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OFFICIAL CRIME DATA: Lag in Recording Time as a Threat to Validity
Author(s) -
KLEINMAN PAULA HOLZMAN,
LUKOFF IRVING FABER
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-9125.1981.tb00429.x
Subject(s) - time lag , commission , criminal justice , lag , criminology , psychology , period (music) , economic justice , crime statistics , subject (documents) , measure (data warehouse) , political science , law , computer science , data mining , computer network , physics , library science , acoustics
Official reports are the preferred measure of criminal activity when the goal is to understand whether criminal justice clients are less involved in crime in the posttreatment than in the pretreatment period. However, even this preferred method has drawbacks. Data presented here show that there is a recording time lag in official crime data. At times, the gap between time of crime commission and entry of the offense onto the subject's police record is considerable. Data collected in a short span of time after the treatment period are likely to underestimate crime committed in that period. Consequently, findings of change in the level of involvement in crime should be interpreted with caution.