 households were interviewed. The NCVS is also characterized by a rotating-panel design in which persons are interviewed every 6 months for a total of seven interviews. Interviews are conducted in person and over the telephone throughout the year.

NCVS surveys are administered via two survey instruments. The first is a screening instrument that is used to gather information to determine whether a respondent was a victim of a threatened, attempted, or completed crime during the preceding 6 months. If the screening instrument uncovers a possible victimization, a second incidentfocused instrument is administered to gather detailed characteristics about all victimizations revealed. These details include the victim characteristics, offender characteristics, and characteristics of the incident.

The details gathered on the incident instrument are used in two very important ways. Detailed incident information is used to determine whether the incident described by the respondent was a crime and, if the incident is deemed a crime, the type of crime that occurred. These assessments are made not by the field representative or the survey respondent but by statisticians using incident details during data processing at the U.S. Census Bureau, the agency responsible for collecting the data on behalf of the BJS.

Because one of the major purposes of the NCVS was to serve as a benchmark for UCR summary program statistics on crime reported to police, and to measure the “dark figure” of unreported crime, the offenses measured by the NCVS are analogous to Part I crimes measured by the UCR. NCVS criminal offenses measured include rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, simple assault, pocket-picking and purse-snatching, property theft, burglary, and motor vehicle theft.

The NCVS gathers far more than merely information on the types of personal and property crimes in the United States against persons age 12 or older. For each victimization revealed, extensive detailed information is collected. This includes the outcome of the victimization (completed, attempted); time and location of the incident; the number of victims, bystanders, and offenders; victim demographics; victim–offender relationship; offender demographics; offender drug and/or alcohol use; gang membership; presence of weapon(s); injuries sustained; medical attention received; police contact; reasons for or against contacting the police; police response; victim retaliation; value of retaliation; and so on.

Currently, the future of the NCVS is unclear. During 2007 and 2008, the Committee on National Statistics, in cooperation with the Committee on Law and Justice, reviewed the NCVS to consider options for conducting it. This need for review grew on the basis of evidence that the effectiveness of the NCVS has recently been undermined via the demands of conducting an expensive survey in a continued flatline budgetary environment. Given this situation, the BJS has implemented many cost savings strategies over time, including multiple sample cuts. Unfortunately, the result of sample cuts (in conjunction with falling crime rates) is that, for the last several years, the sample size is now such that only a year-to-year change of 8% or more can been deemed statistically different from no change at all. On the basis of the review, the panel concluded that the NCVS as it currently stands is not able to achieve its legislatively mandated goal of collecting and analyzing data. The review panel provided multiple recommendations regarding a redesign of the NCVS that are currently being studied. At this time, it is unclear what a redesign would entail, or even if a redesign will happen. One possibility—not embraced by the review panel—is the termination of the NCVS. Such an outcome would be unfortunate given that the survey provides the only nationally representative data on crime and victimization with extensive details on the victim, the offender, and the incident.

A major advantage of the NCVS is that it provides data on reported and unreported crimes. As stated previously, many crimes (and in some cases, e.g., rape, most crimes) are not reported to police. A second advantage of NCVS data is that they offer a wide range of criminal victimization variables, including information about crime victims (e.g., age, gender, race, Hispanic ethnic origin, marital status, income, and educational level), criminal offenders (e.g., gender, race, approximate age, drug/alcohol use, and victim–offender relationship), and the context of the crime (e.g., time and place of occurrence, use of weapons, nature of injury, and economic consequences). A third advantage of NCVS data is the high response rates. Like all surveys, response rates in the NCVS have declined a bit in recent years; nonetheless, they continue to be relatively high. For example, between 1993 and 1998, NCVS response rates varied between 93% and 96% of eligible households and between 89% and 92% of eligible individuals. A fourth advantage of NCVS data is that the survey has been ongoing for over three decades with a stable sample and methodology. This makes trend analysis possible, and it allows one to aggregate data in an effort to study relatively rare crimes, such as rape, or relatively small populations, such as American Indians.

The NCVS performs very well for the purposes designed; however, like all surveys, it has some limitations. First, the NCVS is designed to generate national estimates of victimization. Because of this, the data cannot be used to estimate crime at most other geographic levels, such as the state, county, or local level. In 1996, a region variable was added to the NCVS data, enabling crime estimates for the Northeast, South,West, andMidwest. On rare occasions, special releases of NCVS data have provided insight into crime in major cities. Limited age coverage is a second limitation of NCVS data. Because the data do not include victimizations of persons age 11 or younger, findings are not generalizable to this group. A third limitation is limited population coverage. Because one must live in a housing unit or group quarter to be eligible for the NCVS sample, persons who are crews of vessels, in institutions (e.g., prisons and nursing homes), members of the armed forces living in military barracks, or homeless are excluded from the NCVS sample and data. The fourth and final limitation is limited crime coverage. The NCVS collects data on the few personal and property crimes listed earlier and excludes many others. NCVS data tend to focus on street crimes, excluding other offenses, such as arson, crimes against businesses, stalking, vagrancy, homicide, embezzlement, and kidnapping. A limitation of the NCVS data stems from the fact that they are derived from a sample. Like all sample surveys, the NCVS is subject to sampling and nonsampling error. Although every effort is taken to reduce error, some remains. One source of nonsampling error stems from the inability of some respondents to recall in detail the crimes that occurred during the 6-month reference period. Some victims also may not report crimes committed by certain offenders (e.g., spouses), others may simply forget about victimizations experienced, and still others may experience violence on a frequent basis and may not view such incidents as important enough to report to an NCVS field representative. A final limitation is associated with what are referred to as series victimizations. Series victimizations are defined as six or more similar but separate victimizations that the victim is unable to recall individually or to describe in detail to an interviewer. Recall that crime classification in the NCVS is based on the respondent’s answers to several incident questions. Without information on each incident, crime classification cannot occur. To address series victimization, a specific protocol is used. This protocol states that if an individual was victimized six or more times in a similar fashion during the 6-month reference period, and he or she cannot provide the details about each incident, then one report is taken for the entire series of victimizations. Details of the most recent incident are obtained, and the victimization is counted as a singular incident. It is clear that the series protocol results in an underestimate of the actual rate of victimization.

Because of the similarities between the UCR and the NCVS, it is generally expected that each data source will provide the same story about crime in the United States. Although that does often happen, many times it does not. Since 1972, yearto- year violent crime change estimates from the NCVS and UCR moved in the same direction, either up or down, about 60% of the time. Property crime rates have moved in the same direction about 75% of the time. Given that the NCVS and the UCR have different purposes and different methodologies, study different populations, examine different types of crimes, and count offenses and calculate crime rates differently, a lack of congruence on occasion should not be surprising. This section of the research paper looks at some of the reason the two series do not always track together.

Perhaps the largest difference between the UCR and NCVS is that the UCR measures only crimes reported to law enforcement agencies; that is, if the crime was not reported to the police, that crime can never be reflected in UCR data. In contrast, the NCVS interviews victims of crime and collects information on crimes that were and were not reported to the police. A second major difference in the two systems is found in the population coverage. UCR data include all reported crimes regardless of victim characteristics. This includes crimes against young children, visitors from other countries, and businesses or organizations. In contrast, the NCVS provides data on reported and unreported crimes against people age 12 or older and their households. Not included in the NCVS data are crimes against persons younger than age 12, businesses, homeless people, and institutionalized persons.A third significant difference in the two systems is crime coverage. The Part I UCR summary reporting system includes homicide and arson, neither of which is measured by the NCVS. In contrast, the NCVS collects information on simple assault—the most frequent violent crime—whereas the UCR traditional Part I crimes excludes it. In addition, the NCVS and UCR define some crimes differently and count some crimes differently. As stated earlier, the UCR defines forcible rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” and excludes rapes of males and other forms of sexual assault. The NCVS measures rape and sexual assault of both women and men.

Yet another significant difference concerns the basic counting unit of the two data collection systems. In the NCVS, the basic counting unit is the victim. There are two types of victims in the NCVS: (1) the person and (2) the household. When considering personal or violent crimes, (i.e., rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, purse-snatching, or pocket-picking), the number of victimizations is equal to the number of persons victimized. When considering property crimes (i.e., property theft, household burglary, and motor vehicle theft), the number of victims is equal to the number of households victimized. Therefore, crime reports using NCVS data report rates of violent crime as the number of victimizations per 1,000 people age 12 or older. Likewise, property crimes are reported as the number of property victimizations per 1,000 households. In the UCR, the basic counting unit is the offense. For some crimes, such as assault and rape, an offense is equal to the number of victims. For other crimes, such as burglary or robbery, an offense is equal to the number of incidents. All UCR crime rates, regardless of the type of victim (i.e., individual or organization), are calculated on a per capita basis: the number of offenses per 100,000 people. For some crimes, the NCVS and UCR counting rules result in similar outcomes. For instance, if in a single incident two people were assaulted by a knifewielding offender both programs would count two aggravated assaults. In contrast, other times counting rules result in different outcomes. For example, if in a single incident five people were robbed by a gun-toting offender, the NCVS would record five robbery victimizations, and the UCR would count a single robbery. If, however, a bank teller was threatened by an armed assailant during a bank robbery, the UCR would record this as a robbery with a weapon, whereas the NCVS, which measures only crimes against people and their households, would classify the same crime as an aggravated assault victimization (assuming that no personal property was stolen from the teller).

This research paper has provided an overview of crime reports and statistics, which are used to convey an extensive amount of information about crime. This includes topics such as the extent of crime and the nature or characteristics of criminal offenses, as well as how the nature and characteristics of crime change over time. Furthermore, official crime reporting systems, such as the UCR, the NIBRS, and the NCVS, allow insight into the experiences of crime and victimization for specific groups and how they may or may not differ from others or over time. Understanding what crime reports and statistics are requires an understanding of the agencies that gather the data and publish the reports. Furthermore, one must comprehend the intricacies of the data collection to fully appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of what the data (and resulting reports and statistics) offer.

Data from the UCR and the NCVS are essential to an understanding of crime. Because crime is not a directly observable phenomenon, no single measure can adequately convey or describe information about its extent and characteristics. Like other nonobservable events, such as the economy or the weather, no single measure suffices. One could not hope to understand the state of the economy by understanding only the unemployment rate. Neither could one fully realize the condition of the weather by understanding the percentage humidity only. Multiple measures are required for such phenomenon. These multiple measures are found in UCR data and the NCVS. Together, used in a complementary fashion, these data provide a more complete understanding of crime in the nation than either could alone.

References:

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Open access
Published: 29 April 2021

Crime forecasting: a machine learning and computer vision approach to crime prediction and prevention

Neil Shah 1 ,
Nandish Bhagat 1 &
Manan Shah ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8665-5010 2

Visual Computing for Industry, Biomedicine, and Art volume 4 , Article number: 9 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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A crime is a deliberate act that can cause physical or psychological harm, as well as property damage or loss, and can lead to punishment by a state or other authority according to the severity of the crime. The number and forms of criminal activities are increasing at an alarming rate, forcing agencies to develop efficient methods to take preventive measures. In the current scenario of rapidly increasing crime, traditional crime-solving techniques are unable to deliver results, being slow paced and less efficient. Thus, if we can come up with ways to predict crime, in detail, before it occurs, or come up with a “machine” that can assist police officers, it would lift the burden of police and help in preventing crimes. To achieve this, we suggest including machine learning (ML) and computer vision algorithms and techniques. In this paper, we describe the results of certain cases where such approaches were used, and which motivated us to pursue further research in this field. The main reason for the change in crime detection and prevention lies in the before and after statistical observations of the authorities using such techniques. The sole purpose of this study is to determine how a combination of ML and computer vision can be used by law agencies or authorities to detect, prevent, and solve crimes at a much more accurate and faster rate. In summary, ML and computer vision techniques can bring about an evolution in law agencies.

Introduction

Computer vision is a branch of artificial intelligence that trains the computer to understand and comprehend the visual world, and by doing so, creates a sense of understanding of a machine’s surroundings [ 1 , 2 ]. It mainly analyzes data of the surroundings from a camera, and thus its applications are significant. It can be used for face recognition, number plate recognition, augmented and mixed realities, location determination, and identifying objects [ 3 ]. Research is currently being conducted on the formation of mathematical techniques to recover and make it possible for computers to comprehend 3D images. Obtaining the 3D visuals of an object helps us with object detection, pedestrian detection, face recognition, Eigenfaces active appearance and 3D shape models, personal photo collections, instance recognition, geometric alignment, large databases, location recognition, category recognition, bag of words, part-based models, recognition with segmentation, intelligent photo editing, context and scene understanding, and large image collection and learning, image searches, recognition databases, and test sets. These are only basic applications, and each category mentioned above can be further explored. In ref. [ 4 ], VLFeat is introduced, which is a library of computer vision algorithms that can be used to conduct fast prototyping in computer vision research, thus enabling a tool to obtain computer vision results much faster than anticipated. Considering face detection/human recognition [ 5 ], human posture can also be recognized. Thus, computer vision is extremely attractive for visualizing the world around us.

Machine learning (ML) is an application that provides a system with the ability to learn and improve automatically from past experiences without being explicitly programmed [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. After viewing the data, an exact pattern or information cannot always be determined [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. In such cases, ML is applied to interpret the exact pattern and information [ 12 , 13 ]. ML pushes forward the idea that, by providing a machine with access to the right data, the machine can learn and solve both complex mathematical problems and some specific problems [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. In general, ML is categorized into two parts: (1) supervised ML and (2) unsupervised ML [ 18 , 19 ]. In supervised learning, the machine is trained on the basis of a predefined set of training examples, which facilitates its capability to obtain precise and accurate conclusions when new data are given [ 20 , 21 ]. In unsupervised learning, the machine is given a set of data, and it must find some common patterns and relationships between the data its own [ 22 , 23 ]. Neural networks, which are important tools used in supervised learning, have been studied since the 1980s [ 24 , 25 ]. In ref. [ 26 ], the author suggested that different aspects are needed to obtain an exit from nondeterministic polynomial (NP)-completeness, and architectural constraints are insufficient. However, in ref. [ 27 ], it was proved that NP-completeness problems can be extended to neural networks using sigmoid functions. Although such research has attempted to demonstrate the various aspects of new ML approaches, how accurate are the results [ 28 , 29 , 30 ]?

Although various crimes and their underlying nature seem to be unpredictable, how unforeseeable are they? In ref. [ 31 ], the authors pointed out that as society and the economy results in new types of crimes, the need for a prediction system has grown. In ref. [ 32 ], crime trends and prediction technology called Mahanolobis and a dynamic time wrapping technique are given, delivering the possibility of predicting crime and apprehending the actual culprit. As described in ref. [ 33 ], in 1998, the United States National Institute of Justice granted five grants for crime forecasting as an extension to crime mapping. Applications of crime forecasting are currently being used by law enforcement in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland [ 34 ]. Nowadays, criminal intellect with the help of advances in technology is improving with each passing year. Consequently, it has become necessary for us to provide the police department and the government with the means of a new and powerful machine (a set of programs) that can help them in their process of solving crimes. The main aim of crime forecasting is to predict crimes before they occur, and thus, the importance of using crime forecasting methods is extremely clear. Furthermore, the prediction of crimes can sometimes be crucial because it may potentially save the life of a victim, prevent lifelong trauma, and avoid damage to private property. It may even be used to predict possible terrorist crimes and activities. Finally, if we implement predictive policing with a considerable level of accuracy, governments can apply other primary resources such as police manpower, detectives, and funds in other fields of crime solving, thereby curbing the problem of crime with double the power.

In this paper, we aim to make an impact by using both ML algorithms and computer vision methods to predict both the nature of a crime and possibly pinpoint a culprit. Beforehand, we questioned whether the nature of the crime was predictable. Although it might seem impossible from the outside, categorizing every aspect of a crime is quite possible. We have all heard that every criminal has a motive. That is, if we use motive as a judgment for the nature of a crime, we may be able to achieve a list of ways in which crimes can be categorized. Herein, we discuss a theory where we combine ML algorithms to act as a database for all recorded crimes in terms of category, along with providing visual knowledge of the surroundings through computer vision techniques, and using the knowledge of such data, we may predict a crime before it occurs.

Present technological used in crime detection and prediction

Crime forecasting refers to the basic process of predicting crimes before they occur. Tools are needed to predict a crime before it occurs. Currently, there are tools used by police to assist in specific tasks such as listening in on a suspect’s phone call or using a body cam to record some unusual illegal activity. Below we list some such tools to better understand where they might stand with additional technological assistance.

One good way of tracking phones is through the use of a stingray [ 35 ], which is a new frontier in police surveillance and can be used to pinpoint a cellphone location by mimicking cellphone towers and broadcasting the signals to trick cellphones within the vicinity to transmit their location and other information. An argument against the usage of stingrays in the United States is that it violates the fourth amendment. This technology is used in 23 states and in the district of Columbia. In ref. [ 36 ], the authors provide insight on how this is more than just a surveillance system, raising concerns about privacy violations. In addition, the Federal Communicatons Commission became involved and ultimately urged the manufacturer to meet two conditions in exchange for a grant: (1) “The marketing and sale of these devices shall be limited to federal, state, local public safety and law enforcement officials only” and (2) “State and local law enforcement agencies must advance coordinate with the FBI the acquisition and use of the equipment authorized under this authorization.” Although its use is worthwhile, its implementation remains extremely controversial.

A very popular method that has been in practice since the inception of surveillance is “the stakeout”. A stakeout is the most frequently practiced surveillance technique among police officers and is used to gather information on all types of suspects. In ref. [ 37 ], the authors discuss the importance of a stakeout by stating that police officers witness an extensive range of events about which they are required to write a report. Such criminal acts are observed during stakeouts or patrols; observations of weapons, drugs, and other evidence during house searches; and descriptions of their own behavior and that of the suspect during arrest. Stakeouts are extremely useful, and are considered 100% reliable, with the police themselves observing the notable proceedings. However, are they actually 100% accurate? All officers are humans, and all humans are subject to fatigue. The major objective of a stakeout is to observe wrongful activities. Is there a tool that can substitute its use? We will discuss this point herein.

Another way to conduct surveillance is by using drones, which help in various fields such as mapping cities, chasing suspects, investigating crime scenes and accidents, traffic management and flow, and search and rescue after a disaster. In ref. [ 38 ], legal issues regarding the use of drones and airspace distribution problems are described. Legal issues include the privacy concerns raised by the public, with the police gaining increasing power and authority. Airspace distribution raises concerns about how high a drone is allowed to go.

Other surveillance methods include face recognition, license plate recognition, and body cams. In ref. [ 39 ], the authors indicated that facial recognition can be used to obtain the profile of suspects and analyze it from different databases to obtain more information. Similarly, a license plate reader can be used to access data about a car possibly involved in a crime. They may even use body cams to see more than what the human eye can see, meaning that the reader observes everything a police officer sees and records it. Normally, when we see an object, we cannot recollect the complete image of it. In ref. [ 40 ], the impact of body cams was studied in terms of officer misconduct and domestic violence when the police are making an arrest. Body cams are thus being worn by patrol officers. In ref. [ 41 ], the authors also mentioned how protection against wrongful police practices is provided. However, the use of body cams does not stop here, as other primary reasons for having a body camera on at all times is to record the happenings in front of the wearer in hopes of record useful events during daily activities or during important operations.

Although each of these methods is effective, one point they share in common is that they all work individually, and while the police can use any of these approaches individually or concurrently, having a machine that is able to incorporate the positive aspects of all of these technologies would be highly beneficial.

ML techniques used in crime prediction

In ref. [ 42 ], a comparative study was carried out between violent crime patterns from the Communities and Crime Unnormalized Dataset versus actual crime statistical data using the open source data mining software Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA). Three algorithms, namely, linear regression, additive regression, and decision stump, were implemented using the same finite set of features on communities and actual crime datasets. Test samples were randomly selected. The linear regression algorithm could handle randomness to a certain extent in the test samples and thus proved to be the best among all three selected algorithms. The scope of the project was to prove the efficiency and accuracy of ML algorithms in predicting violent crime patterns and other applications, such as determining criminal hotspots, creating criminal profiles, and learning criminal trends.

When considering WEKA [ 43 ], the integration of a new graphical interface called Knowledge Flow is possible, which can be used as a substitute for Internet Explorer. IT provides a more concentrated view of data mining in association with the process orientation, in which individual learning components (represented by java beans) are used graphically to show a certain flow of information. The authors then describe another graphical interface called an experimenter, which as the name suggests, is designed to compare the performance of multiple learning schemes on multiple data sets.

In ref. [ 34 ], the potential of applying a predictive analysis of crime forecasting in an urban context is studied. Three types of crime, namely, home burglary, street robbery, and battery, were aggregated into grids of 200 m × 250 m and retrospectively analyzed. Based on the crime data of the previous 3 years, an ensemble model was applied to synthesize the results of logistic regression and neural network models in order to obtain fortnightly and monthly predictions for the year 2014. The predictions were evaluated based on the direct hit rate, precision, and prediction index. The results of the fortnightly predictions indicate that by applying a predictive analysis methodology to the data, it is possible to obtain accurate predictions. They concluded that the results can be improved remarkably by comparing the fortnightly predictions with the monthly predictions with a separation between day and night.

