Alternative Futures in Measuring Crime (From Measuring Crime: Large-Scale, Long-Range Efforts, P 223-235, 1990, Doris Layton MacKenzie, Phyllis Jo Baunach, et al, eds. -- See NCJ-122173)

• NCJ Number: 122183
• Author(s): B H Renshaw III
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 13 pages
• Sale Source: California Correctional Peace Officers Assoc
• Publication Type: Best Practice/State-of-the-Art Review
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter examines the institutional, organizational, budgetary, and intellectual futures of crime-measurement programs.

Abstract

Over the past 25 years, investment in research, statistics, and improvements in the administration of justice have not kept pace with similar investments in the economic, health, energy, and arts fields, although the measures of public safety and their direction have been of greatest concern to the American public over the same period. In criminal justice, this situation can only change when those with an empirical orientation to measurement align themselves with those with an operational focus on enforcement. The future offers improved computer technology, data standardization, new survey techniques, shared data and shared instruments, and a special concern for the full range of users of each major statistical series. What must follow is a full and more vigorous dialogue between all those with a desire to use measurement in criminology for improvements in criminal justice, since indifference to either measurement or operational advances limits professional and personal advancement.