Crime Reporting
Annual report compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) containing crimes known to the nation’s police and sheriff departments, the number of arrests made by these agencies, and other crime-related information.
UCR
The collecting of data by criminologists themselves asking people to disclose their delinquent and criminal involvement on anonymous questionnaires.
Self-Report Surveys
Universally condemned crimes that are “inherently bad.”
Mala in se
Crimes that are “bad” simply because they are prohibited.
Mala Prohibita
The legal principle stating that a crime must have a negative impact on either the victim or the general values of the community to be a crime.
Harm
The term for the rate of a given crime is the actual number of reported crimes standardized by some unit of the population.
Crime Rate
The use of modern technology such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by police departments to “map” and analyze patterns of crime.
Crime Mapping
A continuously distributed trait composed of a combination of other continuously distributed traits that signals the willingness to use force, fraud, or guile to deprive others of their lives, limbs, or property for personal gain.
Criminality
An intentional act in violation of the criminal law committed without defense or excuse and penalized by the state.
Crime
The act of being legally detained to answer criminal charges based on an arrest warrant or a law enforcement officer’s probable cause to believe the person arrested has committed a felony crime.
Arrest
A rule requiring the police to report only the most serious offense committed in a multiple-offense single incident to the FBI and to ignore the others.
Hierarchy Rule
The FBI’s annual tally of financial (“white-collar”) crimes in the United States.
Financial Crimes Report
Refers to the five elements of criminal liability that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict a person of a crime.
Corpus Delicti
What is the literal translation for Corpus Delicti
Body of the crime
An investigatory jury composed of seven to 23 citizens before which the prosecutor presents evidence that sufficient grounds exist to try the suspect for a crime. If the prosecutor is successful, he or she obtains an indictment from the grand jury listing the charges a person is accused of.
Grand Jury
A comprehensive crime statistic collection system currently a component of the UCR program and eventually expected to replace it entirely.
NIBRS
The dark (or hidden) figure of crime refers to all of the crimes committed that never come to official attention.
Dark Figure of Crime
Literally guilty act, it refers to the principle that a person must commit some forbidden act or neglect some mandatory act before he or she can be subjected to criminal sanctions.
Actus Reas
“Guilty mind.” Criminal liability does not attach based on actions alone; there must also be criminal intent.
Mens Rea
A court proceeding in which the defendant answers to the charges against him or her by pleading guilty, not guilty, or no contest (nolo contendere).
Arraignment
A biannual survey of a large number of people and households requesting information on crimes committed against individuals and households (whether reported to the police or not) and circumstances of the offense (time and place it occurred, perpetrator’s use of a weapon, any injuries incurred, and financial loss).
NCVS
What is the oldest system that is still used to measure crime?
UCR
The legal principle stating that the act and the mental state concur in the sense that the criminal intention actuates the criminal act.
Concurrence
A legal principle stating that there must be an established proximate causal link between the criminal act and the harm suffered.
Causation
What is the only bird that can fly backwards?
Hummingbird