In ref. [ 44 ], crime predictions were investigated based on ML. Crime data of the last 15 years in Vancouver (Canada) were analyzed for prediction. This machine-learning-based crime analysis involves the collection of data, data classification, identification of patterns, prediction, and visualization. K-nearest neighbor (KNN) and boosted decision tree algorithms were also implemented to analyze the crime dataset. In their study, a total of 560,000 crime datasets between 2003 and 2018 were analyzed, and crime prediction with an accuracy of between 39% and 44% was obtained by predicting the crime using ML algorithms. The accuracy was low as a prediction model, but the authors concluded that the accuracy can be increased or improved by tuning both the algorithms and crime data for specific applications.

In ref. [ 45 ], a ML approach is presented for the prediction of crime-related statistics in Philadelphia, United States. The problem was divided into three parts: determining whether the crime occurs, occurrence of crime and most likely crime. Algorithms such as logistic regression, KNN, ordinal regression, and tree methods were used to train the datasets to obtain detailed quantitative crime predictions with greater significance. They also presented a map for crime prediction with different crime categories in different areas of Philadelphia for a particular time period with different colors indicating each type of crime. Different types of crimes ranging from assaults to cyber fraud were included to match the general pattern of crime in Philadelphia for a particular interval of time. Their algorithm was able to predict whether a crime will occur with an astonishing 69% accuracy, as well as the number of crimes ranging from 1 to 32 with 47% accuracy.

In ref. [ 46 ], the authors analyzed a dataset consisting of several crimes and predicted the type of crime that may occur in the near future depending on various conditions. ML and data science techniques were used for crime prediction in a crime dataset from Chicago, United States. The crime dataset consists of information such as the crime location description, type of crime, date, time, and precise location coordinates. Different combinations of models, such as KNN classification, logistic regression, decision trees, random forest, a support vector machine (SVM), and Bayesian methods were tested, and the most accurate model was used for training. The KNN classification proved to be the best with an accuracy of approximately 0.787. They also used different graphs that helped in understanding the various characteristics of the crime dataset of Chicago. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an idea of how ML can be used by law enforcement agencies to predict, detect, and solve crime at a much better rate, which results in a reduction in crime.

In ref. [ 47 ], a graphical user interface-based prediction of crime rates using a ML approach is presented. The main focus of this study was to investigate machine-learning-based techniques with the best accuracy in predicting crime rates and explore its applicability with particular importance to the dataset. Supervised ML techniques were used to analyze the dataset to carry out data validation, data cleaning, and data visualization on the given dataset. The results of the different supervised ML algorithms were compared to predict the results. The proposed system consists of data collection, data preprocessing, construction of a predictive model, dataset training, dataset testing, and a comparison of algorithms, as shown in Fig. 1 . The aim of this study is to prove the effectiveness and accuracy of a ML algorithm for predicting violent crimes.

Dataflow diagram

In ref. [ 48 ], a feature-level data fusion method based on a deep neural network (DNN) is proposed to accurately predict crime occurrence by efficiently fusing multi-model data from several domains with environmental context information. The dataset consists of data from an online database of crime statistics from Chicago, demographic and meteorological data, and images. Crime prediction methods utilize several ML techniques, including a regression analysis, kernel density estimation (KDE), and SVM. Their approach mainly consisted of three phases: collection of data, analysis of the relationship between crime incidents and collected data using a statistical approach, and lastly, accurate prediction of crime occurrences. The DNN model consists of spatial features, temporal features, and environmental context. The SVM and KDE models had accuracies of 67.01% and 66.33%, respectively, whereas the proposed DNN model had an astonishing accuracy of 84.25%. The experimental results showed that the proposed DNN model was more accurate in predicting crime occurrences than the other prediction models.

In ref. [ 49 ], the authors mainly focused on the analysis and design of ML algorithms to reduce crime rates in India. ML techniques were applied to a large set of data to determine the pattern relations between them. The research was mainly based on providing a prediction of crime that might occur based on the occurrence of previous crime locations, as shown in Fig. 2 . Techniques such as Bayesian neural networks, the Levenberg Marquardt algorithm, and a scaled algorithm were used to analyze and interpret the data, among which the scaled algorithm gave the best result in comparison with the other two techniques. A statistical analysis based on the correlation, analysis of variance, and graphs proved that with the help of the scaled algorithm, the crime rate can be reduced by 78%, implying an accuracy of 0.78.

Functionality of proposed approach

In ref. [ 50 ], a system is proposed that predicts crime by analyzing a dataset containing records of previously committed crimes and their patterns. The proposed system works mainly on two ML algorithms: a decision tree and KNN. Techniques such as the random forest algorithm and Adaptive Boosting were used to increase the accuracy of the prediction model. To obtain better results for the model, the crimes were divided into frequent and rare classes. The frequent class consisted of the most frequent crimes, whereas the rare class consisted of the least frequent crimes. The proposed system was fed with criminal activity data for a 12-year period in San Francisco, United States. Using undersampling and oversampling methods along with the random forest algorithm, the accuracy was surprisingly increased to 99.16%.

In ref. [ 51 ], a detailed study on crime classification and prediction using ML and deep learning architectures is presented. Certain ML methodologies, such as random forest, naïve Bayes, and an SVM have been used in the literature to predict the number of crimes and hotspot prediction. Deep learning is a ML approach that can overcome the limitations of some machine-learning methodologies by extracting the features from the raw data. This paper presents three fundamental deep learning configurations for crime prediction: (1) spatial and temporal patterns, (2) temporal and spatial patterns, and (3) spatial and temporal patterns in parallel. Moreover, the proposed model was compared with 10 state-of-the-art algorithms on 5 different crime prediction datasets with more than 10 years of crime data.

In ref. [ 52 ], a big data and ML technique for behavior analysis and crime prediction is presented. This paper discusses the tracking of information using big data, different data collection approaches, and the last phase of crime prediction using ML techniques based on data collection and analysis. A predictive analysis was conducted through ML using RapidMiner by processing historical crime patterns. The research was mainly conducted in four phases: data collection, data preparation, data analysis, and data visualization. It was concluded that big data is a suitable framework for analyzing crime data because it can provide a high throughput and fault tolerance, analyze extremely large datasets, and generate reliable results, whereas the ML based naïve Bayes algorithm can achieve better predictions using the available datasets.

In ref. [ 53 ], various data mining and ML technologies used in criminal investigations are demonstrated. The contribution of this study is highlighting the methodologies used in crime data analytics. Various ML methods, such as a KNN, SVM, naïve Bayes, and clustering, were used for the classification, understanding, and analysis of datasets based on predefined conditions. By understanding and analyzing the data available in the crime record, the type of crime and the hotspot of future criminal activities can be determined. The proposed model was designed to perform various operations such as feature selection, clustering, analysis, prediction, and evaluation of the given datasets. This research proves the necessity of ML techniques for predicting and analyzing criminal activities.

In ref. [ 54 ], the authors incorporated the concept of a grid-based crime prediction model and established a range of spatial-temporal features based on 84 types of geographic locations for a city in Taiwan. The concept uses ML algorithms to learn the patterns and predict crime for the following month for each grid. Among the many ML methods applied, the best model was found to be a DNN. The main contribution of this study is the use of the most recent ML techniques, including the concept of feature learning. In addition, the testing of crime displacement also showed that the proposed model design outperformed the baseline.

In ref. [ 55 ], the authors considered the development of a crime prediction model using the decision tree (J48) algorithm. When applied in the context of law enforcement and intelligence analysis, J48 holds the promise of mollifying crime rates and is considered the most efficient ML algorithm for the prediction of crime data in the related literature. The J48 classifier was developed using the WEKA tool kit and later trained on a preprocessed crime dataset. The experimental results of the J48 algorithm predicted the unknown category of crime data with an accuracy of 94.25287%. With such high accuracy, it is fair to count on the system for future crime predictions.

Comparative study of different forecasting methods

First, in refs. [ 56 , 57 ], the authors predicted crime using the KNNs algorithm in the years 2014 and 2013, respectively. Sun et al. [ 56 ] proved that a higher crime prediction accuracy can be obtained by combining the grey correlation analysis based on new weighted KNN (GBWKNN) filling algorithm with the KNN classification algorithm. Using the proposed algorithm, we were able to obtain an accuracy of approximately 67%. By contrast, Shojaee et al. [ 57 ] divided crime data into two parts, namely, critical and non-critical, and applied a simple KNN algorithm. They achieved an astonishing accuracy of approximately 87%.

Second, in refs. [ 58 , 59 ], crime is predicted using a decision tree algorithm for the years 2015 and 2013, respectively. In their study, Obuandike et al. [ 58 ] used the ZeroR algorithm along with a decision tree but failed to achieve an accuracy of above 60%. In addition, Iqbal et al. [ 59 ] achieved a stunning accuracy of 84% using a decision tree algorithm. In both cases, however, a small change in the data could lead to a large change in the structure.

Third, in refs. [ 60 , 61 ], a novel crime detection technique called naïve Bayes was implemented for crime prediction and analysis. Jangra and Kalsi [ 60 ] achieved an astounding crime prediction accuracy of 87%, but could not apply their approach to datasets with a large number of features. By contrast, Wibowo and Oesman [ 61 ] achieved an accuracy of only 66% in predicting crimes and failed to consider the computational speed, robustness, and scalability.

Below, we summarize the above comparison and add other models to further illustrate this comparative study and the accuracy of some frequently used models (Table 1 ).

Computer vision models combined with machine and deep learning techniques

In ref. [ 66 ], the study focused on three main questions. First, the authors question whether computer vision algorithms actually work. They stated that the accuracy of the prediction is 90% over fewer complex datasets, but the accuracy drops to 60% over complex datasets. Another concern we need to focus on is reducing the storage and computational costs. Second, they question whether it is effective for policing. They determined that a distinct activity detection is difficult, and pinpointed a key component, the Public Safety Visual Analytics Workstation, which includes many capabilities ranging from detection and localization of objects in camera feeds to labeling actions and events associated with training data, and allowing query-based searches for specific events in videos. By doing so, they aim to view every event as a computer-vision trained, recognized, and labeled event. The third and final question they ask is whether computer vision impacts the criminal justice system. The answer to this from their end is quite optimistic to say the least, although they wish to implement computer vision alone, which we suspect is unsatisfactory.

In ref. [ 67 ], a framework for multi-camera video surveillance is presented. The framework is designed so efficiently that it performs all three major activities of a typical police “stake-out”, i.e., detection, representation, and recognition. The detection part mixes video streams from multiple cameras to efficiently and reliably extract motion trajectories from videos. The representation helps in concluding the raw trajectory data to construct hierarchical, invariant, and content-rich descriptions of motion events. Finally, the recognition part deals with event classification (such as robbery and possibly murder and molestation, among others) and identification of the data descriptors. For an effective recognition, they developed a sequence-alignment kernel function to perform sequence data learning to identify suspicious/possible crime events.

In ref. [ 68 ], a method is suggested for identifying people for surveillance with the help of a new feature called soft biometry, which includes a person’s height, built, skin tone, shirt and trouser color, motion pattern, and trajectory history to identify and track passengers, which further helps in predicting crime activities. They have gone further and discussed some absurd human error incidents that have resulted in the perpetrators getting away. They also conducted experiments, the results of which were quite astounding. In one case, the camera catches people giving piggyback rides in more than one frame of a single shot video. The second scenario shows the camera’s ability to distinguish between airport guards and passengers.

In ref. [ 69 ], the authors discussed automated visual surveillance in a realistic scenario and used Knight, which is a multiple camera surveillance and monitoring system. Their major targets were to analyze the detection, tracking, and classification performances. The detection, tracking, and classification accuracies were 97.4%, 96.7%, and 88%, respectively. The authors also pointed to the major difficulties of illumination changes, camouflage, uninteresting moving objects, and shadows. This research again proves the reliability of computer vision models.

It is well known that an ideal scenario for a camera to achieve a perfect resolution is not possible. In ref. [ 70 ], security surveillance systems often produce poor-quality video, which could be a hurdle in gathering forensic evidence. They examined the ability of subjects to identify targeted individuals captured by a commercially available video security device. In the first experiment, subjects personally familiar with the targets performed extremely well at identifying them, whereas subjects unfamiliar with the targets performed quite poorly. Although these results might not seem to be very conclusive and efficient, police officers with experience in forensic identification performed as poorly as other subjects unfamiliar with the targets. In the second experiment, they asked how familiar subjects could perform so well, and then used the same video device edited clips to obscure the head, body, or gait of the targets. Hiding the body or gait produced a small decrease in recognition performance. Hiding the target heads had a dramatic effect on the subject’s ability to recognize the targets. This indicates that even if the quality of the video is low, the head the target was seen and recognized.

In ref. [ 71 ], an automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) model is proposed. The authors described it as an “image processing innovation”. The ANPR system consists of the following steps: (1) vehicle image capture, (2) preprocessing, (3) number plate extraction, (4) character segmentation, and (5) character recognition. Before the main image processing, a pre-processing of the captured image is conducted, which includes converting the red, green and blue image into a gray image, clamor evacuation, and border enhancement for brightness. The plate is then separated by judging its size. In character segmentation, the letters and numbers are separated and viewed individually. In character recognition, optical character recognition is applied to a given database.

Although real-time crime forecasting is vital, it is extremely difficult to achieve in practice. No known physical models provide a reasonable approximation with dependable results for such a complex system. In ref. [ 72 ], the authors adapted a spatial temporal residual network to well-represented data to predict the distribution of crime in Los Angeles at an hourly scale in neighborhood-sized parcels. These experiments were compared with several existing approaches for prediction, demonstrating the superiority of the proposed model in terms of accuracy. They compared their deep learning approach to ARIMA, KNN, and the historical average. In addition, they presented a ternarization technique to address the concerns of resource consumption for deployment in the real world.

In ref. [ 73 ], the authors conducted a significant study on crime prediction and showed the importance of non-crime data. The major objective of this research was taking advantage of DNNs to achieve crime prediction in a fine-grain city partition. They made predictions using Chicago and Portland crime data, which were further augmented with additional datasets covering the weather, census data, and public transportation. In the paper they split each city into grid cells (beats for Chicago and square grid for Portland). The crime numbers are broken into 10 bins, and their model predicts the most likely bin for each spatial region at a daily level. They train these data using increasingly complex neural network structures, including variations that are suited to the spatial and temporal aspects of the crime prediction problem. Using their model, they were able to predict the correct bin for the overall number of crimes with an accuracy of 75.6% for Chicago and 65.3% for Portland. They showed that adding the value of additional non-crime data was an important factor. They found that days with higher amounts of precipitation and snow decreased the accuracy of the model slightly. Then, considering the impact of transportation, the bus routes and train routes were presented within their beats, and it was shown that the beat containing a train station is on average 1.2% higher than its neighboring beats. The accuracy of a beat that contained one or more train lines passing through it was 0.5% more accurate than its neighboring beats.

In ref. [ 74 ], the authors taught a system how to monitor traffic and identify vehicles at night. They used the bright spots of the headlights and tail lights to identify an object first as a vehicle, and the bright light is extracted with a segmentation process, and then processed by a spatial clustering and tracking procedure that locates and analyzes the spatial and temporal features of the vehicle light. They also conducted an experiment in which, for a span of 20 min, the detection scores for cars and bikes were 98.79% and 96.84%, respectively. In another part of the test, they conducted the same test under the same conditions for 50 min, and the detection scores for cars and bikes were 97.58% and 98.48%, respectively. It is good for machines to be built at such a beginning level. This technology can also be used to conduct surveillance at night.

In ref. [ 75 ], an important approach for human motion analysis is discussed. The author mentions that human motion analysis is difficult because appearances are extremely variable, and thus stresses that focusing on marker-less vision-based human motion analysis has the potential to provide a non-obtrusive solution for the evaluation of body poses. The author claims that this technology can have vast applications such as surveillance, human-computer interaction, and automatic annotation, and will thus benefit from a robust solution. In this paper, the characteristics of human motion analysis are discussed. We divide the analysis part into two aspects, modeling and an estimation phase. The modeling phase includes the construction of the likelihood function [including the camera model, image descriptors, human body model and matching function, and (physical) constraints], and the estimation phase is concerned with finding the most likely pose given the likelihood (function result) of the surface. We discuss the model-free approaches separately.

In ref. [ 76 ], the authors provided insight into how we can achieve crime mapping using satellites. The need for manual data collection for mapping is costly and time consuming. By contrast, satellite imagery is becoming a great alternative. In this paper, they attempted to investigate the use of deep learning to predict crime rates directly from raw satellite imagery. They trained a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) on satellite images obtained from over 1 million crime-incident reports (15 years of data) collected by the Chicago Police Department. The best performing model predicted crime rates from raw satellite imagery with an astounding accuracy of 79%. To make their research more thorough, they conducted a test for reusability, and used the tested and learned Chicago models for prediction in the cities of Denver and San Francisco. Compared to maps made from years of data collected by the corresponding police departments, their maps have an accuracy of 72% and 70%, respectively. They concluded the following: (1) Visual features contained in satellite imagery can be successfully used as a proxy indicator of crime rates; (2) ConvNets are capable of learning models for crime rate prediction from satellite imagery; (3) Once deep models are used and learned, they can be reused across different cities.

In ref. [ 77 ], the authors suggested an extremely intriguing research approach in which they claim to prove that looking beyond what is visible is to infer meaning to what is viewed from an image. They even conducted an interesting study on determining where a McDonalds could be located simply from photographs, and provided the possibility of predicting crime. They compared the human accuracy on this task, which was 59.6%, and the accuracy of using gradient-based features, which was 72.5%, with a chance performance (a chance performance is what you would obtain if you performed at random) of only 50%. This indicates the presence of some visual cues that are not easily spotted by an average human, but are able to be spotted by a machine, thus enables us to judge whether an area is safe. The authors indicated that numerous factors are often associated with our intuition, which we use to avoid certain areas because they may seem “shady” or “unsafe”.

In ref. [ 78 ], the authors describe in two parts how close we are to achieving a fully automated surveillance system. The first part views the possibility of surveillance in a real-world scenario where the installation of systems and maintenance of systems are in question. The second part considers the implementation of computer vision models and algorithms for behavior modeling and event detection. They concluded that the complete scenario is under discussion, and therefore many people are conducting research and obtaining results. However, as we look closely, we can see that reliable results are possible only in certain aspects, while other areas are still in the development process, such as obtaining information on cars and their owners as well as accurately understanding the behavior of a possible suspect.

Many times during criminal activities, convicts use hand gestures to signal messages to each other. In ref. [ 79 ], research on hand gesture recognition was conducted using computer vision models. Their application architecture is of extremely high quality and is easy to understand. They begin by capturing images, and then try detecting a hand in the background. They apply either computer aided manufacturing or different procedure in which they first convert a picture into gray scale, after which they set the image return on investment, and then find and extract the biggest contour. They then determine the convex hull of the contour to try and find an orientation around the bounded rectangle, and finally interpret the gesture and convert it into a meaningful command.

Crime hotspots or areas with high crime intensity are places where the future possibility of a crime exists along with the possibility of spotting a criminal. In ref. [ 80 ], the authors conducted research on forecasting crime hotspots. They used Google Tensor Flow to implement their model and evaluated three options for the recurrent neural network (RNN) architecture: accuracy, precision, and recall. The focus is on achieving a larger value to prove that the approach has a better performance. The gated recurrent unit (GRU) and long short-term memory (LSTM) versions obtained similar performance levels with an accuracy of 81.5%, precision of 86%–87%, recall of 75%, and F1-score of 0.8. Both perform much better than the traditional RNN version. Based on the area under the ROC curve (AUC) performance observations, the GRU version was 2% better than the RNN version. The LSTM version achieved the best AUC score, which was improved by 3% over the GRU version.

In ref. [ 81 ], a spatiotemporal crime network (STCN) is proposed that applies a CNN for predicting crime before it occurs. The authors evaluated the STCN using 311 felony datasets from New York from 2010 to 2015. The results were extremely impressive, with the STCN achieving an F1-score of 88% and an AUC of 92%, which confirmed that it exceeded the performance of the four baselines. Their proposed model achieved the best performance in terms of both F1 and AUC, which remained better than those of the other baselines even when the time window reached 100. This study provides evidence that the system can function well even in a metropolitan area.

Proposed idea

After finding and understanding various distinct methods used by the police for surveillance purposes, we determined the importance of each method. Each surveillance method can perform well on its own and produce satisfactory results, although for only one specific characteristic, that is, if we use a Sting Ray, it can help us only when the suspect is using a phone, which should be switched on. Thus, it is only useful when the information regarding the stake out location is correct. Based on this information, we can see how the ever-evolving technology has yet again produced a smart way to conduct surveillance. The introduction of deep learning, ML, and computer vision techniques has provided us with a new perspective on ways to conduct surveillance. This is an intelligent approach to surveillance because it tries to mimic a human approach, but it does so 24 h a day, 365 days a year, and once it has been taught how to do things it does them in the same manner repeatedly.

Although we have discussed the aspects that ML and computer vision can achieve, but what are these aspects essentially? This brings us to the main point of our paper discussion, i.e., our proposed idea, which is to combine the point aspects of Sting Ray, body cams, facial recognition, number plate recognition, and stakeouts. New features iclude core analytics, neural networks, heuristic engines, recursion processors, Bayesian networks, data acquisition, cryptographic algorithms, document processors, computational linguistics, voiceprint identification, natural language processing, gait analysis, biometric recognition, pattern mining, intel interpretation, threat detection, threat classification. The new features are completely computer dependent and hence require human interaction for development; however, once developed, it functions without human interaction and frees humans for other tasks. Let us understand the use of each function.

