Dark Figure of Crime, Concentric Zone Theory, and Future Crimes

The Dark Figure of Crime and Crime Data Sources

The dark figure of crime is a term employed by criminologists and sociologists to describe the amount of unreported or undiscovered crime (Maguire & Reiner, 2007, p. 129). The notion of a dark figure undetected by standard crime reporting systems casts doubt on the reliability of those systems and raises questions about the true magnitude of criminal activity in the United States.

The main source of crime data in the U.S. is the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), which is operated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The UCR records crimes that are identified through the observation of a law-enforcement officer or reported by a victim or witness to law enforcement authorities. The UCR is not an exhaustive source of crime data because many crimes are neither observed by law enforcement officials nor reported by victims or witnesses.

There are two sources of crime data in the U.S. that attempt to ascertain the dark figure of crime. The first is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), in which victims are asked about the crimes they have suffered. It was started by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1974 and is compiled into an annual survey. The NCVS distributes surveys to a nationally representative sample of households.

The NCVS suffers from a number of methodological limitations. First, it excludes many types of crimes, particularly victimless crimes. Second, it is based on victims' memory of the past six months, which raises reliability concerns. Third, it does not adequately detect the multiple offenses that constitute serial victimization (Lynch & Addington, 2007, p. 156). Fourth, it tends to underreport crimes in which the offender is known to the victim, because such incidents are often not perceived as crimes by the victim.

The second source of dark figure crime data comes in the form of self-report studies, in which offenders are asked about crimes they have committed. These studies are created by individual agencies such as the National Institute of Drug Abuse, which developed the Monitoring the Future survey in 1975 to track drug use among high school seniors.

Self-report surveys also suffer from methodological limitations. First, they rely on the honesty of criminal offenders, who have a higher propensity and incentive to lie than victims do. Second, self-reporting is most useful only for victimless crimes such as drug abuse. Third, many criminal offenders are likely to be missed by self-report surveys. Fourth, there is no comprehensive nationwide offender survey, which results in patchwork coverage of dark crime figures and a lack of standardization of methodology among different surveys.

Chicago's Concentric Zone Theory

A concentric zone model is a theory used by sociologists to explain the distribution of social groups within urban areas (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2007, p. 36). It was formulated by urban sociologists Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess of the University of Chicago. The Concentric Zone model represents a social ecology perspective on crime, which emphasizes the stable characteristics of the crime location rather than focusing solely on the individuals committing the crime. It is based on an economic concept called the bid-rent curve, which models the geographic distribution of social groups according to the amount people will pay for land.

The Concentric Zone model depicts urban land use in concentric rings, with the Central Business District at the core. Surrounding the Central Business District is the Transition Zone of mixed residential and commercial uses. Surrounding this Transition Zone is the Inner City Zone of working-class residential homes. Beyond that lies the Outer Suburbs Zone of middle-class homes of higher quality than those in the Inner City Zone. Finally, surrounding the Outer Suburbs Zone is the Commuter Zone, populated by higher-quality housing linked to significant commuting costs (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2007, p. 37).

Peacemaking Criminology: Overview, Strengths, and Weaknesses

Peacemaking criminology is a movement within academic criminology that looks beyond traditional explanations locating the causes of crime in deviant individuals and beyond traditional responses of deterrence, punishment, and incapacitation (Cullen, Wright, & Blevins, 2006, p. 251). Instead, it proposes a holistic perspective that examines factors such as the social construction of "crimes," selective law enforcement, and the criminal justice system's "warmaking approach" to crime — the approach with which it is contrasted. Peacemaking criminology views crime as the product of a larger social structure that places certain groups at a disadvantage (Wozniak, 2002, p. 206).

Peacemaking criminology generally identifies with progressive political positions both directly and indirectly related to the criminal justice system. Directly, it advocates drug legalization, rehabilitation, gun control, and community policing, while opposing capital punishment. Indirectly, it advocates environmental protection and opposes war, treating these positions as essential policy foundations for a crime-free world.

Peacemaking criminology plays a dynamic role in today's criminal justice system as a thought-shaper for the field's leaders. It affects the criminal justice system primarily through academic channels. Papers on criminal justice are presented before professional societies such as the American Society of Criminology (Cullen, Wright, & Blevins, 2006, p. 252). Peacemaking criminology is also covered in most introductory criminal justice textbooks. Perhaps most importantly, it has become a rallying point around which many critics of the current criminal justice system gather.

Strengths

Peacemaking criminology benefits from its roots outside the narrow field of criminology. It draws key influences from the intellectual traditions of humanism, feminism, and critical race theory. This allows it to identify broader social forces and problems affecting crime and the criminal justice system. In a sense, the peacemaking perspective is not primarily about crime itself, but about the deeper roots of crime, involving factors such as parenting, self-development, and spirituality (Cullen, Wright, & Blevins, 2006, p. 256).

Weaknesses

Peacemaking criminology suffers from a lack of focus on tangible, attainable criminal justice objectives. Although it offers specific policy recommendations for criminal justice institutions, it conditions true institutional progress on the achievement of intrapersonal and interpersonal development among society's individuals (Cullen, Wright, & Blevins, 2006, p. 256). However, the intrapersonal and interpersonal lives of individuals in society are largely beyond the control of criminal justice professionals and policymakers. If such goals are considered an essential part of peacemaking criminology, its execution will be a challenging task indeed.

Overall, peacemaking criminology works well as an intellectual movement but not as an actual mechanism of institutional change in the criminal justice system. Its value lies in its ability to broaden the thinking of leaders in the field. It compels those leaders to make a deeper inquiry into the causes of crime and to formulate ways for their institutions to alleviate those causes. However, the task of redesigning the criminal justice system to reflect a peacemaking perspective lies with the leaders themselves, not with the academic movement.

Conclusion

Both victim surveys and offender surveys represent important tools for ascertaining the dark figure of crime. However, each source is limited in its utility because each survey's intended respondents lack either the knowledge or the incentive to report certain crimes. Neither survey can therefore provide an exhaustive account of the dark figure of crime on its own. They are most useful when examined alongside UCR statistics, because they can either confirm the validity of UCR data for certain crimes or alert researchers to the insufficiency of that data for others.

In the future, conventions on personal privacy will be redefined in the context of new forms of social interaction. Because of this, the field of crimes against persons will expand as online modes of interaction multiply. New modes of social interaction will require new legal boundaries on permissible conduct.

References

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Maguire, M., Morgan, R., & Reiner, R. (2007). The Oxford handbook of criminology. Oxford University Press.

Wozniak, J. F. (2002). Toward a theoretical model of peacemaking criminology: An essay in honor of Richard Quinney. Crime & Delinquency, 48(2), 204–231.