Past Blog entries for the Criminology family

Here are three examples of previous blog entries to give you an idea of what I'd like from you for your entries this term.


Crime Trends in British Columbia


According to statistics found on statcan.gc.ca police reported "overall" crimes are on the decrease, imparticular the most severe crimes. Violent crimes stay fairly even, although there is a slight decrease in their number. In 2001 there was a peak in violent crimes, and then it began a slow decrease to 2008. Based on the information that most crimes except for possibly violent ones are on the decrease makes me believe that maybe the main cause for these slowly increasing violent crimes is the increase in violence in our media, family life, and school lives. Young people learn violence from those they respect or from influencing sources in their lives. If a young person is constantly bombarded with violence in the tv they watch and the video games they play and if their parents are violent towards them or towards each other than they will learn violence and will become violent towards others. In general, our media- video games, movies, tv, sports, magazines, book- are all becoming more violent. This could be a possible cause for the slow increase in violent crimes in B.C.

Possible reasons for the decrease in overall crimes may be for the sole reason that our generation is aging. People are growing old and there are less young people than there was previous to this time. I believe that because of this there are less crimes overall because a lot of the time criminals are in younger generations. Another reason for the crime decrease could be because we are in a bit of an economical "down" and when that happens people aren't out as much causing trouble and commiting crimes. They are busy working and with their families. These are some possible reasons for the decrease in crimes in British Columbia.  

Victims of Crime   Long Term - There are so many factors in victimization. People who have been a victim of a crim can become re-victimized, for instance Law and Order-SVU episode"closure" the victims name is Harper. She is raped by a man and the police make her describe everything that happened then she has to explain it again to the detectives. They dont catch her rapist but 6 months later when they think they have, they find out she has moved changed her whole look and significant other. She then refuses to help them because she doesnt want to remember the past. She even wears running shoes to bed because she still has the "long term" effects chasing her. In real life there was a 17 year old girl who killed her sister which would also be considered to have long term effects on the entire family.

Short Term - There is also an effect on people called short term, a crime that doesnt harm someone for a continuous cycle. There are a few short term type of crimes but long term is the more common. Short term effects can be caused by crimes such as small theft, smuggling, and a few others. In the link below is a sort of short term case. Victims of smugglers would only be short term in my mind.

Society and Crime


Crime happens for many reasons, however I believe that one of the main reasons people commit crime is because of social structures they are immersed in and the people they associate with. Obviously there are many other contributing factors such as brain chemistry, gender, drug usage, inner conflict and just plain choice, the list could go on and on, but the people we surround ourselves with play a huge role in how we behave. I know personally I act differently around my parents then I do when its just my friends and I. others play a huge influence in our lives. As children we learned everything from our parents and mimicked their behavior, then as we entered school we made friends and copied their behavior as well. If we ended up making friends with bad apples then we will most likely be doing and acting the way they are, all feeding off each others behavior in a sense Peer pressure from these same people we hang around with has a major influence on whether or not we are committing crime. For example in this article you have a 13 year old boy planning on robbing a convince store with no previous criminal record and 3 accomplices older then him, I don't personally know the kid but something tells me he was not the one to come up with the idea, maybe robbing the store what he had to do to become a member of the "Indian Posse" gang or just to impress the older boys either way it was most likely him trying to be tough and to impress someone else. I personally know a kid who at the age of 15 tried to shoplift something from a mall, I don't know what it was he was trying to steal but what I do know was he got chased and tackled by mall cops then spent a few hours in jail waiting for his mother to bail him out. This kid is not a bad kid I know that he is a good human being, comes from a good stable he's just your average teenage boy trying to fit in, but the kids he was hanging around with are kind of shady guys, I know for a fact that this boy regrets doing this, and in the long run getting caught for him turned out being more embarrassing then being too chicken to shoplift whatever it was he was attempting to steal. It just goes to show how far people will go to feel some sort of belonging in society and when they themselves feel uncomfortable with the fact that they might be different in someway or defy social norms people can go to extreme lengths to feel loved and important.