Core analytics: This includes having knowledge of a variety of statistical techniques, and by using this knowledge, predict future outcomes, which in our case are anything from behavioral instincts to looting a store in the near future.

Neural networks: This is a concept consisting of a large number of algorithms that help in finding the relation between data by acting similar to a human brain, mimicking biological nerve cells and hence trying to think on its own, thus understanding or even predicting a crime scene.

Heuristic engines: These are engines with data regarding antiviruses, and thus knowledge about viruses, increasing the safety of our system as it identifies the type of threat and eliminates it using known antiviruses.

Cryptographic algorithms: Such algorithms are used in two parts. First, they privately encode the known confidential criminal data. Second, they are used to keep the newly discovered potential crime data encrypted.

Recursion processors: These are used to apply the functions of our machine repeatedly to make sure they continuously work and never break the surveillance of the machine.

Bayesian networks: These are probabilistic acyclic graphical models that can be used for a variety of purposes such as prediction, anomaly detection, diagnostics, automated insight, reasoning, time series prediction, and decision making under uncertainty.

Data acquisition: This might be the most important part because our system has to possess the knowledge of previous crimes and learn from them to predict future possible criminal events.

Document processors: These are used after the data collection, primarily for going through, organizing, analyzing, and learning from the data.

Computer linguistics: Using algorithms and learning models, this method is attempting to give a computer the ability to understand human spoken language, which would be ground breaking, allowing a machine to not only identify a human but also understands what the human is saying.

Natural language processor: This is also used by computers to better understand human linguistics.

Voice print identification: This is an interesting application, which tries to distinguish one person’s voice from another, making it even more recognizable and identifiable. It identifies a target with the help of certain characteristics, such as the configuration of the speaker’s mouth and throat, which can be expressed as a mathematical formula.

Gait analysis: This will be used to study human motion, understanding posture while walking. It will be used to better understand the normal pace of a person and thus judge an abnormal pace.

Bio metric identification: This is used to identify individuals by their face, or if possible, identify them by their thumb print stored in few different databases.

Pattern mining: This is a subset of data mining and helps in observing patterns among routine activities. The use of this technology will help us identify if a person is seen an usual number of times behind a pharmacy window at particular time, allowing the machine to alert the authorities.

Intel interpretation: This is also used to make sense of the information gathered, and will include almost all features mentioned above, combining the results of each and making a final meaningful prediction.

Threat detection: A threat will be detected if during the intel processing a certain number of check boxes predefined when making the system are ticked.

Threat classification: As soon as a threat is detected, it is classified, and the threat can then be categorized into criminal case levels, including burglary, murder, or a possible terrorist attack; thus, based on the time line, near or distant future threats might be predictable.

Combining all of these features, we aim to produce software that has the capability of becoming a universal police officer, having eyes and ears everywhere. Obviously, we tend to use the CCTVs in urban areas during a preliminary round to see the functioning of such software in a real-world scenario. The idea is to train and make the software learn all previously recorded crimes whose footages are available (at least 5000 cases for optimum results), through supervised learning, unsupervised learning, semi-supervised learning, and reinforcement learning to help it to understand what a crime actually is. Thus, it will achieve a better understanding of criminality and can answer how crimes happen, as well as why and where. We do not propose simply making a world-class model to predict crimes, we also suggest making it understand previous crimes to better judge and therefore better predict them.

We aim to use this type of technology on two fronts: first and most importantly, for predicting crimes before they happen, followed by a thorough analysis of a crime scene allowing the system to possibly identify aspects that even a human eye can miss.

The most interesting cutting-edge and evolutionary idea that we believe should be incorporated is the use of scenario simulations. After analyzing the scene and using the 17 main characteristics mentioned above, the software should run at least 50 simulations of the present scenario presented in front of it, which will be assisted by previously learned crime recordings. The simulation will help the software in asserting the threat level and then accordingly recommend a course of action or alert police officials.

To visualize a possible scenario where we are able to invent such software, we prepared a flow chart (Fig. 3 ) to better understand the complete process.

Flowchart of our proposed model. The data are absorbed from the surrounding with the help of cameras and microphones. If the system depicts an activity as suspicious, it gathers more intel allowing the facial algorithms to match against a big database such as a Social Security Number or Aadhaar card database. When it detects a threat, it also classifies it into categories such as the nature of the crime and time span within which it is possible to take place. With all the gathered intel and all the necessary details of the possible crime, it alerts the respective authority with a 60-word synopsis to give them a brief idea, allowing law enforcement agencies to take action accordingly

Although this paper has been implemented with high accuracy and detailed research, there are certain challenges that can pose a problem in the future. First, the correct and complete building of the whole system has to be done in the near future, allowing its implementation to take place immediately and properly. Furthermore, the implementation itself is a significant concern, as such technologies cannot be directly implemented in the open world. The system must first be tested in a small part of a metropolitan area, and only then with constant improvements (revisions of the first model) can its usage be scaled up. Hence, the challenges are more of a help in perfecting the model and thus gradually providing a perfect model that can be applied to the real world. Moreover, there are a few hurdles in the technological aspects of the model, as the size of the learning data will be enormous, and thus processing it will take days and maybe even weeks. Although these are challenges that need to be addressed, they are aspects that a collective team of experts can overcome after due diligence, and if so, the end product will be worth the hard work and persistence.

Future scope

This paper presented the techniques and methods that can be used to predict crime and help law agencies. The scope of using different methods for crime prediction and prevention can change the scenario of law enforcement agencies. Using a combination of ML and computer vision can substantially impact the overall functionality of law enforcement agencies. In the near future, by combining ML and computer vision, along with security equipment such as surveillance cameras and spotting scopes, a machine can learn the pattern of previous crimes, understand what crime actually is, and predict future crimes accurately without human intervention. A possible automation would be to create a system that can predict and anticipate the zones of crime hotspots in a city. Law enforcement agencies can be warned and prevent crime from occurring by implementing more surveillance within the prediction zone. This complete automation can overcome the drawbacks of the current system, and law enforcement agencies can depend more on these techniques in the near future. Designing a machine to anticipate and identify patterns of such crimes will be the starting point of our future study. Although the current systems have a large impact on crime prevention, this could be the next big approach and bring about a revolutionary change in the crime rate, prediction, detection, and prevention, i.e., a “universal police officer”.

Conclusions

Predicting crimes before they happen is simple to understand, but it takes a lot more than understanding the concept to make it a reality. This paper was written to assist researchers aiming to make crime prediction a reality and implement such advanced technology in real life. Although police do include the use of new technologies such as Sting Rays and facial recognition every few years, the implementation of such software can fundamentally change the way police work, in a much better way. This paper outlined a framework envisaging how the aspects of machine and deep learning, along with computer vision, can help create a system that is much more helpful to the police. Our proposed system has a collection of technologies that will perform everything from monitoring crime hotspots to recognizing people from their voice notes. The first difficulty faced will be to actually make this system, followed by problems such as its implementation and use, among others. However, all of these problems are solvable, and we can also benefit from a security system that monitors the entire city around-the-clock. In other words, to visualize a world where we incorporate such a system into a police force, tips or leads that much more reliable can be achieved and perhaps crime can be eradicated at a much faster rate.

Availability of data and materials

All relevant data and material are presented in the main paper.

Abbreviations

Machine learning

Nondeterministic polynomial

Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis

K-nearest neighbor

Automatic number plate recognition

Deep neural network

Kernel density estimation

Support vector machine

Grey correlation analysis based on new weighted KNN

Autoregressive integrated moving average

Spatiotemporal crime network

Convolutional neural network

Area under the ROC curve

Recurrent neural network

Gated recurrent unit

Long short-term memory

Absolute percent error

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Shah, N., Bhagat, N. & Shah, M. Crime forecasting: a machine learning and computer vision approach to crime prediction and prevention. Vis. Comput. Ind. Biomed. Art 4 , 9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42492-021-00075-z

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Journal Citation Reports This link opens in a new window Provides a more robust ranking of criminal justice journals more... less... Journal performance metrics offer a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world's leading journals by delivering quantifiable statistical information based on citation data, which helps determine a publication's impact and influence in the global research community. It includes journal and category data.
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Criminal Justice Abstracts This link opens in a new window The journal articles described in this resource are from the premier journals in the field as well as from trade publications in the profession. more... less... Provides abstracts of articles from the major journals in criminology and related disciplines, as well as books and reports from government and nongovernmental agencies. For each document, an informative summary of the findings, methodology, and conclusions is provided. Topics include crime trends, prevention projects, corrections, juvenile delinquency, police, courts, offenders, victims, and sentencing.
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National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts This link opens in a new window This resource is published by the US Department of Justice. It functions as a clearinghouse of information from government agencies at all levels of government. It is particularly useful for finding reports and scholarly research funded through tax dollars. It is equally a wealth of information on current policy topics and events. more... less... The National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database contains summaries of more than 150,000 publications on criminal justice, including Federal, state, and local government reports, books, research reports, journal articles, and unpublished research. Subject areas include corrections, courts, drugs and crime, law enforcement, juvenile justice, crime statistics, and victims of crime. Coverage: The time period covered is from the early 1970's to the present.
PsycINFO (via ProQuest) This link opens in a new window A great resource for scholarly articles that focus on victimization, behavior and crime, Primary database for international literature in psychology and related disciplines. It is published by the American Psychological Association and provides coverage from 1840 to the present. more... less... PsycINFO provides access to international literature in psychology and related disciplines. Unrivaled in its depth of psychological coverage and respected worldwide for its high quality, the database is enriched with literature from an array of disciplines related to psychology such as psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work. Nearly all records contain nonevaluative summaries, and all records from 1967 to the present are indexed using the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.
ERIC (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window An education resource sponsored by the US Department of Education. It is useful for topics such as: juvenile delinquency, school violence, rehabilitation programs, counseling. more... less... ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is the major database for education literature, sponsored by the U.S. Department. of Education. The same database content is available on many platforms.

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Home » 500+ Statistics Research Topics

500+ Statistics Research Topics

Statistics is a branch of mathematics that deals with the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data . It is a fundamental tool used in various fields such as business, social sciences, engineering, healthcare, and many more. As a research topic , statistics can be a fascinating subject to explore, as it allows researchers to investigate patterns, trends, and relationships within data. With the help of statistical methods, researchers can make informed decisions and draw valid conclusions based on empirical evidence. In this post, we will explore some interesting statistics research topics that can be pursued by researchers to further expand our understanding of this field.

Statistics Research Topics

Statistics Research Topics are as follows:

Analysis of the effectiveness of different marketing strategies on consumer behavior.
An investigation into the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability.
A study of the effects of social media on mental health and well-being.
A comparative analysis of the educational outcomes of public and private schools.
The impact of climate change on agriculture and food security.
A survey of the prevalence and causes of workplace stress in different industries.
A statistical analysis of crime rates in urban and rural areas.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of alternative medicine treatments.
A study of the relationship between income inequality and health outcomes.
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of different weight loss programs.
An investigation into the factors that affect job satisfaction among employees.
A statistical analysis of the relationship between poverty and crime.
A study of the factors that influence the success of small businesses.
A survey of the prevalence and causes of childhood obesity.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of drug addiction treatment programs.
A statistical analysis of the relationship between gender and leadership in organizations.
A study of the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement.
An investigation into the causes and consequences of income inequality.
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of different types of therapy for mental health conditions.
A survey of the prevalence and causes of substance abuse among teenagers.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of online education compared to traditional classroom learning.
A statistical analysis of the impact of globalization on different industries.
A study of the relationship between social media use and political polarization.
An investigation into the factors that influence customer loyalty in the retail industry.
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of different types of advertising.
A survey of the prevalence and causes of workplace discrimination.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of different types of employee training programs.
A statistical analysis of the relationship between air pollution and health outcomes.
A study of the factors that affect employee turnover rates.
An investigation into the causes and consequences of income mobility.
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of different types of leadership styles.
A survey of the prevalence and causes of mental health disorders among college students.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of different types of cancer treatments.
A statistical analysis of the impact of social media influencers on consumer behavior.
A study of the factors that influence the adoption of renewable energy sources.
An investigation into the relationship between alcohol consumption and health outcomes.
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of different types of conflict resolution strategies.
A survey of the prevalence and causes of childhood poverty.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of different types of diversity training programs.
A statistical analysis of the relationship between immigration and economic growth.
A study of the factors that influence customer satisfaction in the service industry.
An investigation into the causes and consequences of urbanization.
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of different types of economic policies.
A survey of the prevalence and causes of elder abuse.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of different types of rehabilitation programs for prisoners.
A statistical analysis of the impact of automation on different industries.
A study of the factors that influence employee productivity in the workplace.
An investigation into the causes and consequences of gentrification.
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of different types of humanitarian aid.
A survey of the prevalence and causes of homelessness.
Exploring the relationship between socioeconomic status and access to healthcare services
An analysis of the relationship between parental education level and children’s academic performance.
Exploring the effects of different statistical models on prediction accuracy in machine learning.
The Impact of Social Media on Consumer Behavior: A Statistical Analysis
Bayesian hierarchical modeling for network data analysis
Spatial statistics and modeling for environmental data
Nonparametric methods for time series analysis
Bayesian inference for high-dimensional data analysis
Multivariate analysis for genetic data
Machine learning methods for predicting financial markets
Causal inference in observational studies
Sampling design and estimation for complex surveys
Robust statistical methods for outlier detection
Statistical inference for large-scale simulations
Survival analysis and its applications in medical research
Mixture models for clustering and classification
Time-varying coefficient models for longitudinal data
Multilevel modeling for complex data structures
Graphical modeling and Bayesian networks
Experimental design for clinical trials
Inference for network data using stochastic block models
Nonlinear regression modeling for data with complex structures
Statistical learning for social network analysis
Time series forecasting using deep learning methods
Model selection and variable importance in high-dimensional data
Spatial point process modeling for environmental data
Bayesian spatial modeling for disease mapping
Functional data analysis for longitudinal studies
Bayesian network meta-analysis
Statistical methods for big data analysis
Mixed-effects models for longitudinal data
Clustering algorithms for text data
Bayesian modeling for spatiotemporal data
Multivariate analysis for ecological data
Statistical analysis of genomic data
Bayesian network inference for gene regulatory networks
Principal component analysis for high-dimensional data
Time series analysis of financial data
Multivariate survival analysis for complex outcomes
Nonparametric estimation of causal effects
Bayesian network analysis of complex systems
Statistical inference for multilevel network data
Generalized linear mixed models for non-normal data
Bayesian inference for dynamic systems
Latent variable modeling for categorical data
Statistical inference for social network data
Regression models for panel data
Bayesian spatiotemporal modeling for climate data
Predictive modeling for customer behavior analysis
Nonlinear time series analysis for ecological systems
Statistical modeling for image analysis
Bayesian hierarchical modeling for longitudinal data
Network-based clustering for high-dimensional data
Bayesian spatial modeling for ecological systems.
Analysis of the Effect of Climate Change on Crop Yields: A Case Study
Examining the Relationship Between Physical Activity and Mental Health in Young Adults
A Comparative Study of Crime Rates in Urban and Rural Areas Using Statistical Methods
Investigating the Effect of Online Learning on Student Performance in Mathematics
A Statistical Analysis of the Relationship Between Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Different Marketing Strategies for E-commerce Businesses
Identifying the Key Factors Affecting Customer Loyalty in the Hospitality Industry
An Analysis of the Factors Influencing Student Dropout Rates in Higher Education
Examining the Impact of Gender on Salary Disparities in the Workplace Using Statistical Methods
Investigating the Relationship Between Physical Fitness and Academic Performance in High School Students
Analyzing the Effect of Social Support on Mental Health in Elderly Populations
A Comparative Study of Different Methods for Forecasting Stock Prices
Investigating the Effect of Online Reviews on Consumer Purchasing Decisions
Identifying the Key Factors Affecting Employee Turnover Rates in the Technology Industry
Analyzing the Effect of Advertising on Brand Awareness and Purchase Intentions
A Study of the Relationship Between Health Insurance Coverage and Healthcare Utilization
Examining the Effect of Parental Involvement on Student Achievement in Elementary School
Investigating the Impact of Social Media on Political Campaigns Using Statistical Methods
A Comparative Analysis of Different Methods for Detecting Fraud in Financial Transactions
Analyzing the Relationship Between Entrepreneurial Characteristics and Business Success
Investigating the Effect of Job Satisfaction on Employee Performance in the Service Industry
Identifying the Key Factors Affecting the Adoption of Renewable Energy Technologies
A Study of the Relationship Between Personality Traits and Academic Achievement
Examining the Impact of Social Media on Body Image and Self-Esteem in Adolescents
Investigating the Effect of Mobile Advertising on Consumer Behavior
Analyzing the Relationship Between Healthcare Expenditures and Health Outcomes Using Statistical Methods
A Comparative Study of Different Methods for Analyzing Customer Satisfaction Data
Investigating the Impact of Economic Factors on Voter Behavior Using Statistical Methods
Identifying the Key Factors Affecting Student Retention Rates in Community Colleges
Analyzing the Relationship Between Workplace Diversity and Organizational Performance
Investigating the Effect of Gamification on Learning and Motivation in Education
A Study of the Relationship Between Social Support and Depression in Cancer Patients
Examining the Impact of Technology on the Travel Industry Using Statistical Methods
Investigating the Effect of Customer Service Quality on Customer Loyalty in the Retail Industry
Analyzing the Relationship Between Internet Usage and Social Isolation in Older Adults
A Comparative Study of Different Methods for Predicting Customer Churn in Telecommunications
Investigating the Impact of Social Media on Consumer Attitudes Towards Brands Using Statistical Methods
Identifying the Key Factors Affecting Student Success in Online Learning Environments
Analyzing the Relationship Between Employee Engagement and Organizational Commitment
Investigating the Effect of Customer Reviews on Sales in E-commerce Businesses
A Study of the Relationship Between Political Ideology and Attitudes Towards Climate Change
Examining the Impact of Technological Innovations on the Manufacturing Industry Using Statistical Methods
Investigating the Effect of Social Support on Postpartum Depression in New Mothers
Analyzing the Relationship Between Cultural Intelligence and Cross-Cultural Adaptation
Investigating the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes using statistical methods.
Analyzing trends in crime rates and identifying factors that contribute to them using statistical methods.
Examining the effectiveness of different advertising strategies using statistical analysis of consumer behavior.
Identifying factors that influence voting behavior and election outcomes using statistical methods.
Investigating the relationship between employee satisfaction and productivity in the workplace using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to better understand the spread of infectious diseases.
Analyzing the impact of climate change on global food production using statistical methods.
Identifying patterns and trends in social media data using statistical methods.
Investigating the relationship between social networks and mental health using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to predict financial market trends and identify investment opportunities.
Analyzing the effectiveness of different educational programs and interventions using statistical methods.
Investigating the impact of environmental factors on public health using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze complex biological systems and identify new drug targets.
Analyzing trends in consumer spending and identifying factors that influence buying behavior using statistical methods.
Investigating the relationship between diet and health outcomes using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze gene expression data and identify biomarkers for disease.
Analyzing patterns in crime data to predict future crime rates and improve law enforcement strategies.
Investigating the effectiveness of different medical treatments using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze the impact of air pollution on public health.
Analyzing trends in global migration and identifying factors that influence migration patterns using statistical methods.
Investigating the impact of automation on the job market using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze climate data and predict future climate trends.
Analyzing trends in online shopping behavior and identifying factors that influence consumer decisions using statistical methods.
Investigating the impact of social media on political discourse using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze gene-environment interactions and identify new disease risk factors.
Analyzing trends in the stock market and identifying factors that influence investment decisions using statistical methods.
Investigating the impact of early childhood education on long-term academic and social outcomes using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze the relationship between human behavior and the environment.
Analyzing trends in the use of renewable energy and identifying factors that influence adoption rates using statistical methods.
Investigating the impact of immigration on labor market outcomes using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze the relationship between social determinants and health outcomes.
Analyzing patterns in customer churn to predict future customer behavior and improve business strategies.
Investigating the effectiveness of different marketing strategies using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze the relationship between air pollution and climate change.
Analyzing trends in global tourism and identifying factors that influence travel behavior using statistical methods.
Investigating the impact of social media on mental health using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze the impact of transportation on the environment.
Analyzing trends in global trade and identifying factors that influence trade patterns using statistical methods.
Investigating the impact of social networks on political participation using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze the relationship between climate change and biodiversity loss.
Analyzing trends in the use of alternative medicine and identifying factors that influence adoption rates using statistical methods.
Investigating the impact of technological change on the labor market using statistical methods.
Developing new statistical models to analyze the impact of climate change on agriculture.
Investigating the impact of social media on mental health: A longitudinal study.
A comparison of the effectiveness of different types of teaching methods on student learning outcomes.
Examining the relationship between sleep duration and productivity among college students.
A study of the factors that influence employee job satisfaction in the tech industry.
Analyzing the relationship between income level and health outcomes among low-income populations.
Investigating the effectiveness of online learning platforms for high school students.
A study of the factors that contribute to success in online entrepreneurship.
Analyzing the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity in developing countries.
A comparison of different statistical models for predicting stock market trends.
Examining the impact of sports on mental health: A cross-sectional study.
A study of the factors that influence employee retention in the hospitality industry.
Analyzing the impact of cultural differences on international business negotiations.
Investigating the effectiveness of different weight loss interventions for obese individuals.
A study of the relationship between personality traits and academic achievement.
Examining the impact of technology on job displacement: A longitudinal study.
A comparison of the effectiveness of different types of advertising strategies on consumer behavior.
Analyzing the impact of environmental regulations on corporate profitability.
Investigating the effectiveness of different types of therapy for treating depression.
A study of the factors that contribute to success in e-commerce.
Examining the relationship between social support and mental health in the elderly population.
A comparison of different statistical methods for analyzing complex survey data.
Analyzing the impact of employee diversity on organizational performance.
Investigating the effectiveness of different types of exercise for improving cardiovascular health.
A study of the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance.
Examining the impact of work-life balance on employee well-being.
A comparison of the effectiveness of different types of financial education programs for low-income populations.
Analyzing the impact of air pollution on respiratory health in urban areas.
Investigating the relationship between personality traits and leadership effectiveness.
A study of the factors that influence consumer behavior in the luxury goods market.
Examining the impact of social networks on political participation: A cross-sectional study.
A comparison of different statistical methods for analyzing survival data.
Analyzing the impact of government policies on income inequality.
Investigating the effectiveness of different types of counseling for substance abuse.
A study of the relationship between cultural values and consumer behavior.
Examining the impact of technology on privacy: A longitudinal study.
A comparison of the effectiveness of different types of online marketing strategies.
Analyzing the impact of the gig economy on job satisfaction: A cross-sectional study.
Investigating the effectiveness of different types of education interventions for improving financial literacy.
A study of the factors that contribute to success in social entrepreneurship.
Examining the impact of gender diversity on board performance in publicly-traded companies.
A comparison of different statistical methods for analyzing panel data.
Analyzing the impact of employee involvement in decision-making on organizational performance.
Investigating the effectiveness of different types of treatment for anxiety disorders.
A study of the relationship between cultural values and entrepreneurial success.
Examining the impact of technology on the labor market: A longitudinal study.
A comparison of the effectiveness of different types of direct mail campaigns.
Analyzing the impact of telecommuting on employee productivity: A cross-sectional study.
Investigating the effectiveness of different types of retirement planning interventions for low-income individuals.
Analyzing the effectiveness of different educational interventions in improving student performance
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Examining the impact of social media on political participation and engagement
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Examining the effects of different types of parenting styles on child development outcomes
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Analyzing the prevalence and causes of teenage pregnancy in different communities
Investigating the impact of globalization on economic growth and development
Examining the prevalence and impact of social isolation on mental health outcomes
Evaluating the effectiveness of different interventions for reducing gun violence
Analyzing the prevalence and impact of bullying on mental health outcomes
Investigating the relationship between immigration and crime rates
Examining the effects of different types of diets on health outcomes
Identifying factors that contribute to social inequality in different regions
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What the data says about crime in the U.S.

A growing share of Americans say reducing crime should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) hold that view today, up from 47% at the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency in 2021.

We conducted this analysis to learn more about U.S. crime patterns and how those patterns have changed over time.

The analysis relies on statistics published by the FBI, which we accessed through the Crime Data Explorer , and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which we accessed through the National Crime Victimization Survey data analysis tool .

To measure public attitudes about crime in the U.S., we relied on survey data from Pew Research Center and Gallup.

Additional details about each data source, including survey methodologies, are available by following the links in the text of this analysis.

A line chart showing that, since 2021, concerns about crime have grown among both Republicans and Democrats.

With the issue likely to come up in this year’s presidential election, here’s what we know about crime in the United States, based on the latest available data from the federal government and other sources.

How much crime is there in the U.S.?

It’s difficult to say for certain. The two primary sources of government crime statistics – the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – paint an incomplete picture.

The FBI publishes annual data on crimes that have been reported to law enforcement, but not crimes that haven’t been reported. Historically, the FBI has also only published statistics about a handful of specific violent and property crimes, but not many other types of crime, such as drug crime. And while the FBI’s data is based on information from thousands of federal, state, county, city and other police departments, not all law enforcement agencies participate every year. In 2022, the most recent full year with available statistics, the FBI received data from 83% of participating agencies .

BJS, for its part, tracks crime by fielding a large annual survey of Americans ages 12 and older and asking them whether they were the victim of certain types of crime in the past six months. One advantage of this approach is that it captures both reported and unreported crimes. But the BJS survey has limitations of its own. Like the FBI, it focuses mainly on a handful of violent and property crimes. And since the BJS data is based on after-the-fact interviews with crime victims, it cannot provide information about one especially high-profile type of offense: murder.

All those caveats aside, looking at the FBI and BJS statistics side-by-side does give researchers a good picture of U.S. violent and property crime rates and how they have changed over time. In addition, the FBI is transitioning to a new data collection system – known as the National Incident-Based Reporting System – that eventually will provide national information on a much larger set of crimes , as well as details such as the time and place they occur and the types of weapons involved, if applicable.

Which kinds of crime are most and least common?

A bar chart showing that theft is most common property crime, and assault is most common violent crime.

Property crime in the U.S. is much more common than violent crime. In 2022, the FBI reported a total of 1,954.4 property crimes per 100,000 people, compared with 380.7 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

By far the most common form of property crime in 2022 was larceny/theft, followed by motor vehicle theft and burglary. Among violent crimes, aggravated assault was the most common offense, followed by robbery, rape, and murder/nonnegligent manslaughter.

BJS tracks a slightly different set of offenses from the FBI, but it finds the same overall patterns, with theft the most common form of property crime in 2022 and assault the most common form of violent crime.

How have crime rates in the U.S. changed over time?

Both the FBI and BJS data show dramatic declines in U.S. violent and property crime rates since the early 1990s, when crime spiked across much of the nation.

Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-74%), aggravated assault (-39%) and murder/nonnegligent manslaughter (-34%). It’s not possible to calculate the change in the rape rate during this period because the FBI revised its definition of the offense in 2013 .

Line charts showing that U.S. violent and property crime rates have plunged since 1990s, regardless of data source.

The FBI data also shows a 59% reduction in the U.S. property crime rate between 1993 and 2022, with big declines in the rates of burglary (-75%), larceny/theft (-54%) and motor vehicle theft (-53%).

Using the BJS statistics, the declines in the violent and property crime rates are even steeper than those captured in the FBI data. Per BJS, the U.S. violent and property crime rates each fell 71% between 1993 and 2022.

While crime rates have fallen sharply over the long term, the decline hasn’t always been steady. There have been notable increases in certain kinds of crime in some years, including recently.

In 2020, for example, the U.S. murder rate saw its largest single-year increase on record – and by 2022, it remained considerably higher than before the coronavirus pandemic. Preliminary data for 2023, however, suggests that the murder rate fell substantially last year .

How do Americans perceive crime in their country?

Americans tend to believe crime is up, even when official data shows it is down.

In 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993 , at least 60% of U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite the downward trend in crime rates during most of that period.

A line chart showing that Americans tend to believe crime is up nationally, less so locally.

While perceptions of rising crime at the national level are common, fewer Americans believe crime is up in their own communities. In every Gallup crime survey since the 1990s, Americans have been much less likely to say crime is up in their area than to say the same about crime nationally.

Public attitudes about crime differ widely by Americans’ party affiliation, race and ethnicity, and other factors . For example, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are much more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say reducing crime should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year (68% vs. 47%), according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

How does crime in the U.S. differ by demographic characteristics?

Some groups of Americans are more likely than others to be victims of crime. In the 2022 BJS survey , for example, younger people and those with lower incomes were far more likely to report being the victim of a violent crime than older and higher-income people.

There were no major differences in violent crime victimization rates between male and female respondents or between those who identified as White, Black or Hispanic. But the victimization rate among Asian Americans (a category that includes Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders) was substantially lower than among other racial and ethnic groups.

The same BJS survey asks victims about the demographic characteristics of the offenders in the incidents they experienced.

In 2022, those who are male, younger people and those who are Black accounted for considerably larger shares of perceived offenders in violent incidents than their respective shares of the U.S. population. Men, for instance, accounted for 79% of perceived offenders in violent incidents, compared with 49% of the nation’s 12-and-older population that year. Black Americans accounted for 25% of perceived offenders in violent incidents, about twice their share of the 12-and-older population (12%).

As with all surveys, however, there are several potential sources of error, including the possibility that crime victims’ perceptions about offenders are incorrect.

How does crime in the U.S. differ geographically?

There are big geographic differences in violent and property crime rates.

For example, in 2022, there were more than 700 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in New Mexico and Alaska. That compares with fewer than 200 per 100,000 people in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine, according to the FBI.

The FBI notes that various factors might influence an area’s crime rate, including its population density and economic conditions.

What percentage of crimes are reported to police? What percentage are solved?

Line charts showing that fewer than half of crimes in the U.S. are reported, and fewer than half of reported crimes are solved.

Most violent and property crimes in the U.S. are not reported to police, and most of the crimes that are reported are not solved.

In its annual survey, BJS asks crime victims whether they reported their crime to police. It found that in 2022, only 41.5% of violent crimes and 31.8% of household property crimes were reported to authorities. BJS notes that there are many reasons why crime might not be reported, including fear of reprisal or of “getting the offender in trouble,” a feeling that police “would not or could not do anything to help,” or a belief that the crime is “a personal issue or too trivial to report.”

Most of the crimes that are reported to police, meanwhile, are not solved , at least based on an FBI measure known as the clearance rate . That’s the share of cases each year that are closed, or “cleared,” through the arrest, charging and referral of a suspect for prosecution, or due to “exceptional” circumstances such as the death of a suspect or a victim’s refusal to cooperate with a prosecution. In 2022, police nationwide cleared 36.7% of violent crimes that were reported to them and 12.1% of the property crimes that came to their attention.

Which crimes are most likely to be reported to police? Which are most likely to be solved?

Bar charts showing that most vehicle thefts are reported to police, but relatively few result in arrest.

Around eight-in-ten motor vehicle thefts (80.9%) were reported to police in 2022, making them by far the most commonly reported property crime tracked by BJS. Household burglaries and trespassing offenses were reported to police at much lower rates (44.9% and 41.2%, respectively), while personal theft/larceny and other types of theft were only reported around a quarter of the time.

Among violent crimes – excluding homicide, which BJS doesn’t track – robbery was the most likely to be reported to law enforcement in 2022 (64.0%). It was followed by aggravated assault (49.9%), simple assault (36.8%) and rape/sexual assault (21.4%).

The list of crimes cleared by police in 2022 looks different from the list of crimes reported. Law enforcement officers were generally much more likely to solve violent crimes than property crimes, according to the FBI.

The most frequently solved violent crime tends to be homicide. Police cleared around half of murders and nonnegligent manslaughters (52.3%) in 2022. The clearance rates were lower for aggravated assault (41.4%), rape (26.1%) and robbery (23.2%).

When it comes to property crime, law enforcement agencies cleared 13.0% of burglaries, 12.4% of larcenies/thefts and 9.3% of motor vehicle thefts in 2022.

Are police solving more or fewer crimes than they used to?

Nationwide clearance rates for both violent and property crime are at their lowest levels since at least 1993, the FBI data shows.

Police cleared a little over a third (36.7%) of the violent crimes that came to their attention in 2022, down from nearly half (48.1%) as recently as 2013. During the same period, there were decreases for each of the four types of violent crime the FBI tracks:

Line charts showing that police clearance rates for violent crimes have declined in recent years.

Police cleared 52.3% of reported murders and nonnegligent homicides in 2022, down from 64.1% in 2013.
They cleared 41.4% of aggravated assaults, down from 57.7%.
They cleared 26.1% of rapes, down from 40.6%.
They cleared 23.2% of robberies, down from 29.4%.

The pattern is less pronounced for property crime. Overall, law enforcement agencies cleared 12.1% of reported property crimes in 2022, down from 19.7% in 2013. The clearance rate for burglary didn’t change much, but it fell for larceny/theft (to 12.4% in 2022 from 22.4% in 2013) and motor vehicle theft (to 9.3% from 14.2%).

Note: This is an update of a post originally published on Nov. 20, 2020.

Criminal Justice

John Gramlich is an associate director at Pew Research Center .

Fewer than 1% of federal criminal defendants were acquitted in 2022

Before release of video showing tyre nichols’ beating, public views of police conduct had improved modestly, violent crime is a key midterm voting issue, but what does the data say, u.s. public divided over whether people convicted of crimes spend too much or too little time in prison, what we know about the increase in u.s. murders in 2020, most popular.

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Research trends in cybercrime victimization during 2010–2020: a bibliometric analysis

Huong thi ngoc ho.

1 School of Journalism and Communication, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei China

Hai Thanh Luong

2 School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Associated Data

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Research on cybercrime victimization is relatively diversified; however, no bibliometric study has been found to introduce the panorama of this subject. The current study aims to address this research gap by performing a bibliometric analysis of 387 Social Science Citation Index articles relevant to cybercrime victimization from Web of Science database during the period of 2010–2020. The purpose of the article is to examine the research trend and distribution of publications by five main fields, including time, productive authors, prominent sources, active institutions, and leading countries/regions. Furthermore, this study aims to determine the global collaborations and current gaps in research of cybercrime victimization. Findings indicated the decidedly upward trend of publications in the given period. The USA and its authors and institutions were likely to connect widely and took a crucial position in research of cybercrime victimization. Cyberbullying was identified as the most concerned issue over the years and cyber interpersonal crimes had the large number of research comparing to cyber-dependent crimes. Future research is suggested to concern more about sample of the elder and collect data in different countries which are not only European countries or the USA. Cross-nation research in less popular continents in research map was recommended to be conducted more. This paper contributed an overview of scholarly status of cybercrime victimization through statistical evidence and visual findings; assisted researchers to optimize their own research direction; and supported authors and institutions to build strategies for research collaboration.

Introduction

To date, the debate of cybercrime definition has been controversial which is considered as one of the five areas of cyber criminology (Ngo and Jaishankar 2017 ; Drew 2020 ). 1 Several terms are used to illustrate ‘cybercrime’, such as ‘high-tech crime’ (Insa 2007 ), ‘computer crime’ (Choi 2008 ; Skinner and Fream 1997 ), ‘digital crime’ (Gogolin 2010 ), or ‘virtual crime’ (Brenner 2001 ). ‘Cybercrime’, however, has been the most popular in the public parlance (Wall 2004 ). A propensity considers crime directly against computer as cybercrime, while other tendency asserts that any crime committed via internet or related to a computer is cybercrime (Marsh and Melville 2008 ; Wall 2004 ). Hence, there is a distinction between ‘true cybercrime’ or ‘high-tech’ cybercrime and ‘low-tech’ cybercrime (Wagen and Pieters 2020 ). Council of Europe defines ‘any criminal offense committed against or with the help of a computer network’ as cybercrime (Abdullah and Jahan 2020 , p. 90). Despite different approaches, cybercrime generally includes not only new types of crimes which have just occurred after the invention of computer and internet (Holt and Bossler 2014 ; Drew 2020 ) but also traditional types of crimes which took the advantages of information communication technology (ICT) as vehicle for illegal behaviors (Luong 2021 ; Nguyen and Luong 2020 ; Luong et al. 2019 ). Two main cybercrime categories identified, respectively, are cyber-dependent crime (hacking, malware, denial of service attacks) and cyber-enable crime (phishing, identity theft, cyber romance scam, online shopping fraud). Nevertheless, there are several different classifications of cybercrime such as cybercrime against certain individuals, groups of individuals, computer networks, computer users, critical infrastructures, virtual entities (Wagen and Pieters 2020 ); cyber-trespass, cyber-deceptions, cyber-pornography, and cyber-violence (Wall 2001 ).

Due to the common prevalence of cybercrime, the increasing threats of cybercrime victimization are obviously serious. Cybercrime victimization has become a crucial research subfield in recent years (Wagen and Pieters 2020 ). It is difficult to differ “forms of online victimization” and “acts that actually constitute a crime”, then it is usual for researchers to focus less on perspective of criminal law and consider any negative experiences online as cybercrime (Näsi et al. 2015 , p. 2). It was likely to lead to practical gaps between theory and practice in terms of investigating the nexus of offender and victims on cyberspace. In the light of literature review, numerous specific aspects of cybercrime victimization were investigated by questionnaire surveys or interview survey such as the prevalence of cybercrime victimization (Näsi et al. 2015 ; Whitty and Buchanan 2012 ); causes and predictors of cybercrime victimization (Abdullah and Jahan 2020 ; Algarni et al. 2017 ; Ilievski 2016 ; Jahankhani 2013 ; Kirwan et al. 2018 ; Näsi et al. 2015 ; Reyns et al. 2019 ; Saad et al. 2018 ); and the relationship between social networking sites (SNS) and cybercrime victimization (Das and Sahoo 2011 ; Algarni et al. 2017 ; Benson et al. 2015 ; Seng et al. 2018 ). To some extent, therefore, the current study examines cybercrime victimization in the large scale, referring to any negative experiences on cyberspace or computer systems. Nevertheless, no bibliometric analysis was found to show the research trend and general landscape of this domain.

Bibliometric is a kind of statistical analysis which uses information in a database to provide the depth insight into the development of a specified area (Leung et al. 2017 ). The present study aims to address this research gap by providing a bibliometric review of the relevant SSCI articles in WoS database during the period of 2010–2020. The pattern of publications, the productivity of main elements (authors, journals, institutions, and countries/regions), statistic of citations, classification of key terms, research gaps, and other collaborations will be presented and discussed in section four and five after reviewing literatures and presenting our methods conducted. This article contributes an overview of research achievements pertaining to cybercrime victimization in the given period through statistical evidence and visual findings; assists researchers to perceive clearly about the key positions in research maps of this field, and obtain more suggestions to develop their own research direction.

Literature review

Cybercrime victimization.

Cybercrime victimization may exist in two levels including institutional and individual level (Näsi et al. 2015 ). For the former, victim is governments, institutions, or corporations, whereas for the latter, victim is a specific individual (Näsi et al. 2015 ). A wide range of previous studies concerned about individual level of victim and applied Lifestyle Exposure Theory (LET), Routine Activity Theory (RAT) and General Theory of Crime to explain cybercrime victimization (Choi 2008 ; Holt and Bossler 2009 ; Ngo and Paternoster 2011 ). Basing on these theories, situational and individual factors were supposed to play an important role in understanding cybercrime victimization (Choi 2008 ; Van Wilsem 2013 ). However, there was another argument that situational and individual factors did not predict cybercrime victimization (Ngo and Paternoster 2011 ; Wagen and Pieters 2020 ). Overall, most of those studies just focused only one distinctive kind of cybercrime such as computer viruses, malware infection, phishing, cyberbullying, online harassment, online defamation, identity theft, cyberstalking, online sexual solicitation, cyber romance scams or online consumer fraud. Referring to results of the prior research, some supported for the applicability of mentioned theories but other did not share the same viewpoint (Leukfeldt and Yar 2016 ). It was hard to evaluate the effect of LET or RAT for explanation of cybercrime victimization because the nature of examined cybercrime were different (Leukfeldt and Holt 2020 ; Leukfeldt and Yar 2016 ).

Previous research determined that cybercrime victimization was more common in younger group compared to older group because the young is the most active online user (Näsi et al. 2015 ; Oksanen and Keipi 2013 ) and males tended to become victims of cybercrime more than females in general (Näsi et al. 2015 ). However, findings might be different in research which concerned specific types of cybercrime. Women were more likely to be victims of the online romance scam (Whitty and Buchanan 2012 ) and sexual harassment (Näsi et al. 2015 ), while men recorded higher rate of victimization of cyber-violence and defamation. Other demographic factors were also examined such as living areas (Näsi et al. 2015 ), education (Oksanen and Keipi 2013 ; Saad et al. 2018 ) and economic status (Oksanen and Keipi 2013 ; Saad et al. 2018 ). Furthermore, several prior studies focus on the association of psychological factors and cybercrime victimization, including awareness and perception (Ariola et al. 2018 ; Saridakis et al. 2016 ), personality (Kirwan et al. 2018 ; Orchard et al. 2014 ; Parrish et al. 2009 ), self-control (Ilievski 2016 ; Ngo and Paternoster 2011 ; Reyns et al. 2019 ), fear of cybercrime (Lee et al. 2019 ), online behaviors (Al-Nemrat and Benzaïd 2015 ; Saridakis et al. 2016 ). Psychological factors were assumed to have effects on cybercrime victimization at distinctive levels.

Another perspective which was much concerned by researchers was the relationship between cybercrime victimization and SNS. SNS has been a fertile land for cybercriminals due to the plenty of personal information shared, lack of guard, the availability of communication channels (Seng et al. 2018 ), and the networked nature of social media (Vishwanath 2015 ). When users disclosed their personal information, they turned themselves into prey for predators in cyberspace. Seng et al. ( 2018 ) did research to understand impact factors on user’s decision to react and click on suspicious posts or links on Facebook. The findings indicated that participants’ interactions with shared contents on SNS were affected by their relationship with author of those contents; they often ignored the location of shared posts; several warning signals of suspicious posts were not concerned. Additionally, Vishwanath ( 2015 ) indicated factors that led users to fall victims on the SNS; Algarni et al. ( 2017 ) investigated users’ susceptibility to social engineering victimization on Facebook; and Kirwan et al. ( 2018 ) determined risk factors resulting in falling victims of SNS scam.

Bibliometric of cybercrime victimization

“Bibliometric” is a term which was coined by Pritchard in 1969 and a useful method which structures, quantifies bibliometric information to indicate the factors constituting the scientific research within a specific field (Serafin et al. 2019 ). Bibliometric method relies on some basic types of analysis, namely co-authorship, co-occurrence, citation, co-citation, and bibliographic coupling. This method was employed to various research domains such as criminology (Alalehto and Persson 2013 ), criminal law (Jamshed et al. 2020 ), marketing communication (Kim et al. 2019 ), social media (Chen et al. 2019 ; Gan and Wang 2014 ; Leung et al. 2017 ; Li et al. 2017 ; You et al. 2014 ; Zyoud et al. 2018 ), communication (Feeley 2008 ), advertising (Pasadeos 1985 ), education (Martí-Parreño et al. 2016 ).

Also, there are more and more scholars preferring to use bibliometric analysis on cyberspace-related subject such as: cyber behaviors (Serafin et al. 2019 ), cybersecurity (Cojocaru and Cojocaru 2019 ), cyber parental control (Altarturi et al. 2020 ). Serafin et al. ( 2019 ) accessed the Scopus database to perform a bibliometric analysis of cyber behavior. All documents were published by four journals: Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking (ISSN: 21522723), Cyberpsychology and Behavior (ISSN: 10949313) , Computers in Human Behavior (ISSN: 07475632) and Human–Computer Interaction (ISSN: 07370024), in duration of 2000–2018. Findings indicated the use of Facebook and other social media was the most common in research during this period, while psychological matters were less concerned (Serafin et al. 2019 ). Cojocaru and Cojocaru ( 2019 ) examined the research status of cybersecurity in the Republic of Moldavo, then made a comparison with the Eastern Europe countries’ status. This study employed bibliometric analysis of publications from three data sources: National Bibliometric Instrument (database from Republic of Moldavo), Scopus Elsevier and WoS. The Republic of Moldavo had the moderate number of scientific publications on cybersecurity; Russian Federation, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, and Ukraine were the leading countries in Eastern Europe area (Cojocaru and Cojocaru 2019 ). Altarturi et al. ( 2020 ) was interested in bibliometric analysis of cyber parental control, basing on publications between 2000 and 2019 in Scopus and WoS. This research identified some most used keywords including ‘cyberbullying’, ‘bullying’, ‘adolescents’ and ‘adolescence’, showing their crucial position in the domain of cyber parental control (Altarturi et al. 2020 ). ‘Cyber victimization’ and ‘victimization’ were also mentioned as the common keywords by Altarturi et al. ( 2020 ). Prior research much focus on how to protect children from cyberbullying. Besides, four online threats for children were determined: content, contact, conduct and commercial threats (Altarturi et al. 2020 ).

Generally, it has been recorded several published bibliometric analyses of cyber-related issues but remained a lack of bibliometric research targeting cybercrime victimization. Thus, the present study attempts to fill this gap, reviewing the achievements of existed publications as well as updating the research trend in this field.

In detail, our current study aims to address four research questions (RQs):

What is overall distribution of publication based on year, institutions and countries, sources, and authors in cybercrime victimization?

Which are the topmost cited publications in terms of cybercrime victimization?

Who are the top co-authorships among authors, institutions, and countries in research cybercrime victimization?

What are top keywords, co-occurrences and research gaps in the field of cybercrime victimization?

Data collection procedure

Currently, among specific approaches in cybercrime’s fileds, WoS is “one of the largest and comprehensive bibliographic data covering multidisciplinary areas” (Zyoud et al. 2018 , p. 2). This paper retrieved data from the SSCI by searching publications of cybercrime victimization on WoS database to examine the growth of publication; top keywords; popular topics; research gaps; and top influential authors, institutions, countries, and journals in the academic community.

This paper employed Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) for data collection procedure. For timeline, we preferred to search between 2010 and 2020 on the WoS system with two main reasons. First, when the official update of the 2009 PRISMA Statement had ready upgraded with the specific guidelines and stable techniques, we consider beginning since 2010 that is timely to test. Secondly, although there are several publications from the early of 2021 to collect by the WoS, its updated articles will be continued until the end of the year. Therefore, we only searched until the end of 2020 to ensure the full updates.

To identify publications on cybercrime victimization, the study accessed WoS and used two keywords for searching: ‘cybercrime victimization’ or ‘cyber victimization’ after testing and looking for some terminology-related topics. Accordingly, the paper applied a combination of many other searching terms besides two selected words such as “online victimization”, “victim of cybercrime”, “phishing victimization”, “online romance victimization”, “cyberstalking victim”, “interpersonal cybercrime victimization”, or “sexting victimization”, the results, however, were not really appropriate. A lot of papers did not contain search keywords in their titles, abstracts, keywords and were not relavant to study topic. After searching with many different terms and comparing the results, the current study selected the two search terms for the most appropriate articles. The query result consisted of 962 documents. Basing on the result from preliminary searching, retrieved publications were refined automatically on WoS by criteria of timespan, document types, language, research areas, and WoS Index as presented in Table Table1. 1 . Accordingly, the criteria for automatic filter process were basic information of an articles and classified clearly in WoS system so the results reached high accuracy. The refined results are 473 articles.

Criteria for automatic filter

After automatic filters, file of data was converted to Microsoft Excel 2016 for screening. The present study examined titles and abstracts of 473 articles to assess the eligibility of each publication according to the relevance with given topic. There are 387 articles are eligible,while 86 irrelevant publications were excluded.

Data analysis

Prior to data analysis, the raw data were cleaned in Microsoft Excel 2016. Different forms of the same author’s name were corrected for consistency, for example “Zhou, Zong-Kui” and “Zhou Zongkui”, “Van Cleemput, Katrien” and “Van Cleemput, K.”, “Williams, Matthew L.” and “Williams, Matthew”. Similarly, different keywords (single/plural or synonyms) used for the same concept were identified and standardized such as “victimization” and “victimisation”; “adolescent” and “adolescents”; “cyber bullying”, “cyber-bullying” and “cyberbullying”; “routine activity theory” and “routine activities theory”.

The data were processed by Microsoft Excel 2016 and VOS Viewer version 1.6.16; then it was analyzed according to three main aspects. First, descriptive statistic provided evidence for yearly distribution and growth trend of publications, frequency counts of citations, the influential authors, the predominant journals, the top institutions and countries/territories, most-cited publications. Second, co-authorship and co-occurrence analysis were constructed and visualized by VOS Viewer version 1.6.16 to explore the network collaborations. Finally, the current study also investigated research topics through content analysis of keywords. The authors’ keywords were classified into 15 themes, including: #1 cybercrime; #2 sample and demographic factors; #3 location; #4 theory; #5 methodology; #6 technology, platforms and related others; #7 psychology and mental health; #8 physical health; #9 family; #10 school; #11 society; #12 crimes and deviant behaviors; #13 victim; #14 prevention and intervention; and #15 others. Besides, the study also added other keywords from titles and abstracts basing on these themes, then indicated aspects examined in previous research.

In this section, all findings corresponding with four research questions identified at the ouset of this study would be illustrated (Fig. 1 ).

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PRISMA diagram depicts data collection from WoS database

Distribution of publication

Distribution by year, institutions and countries.

Basing on retrieved data, it was witnessed an increasing trend of articles relevant to cybercrime victimization in SSCI list during the time of 2010–2020 but it had slight fluctuations in each year as shown in Fig. 2 . The total number of articles over this time was 387 items, which were broken into two sub-periods: 2010–2014 and 2015–2020. It is evident that the latter period demonstrated the superiority of the rate of articles (79.33%) compared to the previous period (20.67%). The yearly quantity of publications in this research subject was fewer than forty before 2015. Research of cybercrime victimization reached a noticeable development in 2016 with over fifty publications, remained the large number of publications in the following years and peaked at 60 items in 2018.

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Annual distribution of publications

Distribution by institutions and countries

Table Table2 2 shows the top contributing institutions according to the quantity of publications related to cybercrime victimization. Of the top institutions, four universities were from the USA, two ones were from Spain, two institutions were from Australia and the rest ones were from Czech Republic, Belgium, Greece, and Austria. Specifically, Masaryk University (17 documents) became the most productive publishing institution, closely followed by Michigan State University (16 documents). The third and fourth places were University of Antwerp (13 documents) and Weber State University (10 documents). Accordingly, the institutions from The USA and Europe occupied the vast majority.

Top contributing institutions based on total publications

TP total publications, TC total citations for the publications reviewed, AC average citations per document

In Table Table2, 2 , University of Seville (total citations: 495, average citations: 70.71) ranked first and University of Cordoba (total citations: 484, average citations: 60.50) stayed at the second place in both total citations and average citations.

Referring to distribution of publications by countries, there were 45 countries in database contributing to the literature of cybercrime victimization. The USA recorded the highest quantity of papers, creating an overwhelming difference from other countries (159 documents) as illustrated in Fig. 3 . Of the top productive countries, eight European countries which achieved total of 173 publications were England (39 documents), Spain (34 documents), Germany (22 documents), Netherlands (18 documents), Italy (17 documents) and Czech Republic (17 documents), Belgium (14 documents), Greece (12 documents). Australia ranked the fourth point (32 documents), followed by Canada (30 documents). One Asian country which came out seventh place, at the same position with Netherlands was China (18 documents).

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Top productive countries based on the number of publications

Distribution by sources

Table Table3 3 enumerates the top leading journals in the number of publications relevant to cybercrime victimization. The total publications of the first ranking journal— Computers in Human Behavior were 56, over twice as higher as the second raking journal— Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking (24 articles). Most of these journals have had long publishing history, starting their publications before 2000. Only three journals launched after 2000, consisting of Journal of School Violence (2002), Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace (2007) and Frontiers in Psychology (2010). Besides, it is remarked that one third of the top journals focuses on youth related issues: Journal of Youth and Adolescence , Journal of Adolescence, School Psychology International and Journal of School Violence .

Top leading journals based on the quantity of publications

SPY Started Publication Year

In Table Table3, 3 , relating to total citations, Computers in Human Behavior remained the first position with 2055 citations. Journal of Youth and Adolescence had total 1285 citations, ranked second and followed by Aggressive Behavior with 661 citations. In terms of average citations per documents, an article of Journal of Youth and Adolescence was cited 67.63 times in average, much higher than average citations of one in Computers in Human Behavior (36.70 times). The other journals which achieved the high number of average citations per document were School Psychology International (59.00 times), Journal of Adolescence (44.83 times) and Aggressive Behavior (44.07 times).

Distribution by authors

Table Table4 4 displays ten productive authors based on article count; total citations of each author and their average citations per document are also included. Michelle F. Wright from Pennsylvania State University ranked first with twenty publications, twice as higher as the second positions, Thomas J. Holt (10 articles) from Michigan State University and Bradford W. Reyns (10 articles) from Weber State University. Rosario Ortega-Ruiz from University of Cordoba stayed at the third place in terms of total publications but the first place in aspect of total citations (483 citations) and the average citations (60.38 times).

Top productive authors based on article count

Of the most productive authors based on total publications, there were three authors from universities in the USA; one from the university in Canada (Brett Holfeld); the others were from institutions in Euro, including Spain (Rosario Ortega-Ruiz), Greece (Constantinos M. Kokkinos) and Belgium (Heidi Vandebosch), Netherlands (Rutger Leukfeldt) and Austria (Takuya Yanagida and Christiane Spiel).

Most-cited publications

The most-cited literature items are displayed in Table Table5. 5 . The article which recorded the highest number of citations was ‘Psychological, Physical, and Academic Correlates of Cyberbullying and Traditional Bullying’ (442 citations) by Robin M. Kowalski et al. published in Journal of Adolescent Health , 2013. Seven of ten most-cited articles were about cyberbullying; focused on youth population; made comparisons between cyberbullying and traditional bullying; analyzed the impact of several factors such as psychological, physical, academic factors or use of Internet; discussed on preventing strategies. The other publications studied victimization of cyberstalking and cyber dating abuse. All most-cited articles were from 2015 and earlier.

The most-cited publications in subject of cybercrime victimization during 2010–2020

Of the top productive authors, only Bradford W. Reyns had an article appeared in the group of most-cited publications. His article ‘Being Pursued Online: Applying Cyberlifestyle-Routine Activities Theory to Cyberstalking Victimization’ (2011) was cited 172 times.

Co-authorship analysis

“Scientific collaboration is a complex social phenomenon in research” (Glänzel and Schubert 2006 , p. 257) and becomes the increasing trend in individual, institutional and national levels. In bibliometric analysis, it is common to assess the productivity and international collaboration of research; identify key leading researchers, institutions, or countries (E Fonseca et al. 2016 ) as well as potential collaborators in a specific scientific area (Romero and Portillo-Salido 2019 ) by co-authorship analysis which constructs networks of authors and countries (Eck and Waltman 2020 ).

This section analyses international collaboration relevant to research of cybercrime victimization among authors, institutions, and countries during 2010–2020 through visualization of VOS Viewer software.

Collaboration between authors

Referring to the threshold of choose in this analysis, minimum number of documents of author is three and there were 80 authors for final results. Figure 4 illustrates the relationships between 80 scientists who study in subject of cybercrime victimization during 2010–2020. It shows several big groups of researchers (Wright’s group, Vandebosch’s group, or Holt’s group), while numerous authors had limited or no connections to others (Sheri Bauman, Michelle K. Demaray or Jennifer D. Shapka).

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Collaboration among authors via network visualization (threshold three articles for an author, displayed 80 authors)

Figure 5 displayed a significant network containing 23 authors who were active in collaboration in detail. The displayed items in Fig. 5 are divided into five clusters coded with distinctive colors, including red, green, blue, yellow, and purple. Each author item was represented by their label and a circle; the size of label and circle are depended on the weight of the item, measured by the total publications (Eck and Waltman 2020 ). The thickness of lines depends on the strength of collaboration (Eck and Waltman 2020 ).

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Collaboration among authors via network visualization (threshold three articles for an author, displayed 23 authors)

The most significant cluster was red one which is comprised of six researchers: Michelle F. Wright, Sebastian Wachs, Yan Li, Anke Gorzig, Manuel Gamez-Guadix and Esther Calvete. The remarked author for the red cluster was Michelle F. Wright whose value of total link strength is 24. She had the strongest links with Sebastian Wachs; closely link with Yan Li, Anke Gorzig, Manuel Gamez-Guadix and collaborated with authors of yellow cluster, including Shanmukh V. Kamble, Li Lei, Hana Machackova, Shruti Soudi as well as Takuya Yanagida of blue cluster. Michelle F. Wright who obtained the largest number of published articles based on criteria of this study made various connections with other scholars who were from many different institutions in the world. This is also an effective way to achieve more publications.

Takuya Yanagida was the biggest node for the blue cluster including Petra Gradinger, Daniel Graf, Christiane Spiel, Dagmar Strohmeier. Total link strength for Takuya Yanagida was 28; twelve connections. It is observed that Takuya Yanagida’ s research collaboration is definitely active. Besides, other research groups showed limited collaborations comparing with the red and blue ones.

Collaboration between institutions

The connections among 156 institutions which published at least two documents per one are shown in Fig. 6 . Interestingly, there is obvious connections among several distinctive clusters which were coded in color of light steel blue, orange, purple, steel blue, green, red, yellow, light red, dark turquoise, light blue, brown and light green. These clusters created a big chain of connected institutions and were in the center of the figure, while other smaller clusters or unlinked bubbles (gray color) were distributed in two sides. The biggest chain consisted of most of productive institutions such as Masaryk University, Michigan State University, University of Antwerp, Weber State University, University of Cordoba, Edith Cowan University, University of Cincinnati, University of Victoria, University of Vienna, and University of Seville.

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Collaboration among institutions via network visualization (threshold two articles for an institution, 156 institutions were displayed)

Light steel blue and orange clusters presented connections among organizations from Australia. Light green included institutions from Netherland, while turquoise and light blue consisted of institutions from the USA. Yellow cluster was remarked by the various collaborations among institutions from China and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Renmin University of China and South China Normal University, University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong), the USA (University of Virginia), Cyprus (Eastern Mediterranean University), Japan (Shizuoka University), India (Karnataka University) and Austria (University Applied Sciences Upper Austria). Central China Normal University is another Chinese institution which appeared in Fig. 5 , linking with Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, Suny Stony Brook and University of Memphis from the USA.

Masaryk University and Michigan State University demonstrated their productivity in both the quantity of publications and the collaboration network. They were active in research collaboration, reaching twelve and eleven links, respectively, with different institutions, but focused much on networking with institutions in the USA and Europe.

Collaboration between countries

The collaboration among 45 countries which published at least one SSCI documents of cybercrime victimization during the given period was examined in VOS Viewer but just 42 items were displayed via overlay visualization. Figure 7 depicts the international collaborations among significant countries. The USA is the biggest bubble due to its biggest number of documents and shows connections with 26 countries/regions in Euro, Asia, Australia, Middle East. Excepting European countries, England collaborate with the USA, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Colombia. Spain and Germany almost focus on research network within Euro. China has the strongest tie with the USA, link with Australia, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Cyprus and Turkey, Japan, Indian, Vietnam.

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Collaboration among countries via overlay visualization

Color bar in Fig. 7 is determined by the average publication year of each country and the color of circles based on it. It is unsurprised that the USA, Australia, England, or Spain shows much research experience in this field and maintain the large number of publications steadily. Interestingly, although the average publication year of South Korea or Cyprus was earlier than other countries (purple color), their quantities of documents were moderate. The new nodes (yellow circles) in the map included Vietnam, Norway, Pakistan, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland.

Keywords and co-occurrence

The present paper examined the related themes and contents in research of cybercrime victimization during 2010–2020 through collecting author keywords, adding several keywords from tiles and abstracts. Besides, this study also conducted co-occurrence analysis of author keywords to show the relationships among these keywords.

The keywords were collected and categorized into 15 themes in Table Table6, 6 , including cybercrime; sample and demographic factors; location; theory; methodology; technology, platform, and related others; psychology and mental health; physical health; family; school; society; crimes and other deviant behaviors; victim; prevention and intervention; and others.

Statistic of keywords in themes

These keywords were most of author keyword, adding a few selected keywords from the titles and abstracts by the author of this current study

In the theme of cybercrime, there were numerous types of cybercrimes such as cyberbullying, cyber aggression, cyberstalking, cyber harassment, sextortion and other cyber dating crimes, cyber fraud, identity theft, phishing, hacking, malware, or ransomware. Generally, the frequency of interpersonal cybercrimes or cyber-enable crimes was much higher than cyber-dependent crimes. Cyberbullying was the most common cybercrime in research.

Relating to sample and demographic factors, there were sample of children, adolescent, adults, and the elder who were divided into more detail levels in each research; however, adolescent was the most significant sample. Besides, demographic factor of gender received a remarked concern from scholars.

It is usual that most of the research were carried out in one country, in popular it was the USA, Spain, Germany, England, Australia, Canada or Netherland but sometimes the new ones were published such as Chile, Vietnam, Thailand or Singapore. It was witnessed that some studies showed data collected from a group of countries such as two countries (Canada and the United State), three countries (Israel, Litva, Luxembourg), four countries (the USA, the UK, Germany, and Finland), or six Europe countries (Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom and Greece).

A wide range of theories were applied in this research focusing on criminological and psychological theories such as Routine Activities Theory, Lifestyle—Routine Activities Theory, General Strain Theory, the Theory of Reasoned Action or Self-control Theory.

Table Table6 6 indicated a lot of different research methods covering various perspective of cybercrime victimization: systematic review, questionnaire survey, interview, experiment, mix method, longitudinal study, or cross-national research; many kinds of analysis such as meta-analysis, social network analysis, latent class analysis, confirmatory factor analysis; and a wide range of measurement scales which were appropriate for each variable.

Topic of cybercrime victimization had connections with some main aspects of technology (information and communication technologies, internet, social media or technology related activities), psychology (self-esteem, fear, attitude, personality, psychological problems, empathy, perceptions or emotion), physical health, family (parents), school (peers, school climate), society (norms, culture, social bonds), victim, other crimes (violence, substance use), prevention and intervention.

Co-occurrence analysis was performed with keywords suggested by authors and the minimum number of occurrences per word is seven. The result showed 36 frequent keywords which clustered into five clusters as illustrated in Fig. 8 .

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Co-occurrence between author keywords via network visualization (the minimum number of occurrences per word is seven, 36 keywords were displayed)

Figure 8 illustrates some main issues which were concerned in subject of cybercrime victimization, as well as the relationship among them. Fifteen most frequent keywords were presented by big bubbles, including: ‘cyberbullying’ (174 times), ‘cyber victimization’ (90 times), ‘adolescent’ (79 times), ‘bullying’ (66 times), ‘victimization’ (56 times), ‘cybercrime’ (40 times), ‘cyber aggression’ (37 times), ‘depression’ (23 times), ‘aggression’ (14 times), ‘routine activities theory’ (13 times), ‘cyberstalking’ (11 times), ‘gender’ (11 times), ‘longitudinal’ (10 times), ‘peer victimization’ (10 times) and ‘self-esteem’ (10 times).

‘Cyberbullying’ linked with many other keywords, demonstrating the various perspectives in research of this topic. The thick lines which linked ‘cyberbullying’ and ‘bullying’, ‘adolescent’, ‘cyber victimization’, ‘victimization’ showed the strong connections between them; there were close relationship between ‘cyber aggression’, ‘bystander”, ‘self-esteem’ or ‘moral disengagement’ and ‘cyberbullying’.

‘Cybercrime’ had strong links with ‘victimization’, ‘routine activities theory’. In Fig. 8 , the types of cybercrime which occurred at least seven times were: cyberbullying, cyber aggression, hacking, cyberstalking, and cyber dating abuse.

The increasing trend over the years reveals the increasing concern of scholarly community on this field, especially in the boom of information technology and other communication devices and the upward trend in research of cyberspace-related issues (Altarturi et al. 2020 ; Leung et al. 2017 ; Serafin et al. 2019 ). It predicts the growth of cybercrime victimization research in future.

Psychology was the more popular research areas in database, defeating criminology penology. As part of the ‘human factors of cybercrime’, human decision-making based on their psychological perspectives plays as a hot topic in cyber criminology (Leukfeldt and Holt 2020 ). Then, it is observed that journals in psychology field was more prevalent in top of productive sources. Besides, journal Computers in Human Behavior ranked first in total publications, but Journal of Youth and Adolescence ranked higher place in the average citations per document. Generally, top ten journals having highest number of publications on cybercrime victimization are highly qualified ones and at least 10 years in publishing industry.

The USA demonstrated its leading position in the studied domain in terms of total publications as well as the various collaborations with other countries. The publications of the USA occupied much higher than the second and third countries: England and Spain. It is not difficult to explain for this fact due to the impressive productivity of institutions and authors from the USA. A third of top twelve productive institutions were from the USA. Three leading positions of top ten productive authors based on document count were from institutions of the USA, number one was Michelle F. Wright; others were Thomas J. Holt and Bradford W. Reyns.

Furthermore, these authors also participated in significant research groups and become the important nodes in those clusters. The most noticeable authors in co-authors network were Michelle F. Wright. The US institutions also had strong links in research network. The USA was likely to be open in collaboration with numerous countries from different continents in the world. It was assessed to be a crucial partner for others in the international co-publication network (Glänzel and Schubert 2006 ).

As opposed to the USA, most of European countries prefer developing research network within Europe and had a limited collaboration with other areas. Australia, the USA, or Japan was in a small group of countries which had connections with European ones. Nevertheless, European countries still showed great contributions for research of cybercrime victimization and remained stable links in international collaboration. The prominent authors from Euro are Rosario Ortega-Ruiz, Constantinos M. Kokkinos or Rutger Leukfeldt.

It is obvious that the limited number of publications from Asia, Middle East, Africa, or other areas resulted in the uncomprehensive picture of studied subject. For example, in the Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Vietnam lacked the leading authors with their empirical studies to review and examine the nature of cybercrimes, though they are facing to practical challenges and potential threats in the cyberspace (Lusthaus 2020a , b ). The present study indicated that Vietnam, Ireland, or Norway was the new nodes and links in research network.

Several nations which had a small number of publications such as Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, or Chile started their journey of international publications. It is undeniable that globalization and the context of global village (McLuhan 1992 ) requires more understanding about the whole nations and areas. Conversely, each country or area also desires to engage in international publications. Therefore, new nodes and clusters are expected to increase and expand.

The findings indicated that cyberbullying was the most popular topic on research of cybercrime victimization over the given period. Over a half of most-cited publications was focus on cyberbullying. Additionally, ‘cyberbullying’ was the most frequent author keyword which co-occurred widely with distinctive keywords such as ‘victimization’, ‘adolescents’, ‘bullying’, ‘social media’, ‘internet’, ‘peer victimization’ or ‘anxiety’.

By reviewing keywords, several research gaps were indicated. Research samples were lack of population of the children and elders, while adolescent and youth were frequent samples of numerous studies. Although young people are most active in cyberspace, it is still necessary to understand other populations. Meanwhile, the elderly was assumed to use information and communication technologies to improve their quality of life (Tsai et al. 2015 ), their vulnerability to the risk of cybercrime victimization did not reduce. Those older women were most vulnerable to phishing attacks (Lin et al. 2019 ; Oliveira et al. 2017 ). Similarly, the population of children with distinctive attributes has become a suitable target for cybercriminals, particularly given the context of increasing online learning due to Covid-19 pandemic impacts. These practical gaps should be prioritized to focus on research for looking the suitable solutions in the future. Besides, a vast majority of research were conducted in the scope of one country; some studies collected cross-national data, but the number of these studies were moderate and focused much on developed countries. There are rooms for studies to cover several countries in Southeast Asia or South Africa.

Furthermore, although victims may be both individuals and organizations, most of research concentrated much more on individuals rather than organizations or companies. Wagen and Pieters ( 2020 ) indicated that victims include both human and non-human. They conducted research covering cases of ransomware victimization, Bonet victimization and high-tech virtual theft victimization and applying Actor-Network Theory to provide new aspect which did not aim to individual victims. The number of this kind of research, however, was very limited. Additionally, excepting cyberbullying and cyber aggression were occupied the outstanding quantity of research, other types of cybercrime, especially, e-whoring, or social media-related cybercrime should still be studied more in the future.

Another interesting topic is the impact of family on cybercrime victimization. By reviewing keyword, it is clear that the previous studies aimed to sample of adolescent, hence, there are many keywords linking with parents such as ‘parent-adolescent communication’, ‘parent-adolescent information sharing’, ‘parental mediation’, ‘parental monitoring of cyber behavior’, ‘parental style’. As mentioned above, it is necessary to research more on sample of the elder, then, it is also essential to find out how family members affect the elder’s cybercrime victimization.

It is a big challenge to deal with problems of cybercrime victimization because cybercrime forms become different daily (Näsi et al. 2015 ). Numerous researchers engage in understanding this phenomenon from various angles. The current bibliometric study assessed the scholarly status on cybercrime victimization during 2010–2020 by retrieving SSCI articles from WoS database. There is no study that applied bibliometric method to research on the examined subject. Hence, this paper firstly contributed statistical evidence and visualized findings to literature of cybercrime victimization.

Statistical description was applied to measure the productive authors, institutions, countries/regions, sources, and most-cited documents, mainly based on publication and citation count. The international collaborations among authors, institutions, and countries were assessed by co-authors, while the network of author keywords was created by co-occurrence analysis. The overall scholarly status of cybercrime victimization research was drawn clearly and objectively. The research trend, popular issues and current gaps were reviewed, providing numerous suggestions for policymakers, scholars, and practitioners about cyber-related victimization (Pickering and Byrne 2014 ). Accordingly, the paper indicated the most prevalent authors, most-cited papers but also made summary of contributions of previous research as well as identified research gaps. First, this article supports for PhD candidates or early-career researchers concerning about cybercrime victimization. Identifying the leading authors, remarked journals, or influencing articles, gaps related to a specific research topic is important and useful task for new researchers to start their academic journey. Although this information is relatively simple, it takes time and is not easy for newcomers to find out, especially for ones in poor or developing areas which have limited conditions and opportunities to access international academic sources. Thus, the findings in the current paper provided for them basic but necessary answers to conduct the first step in research. Secondly, by indicating research gaps in relevance to sample, narrow topics or scope of country, the paper suggests future study fulfilling them to complete the field of cybercrime victimization, especial calling for publications from countries which has had a modest position in global research map. Science requires the balance and diversity, not just focusing on a few developed countries or areas. Finally, the present study assists researchers and institutions to determined strategy and potential partners for their development of research collaborations. It not only improve productivity of publication but also create an open and dynamic environment for the development of academic field.

Despite mentioned contributions, this study still has unavoidable limitations. The present paper just focused on SSCI articles from WoS database during 2010–2020. It did not cover other sources of databases that are known such as Scopus, ScienceDirect, or Springer; other types of documents; the whole time; or articles in other languages excepting English. Hence it may not cover all data of examined subject in fact. Moreover, this bibliometric study just performed co-authorship and co-occurrence analysis. The rest of analysis such as citation, co-citation and bibliographic coupling have not been conducted. Research in the future is recommended to perform these kinds of assessment to fill this gap. To visualize the collaboration among authors, institutions, countries, or network of keywords, this study used VOS Viewer software and saved the screenshots as illustrations. Therefore, not all items were displayed in the screenshot figures.

Data availability

Declarations.

The authors declare that they have no competing interest.

1 In the ‘commemorating a decade in existence of the International Journal of Cyber Criminoogy’, Ngo and Jaishankar ( 2017 ) called for further research with focusing on five main areas in the Cyber Criminiology, including (1) defining and classifying cybercrime, (2) assessing the prevalence, nature, and trends of cybercrime, (3) advancing the field of cyber criminology, (4) documenting best practices in combating and preventing cybercrime, and (5) cybercrime and privacy issues.

Contributor Information

Huong Thi Ngoc Ho, Email: moc.liamg@252nhgnouH .

Hai Thanh Luong, Email: [email protected] .

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607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

When writing a research paper about criminology or law, you have to consider your topic carefully. Our team came up with 465 titles, along with some crime essay examples to assist you in your assignment.

🏆 Best Crime Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

👍 good crime topics for essays, ✅ simple & easy topics about crime, 💡 most interesting crime topics to write about, 📌 useful crime topics for essays, 📑 interesting crime topics, ❓ crime research questions.

Unemployment Leads to Crime Essay In the 1990s, the rate of unemployment was low and so was the rate of property crime. Crime rates increase steadily in society, and the rate of crime is connected to unemployment and low wages.
Youth Crime as a Major Issue in the World The relationships that exist in the families of the youths could facilitate the indulgence in criminal activities for example when the parents are involved in crime, when there is poor parental guidance and supervision, in […]
Applying Developmental Theories of Crime to Jeffrey Dahmer In the framework of this theory, Dahmer’s obsession with dissecting animals and necrophilic fantasies from a young age are not connected to the other events in his life but are simply manifestations of his latent, […]
Impact of Crime on Wider Society Therefore, just as some organs in the body can be removed in order to improve the health of a person, the people who cause problems in the society can also be removed so that the […]
The Effects of Mass Media Glorifying Crime and Criminal Lifestyle Crime has and will dominate popular media, ranging from the traditional police and detective shows/movies to documentaries, and more recently the ‘true crime’ genre or psychological thrillers attempting to tell the story from the perspective […]
Technology for Crime Prevention With the modern computer technology and advanced software, criminal justice system has been in a capacity to compile data and store it as well as share its analysis with other agencies both in and out […]
Three Pathways to Crime Identified by Loeber It encompasses an account of an individual’s past in the course of time of problem behavior in a continuing increment of seriousness of problem behavior.
Chris Watts and His Murder Crimes Watts pleaded guilty to the killings of his children and wife. Watts concluded the interview by saying he was sorry and repented for his actions after seeking refuge in God.
Frankston Serial Killer: Background, Crimes, and Motives At the time, the police noted that Denyer was with his girlfriend. The letter claimed that Denyer knows his whereabouts, and that he was planning to break out of prison to kill him.
Types of Crime Analysis The goals of tactical analysis are to recognize crime trends and to develop the best suited strategies to address them. This is a matter of great concern and the department would inquire more into the […]
Marxists and Functionalists’ Views on Crime and Deviance Also, the essay seeks to explain why people commit crimes in reference to a social and political transition, poverty, globalization of crime and state bureaucracy in order to evaluate the most effective conceptual approach to […]
Solving the Issue of Crime As the director of the county juvenile court, the research question related to the problem at hand should state as follows: What are cost effective methods of solving the proliferation of violent street gangs in […]
International Organized Crime: The 14K Triads in Hong Kong Being one of the largest transnational criminal organizations globally, the 14K does not depend on the strict structure, operates according to the principles of secrecy, and it is rather difficult to bring the organization to […]
The Impact of Social Media on the Rise in Crime For example, Jones cites revenge porn, or the practice of publishing a partner’s intimate contact on social media, as one of the results of social media use.
Infamous Crimes: Laci Peterson’s Murder Even during the war in Iraq, the search for her and the ultimate arrest of Scott Peterson led the news. Her cell phone and purse were still in the house, and a neighbor said she […]
Displacement: Crime Prevention It refers to circumstances where crime intervention efforts make the cost of committing an offense greater than the benefits accruing from the crime.
White Collar Crime Parties affected by the crime and how it affects them White collar criminals place more emphasis on their personal needs than their organization’s to the point of downplaying the real costs of their actions.
Investigating Crimes against Property According to the Uniform Crime Report of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, there are about 9,767,915 cases of property crimes reported in America annually.
Suspect, Crime Scene, and the Victim: Evidence Triangle In every crime investigation, it is mandatory that the evidence gathered be adequate to draw the link between the suspect, crime scene and the victim.
White Collar Crimes From a Marxist Criminological Perspective Marxist criminologists interpret it in the following way: “…the crimes of the upper class exert a greater economic toll on society than the crimes of the ‘ordinary people’”.
Crimes Against Person Cases of murder falls in the rule of felony murder which is well stipulated by the constitution of any given country and the penalty is administered depending on whether the case was committed in an […]
Crimes Against Property, Persons, and Public Order The least in ranking is crimes against public order for they have no serious repercussions to lives and livelihood of the involved people.
Youth Crime According to Conflict Theory The second one is that the youth might engage in criminal activities and violence due to misappropriation of resources, lack of jobs, and inadequate strategies to meet their social needs.
Why Does Crime Exist in Society? Philosophically this is the equivalent of saying that without evil one would not recognize good, and while this is evident in the criminal world and the world of law, it only provides some explanation as […]
Consequences of Committing Crime These factors affect the behavior of an individual and might lead them to criminal activities depending on the effect of the overall combination of the elements mentioned above.
An Epidemic of Knife Crime in the UK In the case of the former, it is evident that social class plays a key role in the emergence of knife crimes across the UK.
Parental Responsibility for Crimes of Children Parents should be held responsible for the crime of their children because in most cases criminal involvement of children is the result of lack of parental control.
Crime TV: How Is Criminality Represented on Television? The public’s views and comprehension of crime are heavily influenced by television, the internet, and print media, which can spread the message about the exaggerated danger to society.
Social Cultural Causes of Crime There is need to highlight the social cultural factors of crime and describe the necessary positive measures to prevent the occurrences of crime.
Social Theories of Crime in Explaining Gang Violence This theory incorporates the strain theory as well as the social disorganization it points out that as a result of strain and societal segregation there is a particular culture that establishes for the low income […]
Zodiac Movie: Crime, Media Reporting and Ethics The development of the events and the rise of the killer’s popularity began as soon as the reporters of the San Francisco Chronicle received and discovered the letter with threats to American society.
Drug, Crime and Violence This essay offers a brief discussion of how the abuse of illegal drugs is related to both crime and violence. It is prudent to mention that drug and violence have been noted to be closely […]
Capital Punishment and Deterrence of Crime For the case of murder or crimes that necessitate capital punishment, the incentive to commit murder is directly related to the uncertainties that punishments for the crime will generate.
Youth Crime in Functionalism and Conflict Theories The analysis will focus on determining factors contributing to youth engagement in criminal acts, examining the types of delinquencies they are likely to commit, and establishing the socio-psychological facets associated with the teenagers in the […]
The Major Theories of Crime Causation The survival of any civilization hinges on the establishment of laws and codes of conduct and the subsequent obeying of the same by the members of the society.
Crime: What Modifies the Human Acts? A young man entering medical school has, as proximate and intermediate ends, the passing of his exams, and the advance from the first to the second class; more remote ends are the exams and classes […]
“The Functions of Crime” by Emile Durkheim In the article “The Functions of Crime”, Emile Durkheim argues clearly that crime should be treated and analyzed as a normal aspect of a given society.
Does Crime Make Economic Sense? Crime has great effects on the prices of the commodities being sold in the country; hence this will affect both the suppliers and the consumers which influences the income directly.
The Influence of Peer Groups on Youth Crime The impact of youth crime on the community is profound, and so is the influence of criminal behavior on the lives of adolescents.
Crimes and Criminal Tendencies: Cause and Effect The school makes demands of control, discipline, and accountability which are difficult for the low self-control student to meet, and, for this reason, early school leaving is a result of low self-control, not a cause […]
Relationship Between Crime Rates and Poverty This shows that the strength of the relationship between the crime index and people living below the line of poverty is.427.
Statistics of Crime Costs to the UK Healthcare The statistic is describing the claims by Labour that the NHS uses 500 million a year to treat wounds caused by knife crimes.
The Cause of the Crime Since it takes a lot of time and resources to get involved in crime, it is evident that involvement in crime is entirely due to decision of the person to gain the rewards that are […]
The Genre of Crime and Gangster Movies The gangster movies always tend to idolize the gangster figures with a relation to the sinister activities that always define crime and the lifestyles of the gangsters.
Aileen Wuornos’ Background and Crimes Aileen Wuornos began her series of murders in 1989. For a short period, she killed seven people, and all of them were men.
Developmental Crime Prevention Developmental crime prevention is a subsystem of special criminological crime prevention, the target of which is the pre-criminal forms of deviant and delinquent behavior of minors.
Cyber Bullying and Positivist Theory of Crime Learning theory approaches to the explanation of criminal behavior have been associated with one of the major sociological theories of crime, the differential association theory.
The Impact of the Internet on Traditional Crime How the Internet helps the criminals The advancement in the modern computer technologies and the Internet has put radical changes in the concept of information and the mode of exchanging the data.
The Phases of a Crime and Their Importance in Psychological Profiling Attempt and accomplishment, the third and fourth phases of a crime respectively, differ in the sense that an attempt is a failed crime.
Bernie Madoff Ponzi’s Crime Scheme The image of the American Dream and the Strain Theory works in reverse as well: if a person fails to possess lots of quantifiable treasure, then the social order will consider him as a disappointment.
Social Disorganization and Crime Social disorganization can be conceptualized as the incapability of the community structure to attain the common values of its members and maintain effective social controls, or as the failure and degeneration of social institutions and […]
Crime Scene Investigation in Criminal Justice In the process of controlling the crowd and maintaining order with the aid of the police officers, I took some photographs of the surrounding and then approached the main spot of event. I managed to […]
Factors Influencing the Commission of Crime Some of the factors that contribute to the decision-making of the offender are based on time constraints, the ability of the information available, agreeing with the offender’s plans as well as the availability of favorable […]
Actus Reus and Mens Rea Aspects of Crime These facts imply that there are different contexts in the analysis of the case, and trying to find a common ground for the application of men’s rea would be a futile exercise.
Anti Money Laundering and Financial Crime There are a number of requirements by the government on the AML procedures to be developed and adopted by the firms in the financial service in industry in an attempt to fight the illegal practice.
CCTV Cameras: Surveillance and the Reduction of Crime The present paper will seek to argue that greater surveillance is not a desirable answer to the problem of crime and that other solutions are required to reduce crime rates in the long term.
Criminology: Application of Crime Theories For an action to amount to crime, there has to be a breach of law followed by the administration of punishment by the state to the accused.
The Evolution of Behavioral and Cognitive Development Theories of Crime Behavioral theory is based upon the principles of behavioral psychology and is the basis for behavior modification and change. This theory is founded on the belief that the way in which people organize their thoughts […]
Corporate Crime – BP Oil Spill The spill contributed to the disruption of the ecosystem and the wildlife, these included both aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. This contributed to the loss of life, environmental pollution and health issues among others.
Functionalist Approach to Deviance and Crime This paper looks at the functionalist approach to the explanation of the causes of deviance and crime. Some level of deviance is however healthy as it leads to better adaptation of the society.
Water Pollution as a Crime Against the Environment In particular, water pollution is a widespread crime against the environment, even though it is a severe felony that can result in harm to many people and vast territories.
The Drug Crime Story of the Stickup Kids In the first part, Contreras situates the participants in the historical context of New York and the South Bronx, the epicenter of the rise of the crack-cocaine trade.
Cultural Criminology: Inside the Crime To facilitate an understanding of cultural criminology, it is essential to consider such ideas as crime as culture, culture as crime, the media constructions of crime control and corruption, and political dimensions of culture, crime, […]
Campus Crimes Types and Causes According to the college administrators’ records, crimes in campuses were minimal in the 19th century and in the early 20th century.
Approaches to Crime Prevention The objective of the criminal justice system is to ensure proper enforcement of the standards of conduct in protecting the rights of the individuals and the community in a free society.
Crime and Deviance Crime is an act that is against the norm of a society and the registered law of the entire country. A person is usually taken to the court of law where the offence is listened […]
Andrew Luster’s Crime and Media Attention Henry Luster, a psychiatrist, and Elizabeth Luster, the parents of Andrew Luster. The film concluded with a snapshot of Luster and an appeal for witnesses to his whereabouts to notify authorities.
The Theft of a Laptop in Various Crime Scenarios This paper seeks to evaluate different situations that involve the theft of a laptop with the aim of establishing the types of crime they represent and the differences between them.
Medea’s Justification for Her Crime Medea felt Jason had betrayed her love for him and due to her desperate situation she was depressed and her normal thinking was affected that she started thinking of how she would revenge the man […]
Cyber-Bullying Is a Crime: Discussion It is easy to see the effects of cyber-bullying but it is hard to find out who is the bully making it hard for authorities to pin the blame on the perpetrator of a crime […]
Psychological Theories Explaining Violent Crime Genetic influences refer to the blueprints for behavior that are contained in a person’s chromosomes. It is theoretically possible for a person to carry genes that influence behavior; the behavior they express would be the […]
The First Officer at Crime Scene One should perfectly realize the fact that the crime scene investigation is an extremely important and, at the same time, complex process that determines the success of the whole case and contributes to the improved […]
Freakonomics: What Attributed to the Sharp Drop In Crime? This article focuses on these reasons that were thought to have led to reduction of the rising crime rates experienced in United States in the 1990s and refutes the claims flaunted by the theorists.
Cybercrime and Cyber-Related Crimes The introduction of computer technology has created room for cyber crimes and cyber related crimes that have caused many people pain and losses to the society.
White Collar Crimes: Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme A Ponzi scheme is a white collar crime in which the perpetrator encourages people to invest in a business and promises high dividends within a short period of time.
Document Falsification Crime and Response to It The crime is often described as a white color crime as the modification of documents is primarily used for illegal monetary benefits and deception of others. The current response to falsified documents is sufficient and […]
How Biochemical Conditions and Brain Activity are Linked to Crime Studies have shown that areas with high rates of homicide and other forms of violence had a lot of lead in the air.
Crime Prevention Strategies and Quality of Life The aim of crime prevention strategies is to create conditions that cut the chances and motivation for crime, transforming the capability of the criminal justice system to handle crimes.
TV Violence, Increasing Crime Levels and Child Aggression Most of the proponents of that theory state that by witnessing a certain behavior in fiction people become more prone to repeating it in real life. One of the powers these advancements have given us […]
Anthropological Theory of Crime Criminal law is a division of law that elucidates crimes, describes their nature and defines available punishment for a criminal offense.
Crime Scene Investigation and Evidence Classification They include the explanation of physical evidence to identify purposes, the discussion of the differences between class and individual characteristics of physical evidence, and the evaluation of the class characteristics’ importance.
Crimes in Biological, Psychological, Sociological Theories With the course of time, people also started paying attention not to the very commitment of crimes but to the triggers that made a person act in a particular way.
The Most Effective Crime Prevention Strategies in the Past Two Decades The conditions are; the desire of the criminal to carry out an offence, the opportunity to carry out the crime and finally the possession of skills and tools necessary for commitment of the crime.
Organized Crime – John Gotti’s Analyze He argues that the American social structure and its structure of wealth distribution and that dream of achieving the ‘American dream’ all require crime to maintain social stability in the face of structural inequality.
“Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal” by Adler This includes the extent, nature, control and cause of crime in the society. It focuses on supernaturalism in the definition and address of crime in society.
The Relationship Between Wealth Distribution and Crime Rates According to Anser et al, the levels of crime and violence in the community depend on the difference between the risks or costs and potential gains.
The Community Policing Impact on Juvenile Crime Moreover, the involvement of the police when it comes to community activities and narrowing the gap between law enforcement and youth is also related to criminal activity in the region.
Sentencing Philosophies in Crime That makes it difficult to know how severe the crime is in relation to the sentence. The objectives of sentencing are to protect society.
Natural and Legal Crime Conceptual Distinction Natural crime is therefore described as a crime against the fundamental laws of nature as well as personal crimes which could or may sometimes not be against the laws of the land.
The British Crime Survey’s Strengths and Weaknesses The British Crime Survey’s main purpose is to check the crime level and the number of affected people in England. The investigation performed by the British Crime Survey is in the form of an interview, […]
Economy and Crime: The Relationship Economic crime is a serious problem for the business world, and it has become more and more aggravating with the development of technologies and with the growing availability of internet access.
Organized Crime Investigation in Different Countries Such tools and strategies cover investigations into the organized crimes and operations, strategies to thwart planned crimes operations and preventions of the effecting, netting of criminals and affiliates of the groups as well as facilitating […]
Prostitution as a Victimless Crime The association in the law and morality in the subject of prostitution is been a wide concern as prostitution can be considered as one of the oldest phenomena of humankind in a way of practicing […]
Processing a Crime Scene That is why, for the effective investigation, it is important to take all the necessary crime scene processing measures correctly, and the role of the first responding officer is particularly significant.
Crime Prevention and Risk Management This brochure will outline some basic notions of risk management and assessment and crime and victimization prevention; additionally, it will provide the reader with some basic strategies of daily risk management and include sources for […]
Shoe Impression at a Crime Scene It is the transfer of material from the shoe to the surface. The print results from the static charges between the sole of the shoe and the surface.
Social Implications of Computer Technology: Cybercrimes In reading the discussion above it becomes clear that the term cybercrime actually refers to computer-related crime; however, some consider computer crime to be a subdivision of cybercrime that warrants its own definition and understanding.
Robert Merton’s Strain Theory Explaining Economic Crime Trends This theory states that “crime occurs when there are not enough legitimate opportunities for people to achieve the success goals imposed by the society”.
Electronic Crime: Online Predators on Facebook Facebook, as one of the many social network sites, will be addressed in this paper and after looking at the dangers that such sites pose to the contemporary world, a conclusion will be arrived at […]
Victimless Crimes: Definition and Types Again, the taxpayers are the victims in such a case as they have to contribute to the rehabilitation of the drug users. As such, some of the so-called victimless crimes have identifiable victims.
Substance Abuse and Crime Logically, it is still not possible to prove the theories that correspond to criminal behaviour studies and consequently the correctness and relevancy of the theories vary in application depending on the strain of the situation, […]
“Making Crime Pay” by Katherine Beckett The writer suggests that even if the call for tougher penalties is seen as the answer to the problem, those calling for these penalties are not necessarily affected by the rising crime. There is need […]
Current Trends in Globalization of Crime Hence, the major cause of the drugs smuggling routes over the U.S.-Mexico border is still the discrepancies between the U.S.and Mexican drug enforcing legislation as well as the lack of cross-border cooperation.
Transnational Organized Crime in Port Security Operations Transnational organized crime manifests in seaports across three primary trajectories of trafficking through the port, infiltration of the port structure and economy, and governance of the port management.
“Legend” Crime Drama Directed by Brian Helgeland Helgeland revives the images of the Kray brothers, Reggie and Ronny that at some point become one of the leading players in the brutal games of the gangster side.
Causes of Committing Crimes However, this is to ensure that the number of crimes committed decrease, as the number of crime manager’s increases. Boredom in many young people is by the lack of something constructive to do.
The Crimes of Charles Manson In reality, based on the ghastly consequences of his actions and “teachings”, he is generally considered a pathological liar, a shrewd manipulator and a man guilty of not only coercing others to murder in his […]
Crime Analysis Data Sources The National Incident-Based Reporting System is a technological method used by the government, still in the United States of America to monitor and assist in the gathering of the necessary information regarding the crime.
The Three Strikes Law in Countering Crime The preceding level of severe felonies in the United States was critical, and the community considered the three strikes laws enrollment a necessity.
The Self Control Theory of Crime In this theory, the level of self control exercised by individuals in the presence of a strong or a weak incentive to commit a crime explains why some people commit crimes while others do not.
Does Drug Interdiction Increase or Decrease Drug-Related Crime? Thesis: Drug interdiction helps to reduce drug-related crime by reducing the flow of drugs into the country and by disrupting the flow of funds into the hands of the terrorists.
Crime and Punishment in Texas As for the number of prisoners, Texas has the highest number of them, and this is due to the fact that it is one of the states with the highest population in the United States.
Surveillance as the Answer to the Crime Issue One of the main features of the “surveillance society” is the use of closed-circuit television that allows for detecting and preventing crimes.
Computer Forensics: Identity Theft The forensics process that is maintained in the framework of computer-related technologies provides professionals with the opportunity to gather, analyze, and report on the information.
Crime Causes in Sociological Theories The former can be characterized as the outcome of the constructive or adverse influence of rewards/ penalties on the individual’s behavior.
Nature of Crime in the UAE The irony of this phenomenon is that most embassies in the UAE advise their citizens to take normal security precautions while in the country, yet they are among the biggest offenders.
Organ Trade: Legal Position and Crime The rise in demand for organs for transplant and the scarcity of organs to transplant have led to the rise of the organ trade with healthy persons putting up their organs for sale due to […]
Analyzing Graffiti as a Crime Other types of graffiti such as the commercial graffiti are categorized as crimes because making use of graffiti as a form of advertisement is usually against the advertisement along with media laws established in most […]
Social Issues; Crime and Poverty in Camden This has threatened the social security and peaceful coexistence of the people in the community. The larger the differences between the poor and the rich, the high are the chances of crime.
Crime Control: Curbing Market Failures Since this study notes that crime is a direct result of the intrigues in the market, and the market is too diverse to control, the only solution to the reduction in crime is the control […]
Concepts and Reasons of Violent Crimes in Modern Society The environment has specifically been pointed out to be influential in the case of corporate affairs whereby the risk of exposure of huge corruption claims may lead to elimination of the whistle blowers.
Crimes and Criminal Law Therefore, facts on crimes and decisions of the judge is referenced from the constitution, which prescribes the nature and extend of the punishment or fine awarded to an individual found guilty of an offense. One […]
Cyber Crimes: Court – United States vs. Ancheta Reasoning: The jury argued that the defendant conspired to violate the Computer Fraud Abuse Act as well as the CAN-SPAM Act, caused havoc to computer networks of the national defense department of the federal government, […]
Age-Crime Relationships and Motivations Of the three major factors outlined by basis theory, opportunities availability is the most determinant factor of crime commission among the youths as lack of jobs makes them engage in criminal activities in order to […]
“Crimes Against Humanity” by Ward Churchill Throughout the essay, he puts a lot of words and phrases in quotation marks to underline the unique and figurative meaning of these phrases.
Society’s Response to Crime Impacts on Justice True, the decisions of the court are generally based on nature of the crime, evidence and the manner of the plaintiff and defendant.
Street Crime in Australia As such, it follows suit that crime, and to be specific street crime, must be analyzed in the context of how it is related to the society as a whole but not in isolation5.
Crime Reporting in Irish Media The impact of the increase in crime reporting is the rise in worrisome behaviors among the citizens. On the other hand, there is an increase in crime rates, especially cyber crimes and sexual offenses.
American Serial Killer Joseph Paul Franklin’s Crimes The reason for changing his name as because he wanted to join the Rhodesian Army and due to his criminal background, he was forced to change the name. The couple were killed and Franklin confessed […]
Design Theory in “Ornament and Crime” Essay by Loos One of the striking examples of this opinion is the desire to combine the interior and exterior decoration of the building, making them a logical continuation of each other.
Sociological Perspectives on Crimes of Power: Enron Selfish ambitions of people are dangerous to the organization because this will lead to the downfall of the company in the long run as it happened with Enron.
Hacking as a Crime and Related Theories The move to embrace the novel technology has led to the emergence of a new form of crime and behavior referred to as “hacking”. Today, the term is used to refer to individuals engaged in […]
Petty Crime Offenses: A Case of Mary Lee It is easy for the prosecution, in this case, to request the judge to sentence the defendant due to her criminal behavior.
White Collar Crime: Insidious Injuries This is one of the main issues that should be considered since it is important for understanding the dangers of these injuries and reducing their risks. These are some of the main challenges that can […]
Generalisation of Persons Who Commit Crime The generalisation about the people who commit crime indicates flaws in the processes of thinking and possible outcomes. It appears that the society chooses to pay attention to crime committed by specific groups, such as […]
Crime and Delinquency, Eric Smith’s Case Thus the psychological problems that smith developed were due to the experiences he had gone through the courtesy of his bright red hair, freckles, and speech problems.
Relationship Between Unemployment and Crimes Agnew, argue that crime is caused by strain that a person face throughout life, and this can be contributed to the degree of educational inequality in society.
Crime in Canada: Causes, Regulation and Legislation There are those activities that are universally accepted to constitute a crime, however, what might be considered the crime in one society is not necessarily applied in a different society; for instance, looking at a […]
Effective Physical Security and Crime Prevention Therefore, for effective implementation of the defense-in-depth strategy for the protection of assets, it is important to address the following issues: knowing the enemy, understanding the external enemies, defending against an internal enemy, and knowing […]
Situational Crime Prevention SCP focuses on deterring crime by increasing the risk and effort in committing a crime. However, they add that the effect of such measures varies based on the location and type of crime targeted.
Problem‐Oriented Policing in Violent Crime Places In this study funded by the National Institute of Justice, the researchers investigate the impact of problem-oriented policing in Jersey City.
Crime Prevention at the Workplace: Employee Theft Considering that any form of employee theft induces substantial harm to the financial performance of companies, the integration of adequate crime prevention procedures in the corporate security system is of great importance.
Raskolnikov’s Crime in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” Using the ingenuity of Fyodor Dostoevsky and his eternal masterpiece Crime and Punishment, the paper is going to prove the idea that the actual crime committed by Rodion Raskolnikov was the arrogance he had towards […]
Fort Lauderdale’s Law Enforcement and Crime Rates 1 percent of French background, 1. 0 percent of Dutch background, 1.
Hans Von Hentig’s Approach to Crime In order to discuss the male’s crimes in detail, it is important to focus on the relationship between the suspect and victims from the perspective of Hans von Hentig’s theory.
Victims of Crime Act: History and Development The necessary part of the paper is the information about changes to the original policy. The discussion of this act and how necessary it is for the criminal justice system in The United States is […]
Social Criticism Work in the Scandinavian Crime Fiction Novels The issue of revenge being a better option in the Swedish society is evident when, at the end of the novel, Blomkvists makes efforts to bring down the executive who worn the lawsuit mentioned at […]
A Marxist Approach to Global Crime The capitalistic economic system fosters most of the global crimes by encouraging the exploitation of one group by another and promoting the self-interest of the individuals who engage in these forms of crime.
Crime Theories: Psychodynamics and Rational Choice The rational choice theory explained the causes of crime to be the ability of an individual to commit the crime, their need for valuable possessions and money, their physical health and ability to commit the […]
Forensic Psychology Role in the Investigation of Crime The use of the methods majorly depends upon the complexity of the crime, nature of evidence available and level of forensic technology available.
To What Extent Are New Technologies and Organized Crime Linked? There are three major issues in the assessment of the crime and technology which will form the basis of our argument in this research paper; the level of information technology that is used by the […]
Prohibition and the Rise of Organized Crime In the 1920s, the United States was facing worrying rates of crime that called for the intervention of the Congress to avert the situation.
DNA Analysis: A Crime-Fighting Tool or Invasion of Privacy? This paper set out to demonstrate that DNA analysis offers a versatile tool for fighting crime and therefore ensuring the success of our civilization.
An Inchoate Crime Under the conspiracy element in the Wisconsin Statutes, conspiracy is defined as the agreement or combination of forces by two individuals with the intent of committing a crime.
The Connection Between Drugs and Crime The central viewpoint is that it is not an absolute truth that drug use is not an obvious cause of crime.
Factors Affecting Losses From Property Crime The hypothesis of the present research is that country-wide losses from property crime are affected by gross domestic product per capita and the mean education and urbanization levels of the region.
Extortion in Organized Crime Groups Blackmailing is a standard tool in organized crime, as it relies on one’s ability to threaten with severe consequences for non-compliance.
The Crimes of Charles Manson, Serial Killer Even though his people did it himself, he was not involved in this, and the organization of a particular group of people is not in itself an immoral act but is prohibited in some places.
Guidelines for Responsible Reporting on Hate Crimes The media is responsible for maintaining a balance between their interests and the needs and rights of crime victims, the public, and defendants.
The Crime of Attempt: Adequate Punishment In this situation, it is necessary to cooperate with a lawyer to prove the absence of intent to harm or to verify the impossibility of committing a crime.
Hate Crimes from a Biblical Perspective
Categories of Crime in Current Justice System
Impact of Cyber Crime on Internet Banking
Crime Scene Investigation Techniques
The Most Effective Crime Reduction Approaches
Mental Health of Crime Offenders
A Theoretical Perspective on Crimes
Cryptocurrency Crimes in Financial Markets
Discussion on the Role of Crime
Crime Prevention With Rational Choice Theory
Research in Criminal Justice: Crime Solvability Factors
Terrorism and Transnational Organized Crime as Threats to Homeland Security
Sexual Crimes and Behavioral Problems Treatment
State Crimes: Strategies to Resisting Tortures in Prisons
Police Administration Issue: Crime Victim Rights
Hate Crimes and Biblical Worldview
Sociology Can Be Applied to Offenders and Crimes
Crime Problems and Criminal Justice
Suitability of Electronic Monitoring: Crime Control Perspective
Low Crime Clearance Rates in the United States
Crime Control and Prevention Methods
Crimes and Victimization: Gender Issues
Transnational Organized Crime in the United States
Police Corruption: A Crime With Severe Consequences
Analysis of Crime and Punishment Bill
Investigating and Reporting White Collar Crimes: The Case of Bernie Madoff
Curtis Sliwa’s “The Guardian Angels”: Fighting Crime in New York City
“Time and Crime: Which Cold-Case Investigations Should Be Reheated?”: Key Ideas
“Hot Spots of Crime…” Article by Weisburd & White
Crime of Ricin Using or an Easy Way Out
The Crime and Justice Impact on New Media
Legal Issues Related to Cyber Crime Investigations
Crime Rates in the United States
Processing a Physical and Electronic Crime Scene
Criminalistics: Forensic Science, Crime, and Terrorism
Crime Trends in the Jurisdiction
Websites Against Cyber Crimes: Investigating High-Tech Crime
Crimes, Future Challenges and Issues
Juvenile Crime and Human Institutions’ Solutions
Crime of Extortion and Potential Defense
The United States Uniform Crime Report’s Aims
Department of Justice Project on Organized Crime
Illegal Immigration Policies and Violent Crime
Major Crimes Committed by Women
Finding a Crime Series: Murders Committed by John Wayne Gacy
Review of High Tech Crime Investigation
Analysis of Crime and Violence Trauma
Crime Maps of Detroit and Michigan
Criminologists’ Views on Crime and Justice Issues
Napoleon Beazley: Analysis of Crime
Case Study on Tax Crimes: Distributional Implications of Joint Tax
Aspects of Sexual Crime Myth
Analysis of the Social Context of Crime
Criminal Justice & Security: Measuring Crime Statistics
Overrepresentation of African Americans in Crime Statistics
Business-Related Crime and Preventive Measures
Reasons Why Women Are Often the Victims of Violent Crimes
Hate Crimes and Implications
Juvenile Violent Crime and Children Below Poverty
Mens Rea and Actus Reus of Crime: A Case Study
Increasing Level of Fear of Crime and Its Cause
Criminological Theories Explaining Overrepresentation of African Americans in Crime Statistics
The Crime Scene Investigation Effect Theory
Profiled in Life & Death: Crime Victims’ Compensation and Young People of Color
Prison Sentence Alternatives for Drug-Related Crimes
Juvenile Crime of Lionel Tate: Causes and Effects
Note-Taking and Crime Scene Photography
Crime Commitment and Punishment
The Federal Bureau Investigation Crime Statistics
White-Collar Crime-Related Data Sources in the US
Crimes Against Humanity – Genocide
Ordinary vs. Hate Crime Activities: Key Differences
Public Perceptions of Racial Crimes
Rediscovery of Crime Victims
Public Perceptions of Crime Analysis
Crime and Violence: Modern Social Classification
The New Perspective in the Management of Crime and Offenders
Measuring Crime Within Lynfield Estate
Restoring the Requirement of Mens Rea for All Crimes
GIS Comparing to Areas in Baltimore in Comparison to Crime
Comparing the Rate of Crime between the US, Japan, and Mexico
Who Are the Two Partners in All Crimes?
State Report: Crime Rates in Wisconsin
Victimless Crimes in the United States of America
Youth Crime Statistics in the US
Hate Crimes – Bullying
The Crimes of Sexual Assault in Canada
Social and Cultural Inequalities Impact On Crime Experience: London
Prison Reforms for Handling Crime Effectively
The ‘Street Games’ Athletic Intervention to Reduce Youth Crime
Conspiracies in Society: Power Elite and State Crimes Against Society Theories
Asian Hate Crimes in the United States
Disability Hate Crimes in England and Wales
Close-Circuit Television: Crime Control vs. Privacy
Victims and Crime Evaluation
Hate Crime Problem Overview
“Adventures in Crime” Book by Amanda Archer
Managing the Hate Crimes and Preparing Officers
Adaptations to Anomie. Theories of Crime
Rape Theories and Policies to Minimize Crimes
Federal Statutes: White-Collar Crime
Juvenile Use of Drug and Committing of Crime
Data-Based Analysis Approach in Preventing Crime at Dallas Police Department
Researching Hate Crimes in America
Crimes Against Unborn Children
Crime in 2020 During COVID-19
Evidence of a Relationship Between Crime and Economy
Federal, State, and Local Hate Crime Laws
The Costs and Benefits of Dealing With Juvenile Crimes in Boot Camps
Drug Crimes and Merton’s Anomie
Property Crime in Boston and Detroit
Main Aspects of Organized Crime Models
Crime Control Perspective & the Due Process Perspective
History of Crime Measurement vs. Contemporary Situation
Profiling and Analytical Skills in Crime Detection
The Difference Between Media Depiction and the Reality of Crime
The Use of Social Crime Prevention Techniques in the UK
Lipstick Analysis in Crime Detection
Effects of Community Policing Upon Fear of Crime
Homeland Security: Digital Crime and Terrorism Activities
Problem-Oriented Crime Intervention and Policy Analysis
Affect of the Organized Crime in Australia
Crime Challenges in the 21st Century
Deviance and Deviant Crimes
Human Consciousness Leading to Hate Crimes
The Government Solutions of Violent Crimes
Crime Statistics in United States
Sexual Crimes: Criminal Liability
Crime in Virginia: Nature and Trends
Noble Cause Corruption – A Crime-Fighting Sub-Culture
Insider Trading Crime and Sentencing
Criminal Street Gangs as Organized Crime Groups
Developmental Theories and Crime Prevention Programs
Race and Culture Factors in Crime
Analysis of Mental Health in Crime
Isla Vista Mass Murder as a Hate Crime
The Genetics of Crime: ‘Criminal Gene’
The Links Between Gender and Crime
Crime Prevention Strategies at Walden University
Louisiana’s Crime Law: Victim Rights
Crime Prevention, Law Enforcement and Correction Theories
Applied Crime Prevention in Hollywood 20 Cinema Location
White-Collar Crime: Importance of Awareness
Factors Related to Crime and Their Influence
The Effects of Campus Shootings on Fear of Crime on Campus
Global Crimes Impact Assessment
Improving Crime Policy in Canada by Using Criminological Evidence
Computer Crime in the United Arab Emirates
Hate Crime Statistics in Los Angeles and New York Metropolitan Areas
Theories on Crime
Criminology in Brief: Understanding Crime
White-Collar Crime: The Notorious Case of Ford Pinto
White Collar Crime Characteristics
The Wire: A Crime-Drama Television Series
The Crime of Robbing the Big City Bank
Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs
The Crime Phenomenon: Victimization and Its Theories
White-Collar Crime: An Overview
“Thinking About Crime: Sense and Sensibility in American Penal Culture” by Michael Tonry
Gender Crime Rates: The Role of Division of Labor
Official Crime Statistics: ‘Criminal Activity’ Measure
Organized Crimes: Review
Types of Crime in Cyberspace
A Research of the Crime in State Nevada
Marriage and Crime Reduction: Is There a Relationship?
Medical Crimes in the Health Industry
Application of CompStat Crime Model in Los Angeles
Problems Related to Defining and Regulating Crimes in the Home
Copyright Implications: Crime Punishable by Law
Crime in America: What We May Learn From Its Causes?
Reducing Crime Rates by Analyzing Its Causes
Crime and Family Background Correlation
White-Collar Crime Conceptual Study
How America’s Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic
Impact of Economic Characteristics on Sex Crimes
Juvenile Crime Statistics
Factors Contributing to Gender Disparity in White Collar Crimes
Comparison Between Organized Crime And Terrorism
Mental Illness Relationship to Crime
Models of Organized Crime Executive Summary
White Collar Crime-Enron Corporation
Houston City Demographics and Crime Profile
Hate Crime Against the Jewish Community
Anomie, Crime, and Weakened Social Ties in Social Institutions
State of Crime in California
The Highest Crime Rate: Metropolitan County of Jefferson
Identifying Crime Patterns
Increasing the Rates of Crimes in Modern World
Corporate Regulation and Crime
Understanding the Causes of Juvenile Crime
White-Collar Crime Offenders and Legislation
Strategic, Tactical, and Administrative Crime Analysis
Methamphetamine Drug Crime Registration
Crime Analysis Conceptual Study
Classical and Biological Theories of Crime
Property and Computer Crimes
Increasing the Severity of Punishments Imposed for Crime
Crime in the Suites Effects of Power and Privilege
Causes of Organized Crime Analysis
Mr. Charles Dempsey Court Case: Cause and Consequences of the Crime
The Fears of Reporting a Crime: Why Witnesses Do Not Report Crimes
Investigation Methods: Terrorism and Cyber Crime
Neighborhood Watch Programs and Crime Prevention
Impact of Globalization and Neoliberalism on Crime and Criminal Justice
Routine Activities Theory of Crime by Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson
Electronic Crime Scene Investigation & Good Practice Guide
White-Collar Crimes: Prevention and Fight
What Is a Crime? Is It Possible to Prevent Crime?
Transnational Crime and International Policing
Asian Crime: Different Cultures, Different Attitudes
International White-Collar Crime
Community Cohesiveness and Incidence of Crime
Crime Theories: Intimate Partner Violence in the US
Crime Factors & Levels in South Africa vs. Canada
Processing the Crime Scene: Tools and Techniques
Forensic Serology and Its Key Aspects in Investigating Crimes
The Relationship of Drugs and Crime
Detrimental Effects of Gender Influenced Crime and Interventions
The Prevention of Crime and Community Justice
Use of the Information Technology to Solve Crimes: DNA Tests and Biometrics
Using the Internet to Solve a Crime
Nature of Crime in the State of Virginia
Crime and Social Learning Theory Concept
The Future of Global Crime: Globalization and Integration
The Parallel Between Crime and Conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America
Globalization and the Internet: Change of Organized Crime
War on Crime Influence on Power Shift Among Various Groups
Trends in Police Recorded Crime in Northern Ireland
Human Factor in Enabling and Facilitating E-Crimes
Financial Crime and Employment
Power Elite: Deviance and Crime Discussion
The Crime of Sexual Violence Committed by Men
Screening in Aviation: Prevention of Crime
Salem Witchcraft Hysteria: Crime Against Women
Depiction of White-Collar Crime: Toxic Chemicals and Effects of the Pollutions
History of Crime in America Since the Early 1800s
US Attorney’s Office Press Release on Birmingham Crimes
Cyber Technology: Organized Crimes and Law Enforcement
Crime Myths and Domestic Terrorism
State or Federal Crime: Texas Kidnapping Study
Recidivism Rates for Sex Crimes
Prevention of Sex Offenders From Committing Crimes
Impacts of the Society’s Response to Crime
Policing Operations: Application of New Technologies to Combat Crime
Drugs, Crime, and Violence: Effects of Drug Use on Behavior
Hate Crimes in the United States: Bias Toward the Victim’s Identity
The Nature of Crime: Underlying Drivers Making People Criminals
Theoretical Impact on Sex Crimes Investigations
Searching and Recording the Crime Scene
Social Pressure and Black Clothing Impact on Crime Judgments
Personal vs. Collective Responsibility in War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
Without a Trace: Crime Scene Field Notes
Economic Recession and Crime Rates
Criminal Justice System: Crime Scene Investigation
Philosophical Theory of Law and Justice and Problem of Crime and Justice
Urban Relationship Between Poverty and Crime
Middle Class and Crime: Historical Analysis of Crime
Community Policing as a Tool Against Crime
Ornament and Crime: Economic Aspects
Women’s Crime: Gendered Criminology Theory
Crimes Against the State: Terrorist Attacks and Death Penalty
Crime Rates in UK: Quantitative Methods
Gang-Related Crimes in Irish Cities
Minor Disorders and Serious Crimes
Social Program for Management of Crimes Against Women
Do Drug Enforcement Laws Help to Reduce Other Crimes?
Crime, Criminality, and Prisons in the USA
Cutting-Off Hand Keeps Off Crimes in the Country
Organized Crime in the United States
Crime Mysteries of Jack the Ripper
China’s Legal System: Crime and Punishment
Criminal Investigations: Nature of Crime Investigators
NGOs and the Fight Against Crime
Sociology and Representation of Crime in the Media
Crime Punishment: Humane Treatment of Prisoners Today
Probing Crime Based on Conduct Report
Criminal Justice for Physically Injured Crime Victims
Major Theories of Crime Causation
Elements of Crime and Intentional Tort
Future of Crime Corrections
Hate Crime as a Core Subject of Criminology
Youth Crime and Punishment
Policy Recommendations for Controlling Crime
City Violence, Crimes and Disruption
Responsibility for the Most Horrific Crimes Issue
Crime Prevention Programs in America
Rape: The Misunderstood Crime
Sex Crimes and Burglary: Patterns, Benefits, and Risk
Alcohol and Crime in the U.K., the United States, and Australia
Prostitution as a “Victimless” Crime
Enron Scandal and Business Crime
Crime Policy and Practices: Trying Juveniles as Adults
White-Collar and Political Crimes
Three Perspective of One Crime
Financial Cost of Crime to Society
The History of Cyber Crimes and the Most Popular Forms of Cyber Crimes
Violence and Society: Multiple Perceptions of Crime
Law Enforcement: White-Collar and Corporate Crimes
Crime in High Schools
White Collar Crime: When Looks Can Be Deceiving
Nazi’s Crimes Against Jews During World War II
Crime Victimization in America: Data Statistics
Prevention & Control Of Crime
Crime and Subcultures in the Urban Area
Crime in Inner City Neighborhoods
Date Rape Is Not a Crime: Discussion
Criminology: Drugs, Crime and Control
Youth Crime. Prejudice: Is It Justified?
New York City Community Policing and Crime Reduction
Crime, Justice and the Media Relations
State Corporate Crime and Criminological Inquiry
Strain Theory: Sociological Explanation of Crime
Granite City Building Inspectors: Service Crime
Torts and Crimes. Liability for Traffic Accidents
The General Theory of Crime
Crime Laboratories: Accreditation and Certification
Situational Crime Prevention Strategy
Policing Crime and Disorder Hot Spots
Crime of Genocide: Justice and Ethical Issues
White-Collar Crimes and Deferred Prosecution
The Uniform Crime Statistics Over 5 Years
Cyber Crime in the U.S. and Nigeria
Forensic Biology in Crime Scene Investigations
The Concept of Uniform Crime Reporting Program
Property Crime and Typologies
Greater Surveillance Is Not a Desirable Answer to the Problem of Crime
The Key Types of Crimes
Crime Prevention in the United States
Crimes That Teenagers Do Not Commit
Crime Investigation With Global Positioning System
National Crime Victimization Survey and Analysis
The Crime of Innocence
Crime Scene Reconstruction
Computer Crimes: Viewing the Future
Important Crime Scene Responsibilities
Computer Forensics and Cyber Crime
Crimes Against Small Businesses and Prevention Strategies
Computer Crime Investigation Processes and Analyses
Crime Prevention and Juvenile Delinquency
Longford: British Biographical Crime Drama Film
Immigration and Crime Rates in the United States
Organized Crime in New York and Chicago
Gender and Crime in Campus: Correlation Analysis
Gender Factors of Crime in Campus
Conflict & Crime Control vs. Consensus & Due Process Model
Capturing Crime, Criminals and the Public’s Imagination
Forensic Psychology: Media and Crime Relationship
National Missing and Unidentified Persons System
“Broken Windows” and Situational Crime Prevention Theories
NGO Analysis of Canadian Crime Victim Foundation
Crime and Criminal Justice News
Deterrence: Discouraging Offenders from Re-Committing Crimes
General Trends of Crime Over the Past Twenty Years
Religion Role in Crime Definition
Transnational Organized Crime: Counterstrategy
Serial Killers, Their Crimes, and Stereotypes
Crime Analysis Writing and Alert Website Content
Economics of Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking
Achieving Total Security in the Community
Organized Crime Series Analysis
International Law: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
Fear from Media Reporting of Crimes
Crime Theories Differentiating Criminal Behavior
Tactical Crime Analysis and Statistical Cases
Comparing Different Indexes of Crimes
Anomie and Strain Crime Theories
Crime Theories: Shooting in Northwest Washington
White-Collar Crime Theories and Their Development
Robert Courtney’s Crime as Input to Business Regulation
Three-Strikes Law Ineffective in Crime Reduction
Violence, Security and Crime Prevention at School
Electronic Crimes and Federal Guidance in Regulation
Phoenix Park: Community-Based Crime Prevention
Forensic Science: Examining Crime Evidence
Human and Drug Trafficking as Transnational Organised Crimes
Alleged Crimes: Aggravated Assault and Drug Dealing
Offenders’ Age and Anti-Black Hate Crimes
The Role of Location in Crime Fiction
Crimes Against Persons: Theory and Doctrine
Prohibition as a Cause of Increased Crimes Illegal Activity
Crime Prevention Approaches
Crime Scene Investigation: Types of Analysis
White-Collar Crimes Causes
Differences of Crime Perception in North Jersey
Children as Victims of Crime
Crime and Victimization Trends
Crime Data: Collection and Analysis Tools
Crime Rates of Sex Crimes and Firearm Violence
Hate Crimes in Modern Society
Organized Crime in the Balkans
Compliance Impact on Financial Crimes
Fascination With Crime Through the Art of Photography
Closed-Circuit Television Cameras in Crime Reduction
Marijuana Crime in California State and Federal Courts
Internet Crimes and Digital Terrorism Prevention
Deterrence Theory and Adolescent Sex Crimes
Immigration Services Against Crime and Terrorism
Digital Crime Causes and Theories
Pink-Collar Criminal: Gender in White-Collar Crime
Nanjing Massacre as Japan’s Denied War Crime
Gender and Crime Correlation in Strain Theory
Police Patrol Presence in Crime “Hot Spots”
Crime Scene Investigation: Principles and Process
National Impact on Organized Crime
Organized Crime and Current Laws
Civic Virtue in Crime Commitment and Revelation
”Crime and Justice in the United States” by Bohm & Haley
Computer Crimes and Internet Security
Crime Television Series: “Al Fin Cayó!”
War Crimes in “Zambak/Muslims” by S. Mehmedinovic
Internet Crime Prevention by Law and E-Business
Hate Crimes and Anti-Discrimination Laws
Crime Prevention and Control Effectiveness
Crime Scene Investigation Stages and Protocols
Race, Ethnicity and Crime in America
White Collar Crimes Focus
Terrorism, Hate Crimes and Racial Profiling
Hate Crime Charge in Attack on Sikh Professor
Los Angeles: Housing, Homelessness, Drugs, Crimes
Death Penalty: Mistrial, Racial Bias, Crime Ranking
Crime Causation and Diversion in the Florida State
American Juvenile Crime Statistics in 2008
Can Genetics Cause Crime?
Are the Laws Propagating Crime?
When Was the First True Crime?
Does Capital Punishment Deter Crime?
Does Crime and Violence Affect the Tourism Industry?
Does Drug Use Cause Crime or Does Crime Cause Drug Use?
Does Marriage Reduce Crime?
What’s the Origin of Crime?
Does Social Deprivation Relate to Crime?
Why People Commit Crime?
Why Crime Rates Will Drop?
What Are the Social Causes of Youth Crime?
What Causes High Crime Rate?
What Are the Proper Steps in a Crime Investigation?
What Are the Psychological Causes of Crime?
What Are the Causes of Youth Crime in the UK?
What Are the Major Problems with Regard to the Collection of Crime Statistics?
How Accurate Are Official Crime Statistics?
What Is the First: Crime or Law?
How Did American White Collar Crime Transform?
What Are the Seven Elements of a Crime?
How Does Globalization Impact on Crime and Victimisation?
How Can Crime Best Be Measured?
Why Does Crime Change over Time?
How Crime and Deviance Can Be Seen as Functional for Society?
Computer Forensics Essay Topics
Drug Trafficking Research Topics
Crime Prevention Research Topics
Organized Crime Titles
Crime and Punishment Titles
Mass Incarceration Essay Topics
Criminal Procedure Titles
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135+ Amazing Criminal Justice Research Topics In 2023
Here, in this blog, you can find your criminal justice research topics. Statanalytca.com explains the 135 amazing criminal research paper topic ideas for 2023 in this blog. When we listen to the word criminal justice, many words come into our mind like "victim," "enforcement," "crimes," "courts," "prison," and law sanctions.
256 Research Topics on Criminal Justice & Criminology
Criminology Topics on Types of Crime. Campus crime: the most common crimes on college campuses and ways of preventing them. Child abuse: types, prevalence, risk groups, ways of detection and prevention. Cybercrime: cyber fraud, defamation, hacking, bullying, phishing. Domestic violence: gender, ways of detection and prevention, activism.
500+ Criminal Justice Research Topics
500+ Criminal Justice Research Topics. March 25, 2024. by Muhammad Hassan. Criminal justice is a complex and critical field that encompasses various aspects of crime prevention, law enforcement, legal proceedings, and punishment. Research plays a crucial role in understanding and addressing the challenges and opportunities in this field.
Beyond Policing: The Problem of Crime in America
Examining What Is: Covid-19, Guns, and the Rise in Hate. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, crime rates were relatively low. As the graph in Figure 1 demonstrates, the rate of violent crime offenses declined from a peak in 1991 of 758.2 per year to 398.5 per year in 2020. 19 The rate of homicide over the same period also dropped significantly, from its highest level in 1991 compared with 2020. 20 ...
Global Crime Patterns: An Analysis of Survey Data from 166 ...
Objectives This article explores the merits of commercially-based survey data on crime through cross-validation with established crime metrics. Methods Using unpublished data from 166 countries covering the period between 2006 and 2019, the article describes the geographical distribution across global regions and trends over time of three types of common crime, homicide, and organised crime ...
230 Criminal Justice Research Topics for your Inspiration
Criminal Law Research Topics. The Evolution of Criminal Law and Its Impact on Society. Comparative Analysis of Criminal Law Systems Worldwide. The Role of International Law in Combating Transnational Crime. The Effectiveness of the Insanity Defense in Criminal Trials. Cyber Law: Addressing New Age Cybercrimes.
Top 110 Criminal Justice Research Topics
7 International Crimes Research Topics. 8 Racism and Discrimination Criminal Justice Research Topics. 9 Court Cases Research Topics. 10 Crime and victimization Research Topics. 11 Criminology Theories Research Topics. 12 Reasonable Criminology Research Topics. 12.1 Conclusion.
The accuracy of crime statistics: assessing the impact of ...
Objectives Police-recorded crimes are used by police forces to document community differences in crime and design spatially targeted strategies. Nevertheless, crimes known to police are affected by selection biases driven by underreporting. This paper presents a simulation study to analyze if crime statistics aggregated at small spatial scales are affected by larger bias than maps produced for ...
Crime Rates in a Pandemic: the Largest Criminological Experiment in
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has impacted the world in ways not seen in generations. Initial evidence suggests one of the effects is crime rates, which appear to have fallen drastically in many communities around the world. We argue that the principal reason for the change is the government ordered stay-at-home orders, which impacted the routine activities of entire populations. Because these ...
Crime and justice research: The current landscape and future
Early in 2018, I was invited by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to prepare a concise (12 page) paper - a 'think piece' - on the scope for future Research Council investments in research on crime and justice. 1 This was one of 13 such invitations. These were issued to scholars working in fields that for various reasons (in some cases, perhaps, their comparative newness ...
Crime Reports and Statistics
I. Introduction. The purpose of this research paper is to provide an overview of crime reports and statistics. Crime reports and statistics convey an extensive assortment of information about crime to the reader and include topics such as the extent of crime and the nature or characteristics of criminal offenses, as well as how the nature and ...
Crime forecasting: a machine learning and computer ...
A crime is a deliberate act that can cause physical or psychological harm, as well as property damage or loss, and can lead to punishment by a state or other authority according to the severity of the crime. The number and forms of criminal activities are increasing at an alarming rate, forcing agencies to develop efficient methods to take preventive measures. In the current scenario of ...
Criminology & Criminal Justice: Sage Journals
Criminology and Criminal Justice is a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the broad field of criminology and criminal justice policy and practice. The journal publishes scholarly articles on all areas of criminology, crime and criminal justice. It includes theoretical pieces, as well as empirically-based analyses of policy and practice in areas that range from policing to sentencing ...
(PDF) Crime Prediction and Analysis
Crime Prediction and Analysis. February 2020. February 2020. DOI: 10.1109/IDEA49133.2020.9170731. Conference: 2020 2nd International Conference on Data, Engineering and Applications (IDEA) Authors ...
Gun Violence and Gun Policy in the United States: Understanding
This ANNALS volume is a collection of new scholarly articles that address the current state of America's gun ownership, how it came to be, the distinct frames that scholars use to understand gun violence, and potential solutions to the social problems it creates. We offer up-to-date research that examines what works and what does not. From this, we suggest ways forward for research, policy ...
3425 PDFs
This quantitative research paper analyses the trends of white-collar crime in Jamaica from 2010 to 2022. The study uses official crime statistics and data obtained from the Jamaican Constabulary ...
35 Criminal Justice Topics for Students
A PhD in Criminal Justice can prepare graduates for a number of positions, including police chief, corrections facility director, professor, and research consultant. 1. At Walden University, students pursuing a PhD in Criminal Justice can choose the General Program or one of several specializations: The courses you take and the area you ...
CRIM 480: Research Topics in Crime, Law and Justice
A premier resource for interdisciplinary research on subjects impacting society and the single most important database in the Social Sciences. This resource can be useful for any number of topics including: family violence, gangs, violence, drug issues, schools, and media.
500+ Statistics Research Topics
500+ Statistics Research Topics. March 25, 2024. by Muhammad Hassan. Statistics is a branch of mathematics that deals with the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data. It is a fundamental tool used in various fields such as business, social sciences, engineering, healthcare, and many more.
Crime in the U.S.: Key questions answered
Both the FBI and BJS data show dramatic declines in U.S. violent and property crime rates since the early 1990s, when crime spiked across much of the nation. Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-74%), aggravated assault (-39%) and murder/nonnegligent ...
Research trends in cybercrime victimization during 2010-2020: a
The current bibliometric study assessed the scholarly status on cybercrime victimization during 2010-2020 by retrieving SSCI articles from WoS database. There is no study that applied bibliometric method to research on the examined subject. Hence, this paper firstly contributed statistical evidence and visualized findings to literature of ...
(PDF) Incidence of crimes and effectiveness of interventions in the
This paper performs a district-level analysis of the crimes and interventions. ... Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 13(2): 145-154 ... rate, crime solution e ciency and community ...
607 Crime Essay Topics & Samples
607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. Updated: Mar 2nd, 2024. 31 min. When writing a research paper about criminology or law, you have to consider your topic carefully. Our team came up with 465 titles, along with some crime essay examples to assist you in your assignment. We will write.

135+ Amazing Criminal Justice Research Topics In 2023

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Importance of Criminal Justice Research Papers In 2023

1. Informed Policy-Making

2. Evidence-Based Practices

3. Transparency and Accountability

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5. Advancing Knowledge

6. Addressing Disparities

7. Enhancing Public Awareness

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