Purpose
In the last couple of decades and currently, we have been experiencing a paradigm shift from using our subjective experience to using objective data to inform justice decision-making. Learning descriptive statistics is “fun,” but the ultimate purpose of conducting descriptive research and conducting descriptive analyses is to use the result to inform justice decision-making.
In this assignment, you will be provided with a 2018 FBI UCR dataset, an output with all the descriptive statistics as well as the visualization of the measurements of crimes that happened on university campuses in the state of California. Then, you will use these materials to write a short report to the attorney general of California, discussing how to allocate resources to deal with these crime problems. Please pay attention to the following instructions.
Values:
This assignment will help you to become familiar with the following values in this discipline:
The data and empirical evidence are usually utilized to inform criminal justice and public health practices to enhance public safety.
Decision-making is a process in which researchers contribute to public discord by producing reliable and accurate results.
The final subjective decisions to inform practice may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the scientific facts remain objective.
Knowledge:
This assignment will also help you to become familiar with the following important content knowledge in this discipline:
Descriptive analyses statistics
Mean, Median, S.D., S.E. Minimum, Maximum, Confidence Interval, Skewness, Kurtosis, Range and Variance.
Skills:
The skills students will learn are how to use SPSS statistical software
to manage data and variables
to perform the approximate descriptive analyses based on the level of measurement of the variables
to create a visualization of the results
to present the results to a state official or the public
Method:
This assignment will help you to practice the following problem-solving method(s) that are important in the criminal justice discipline:
Identify the “problem” or focus that your discipline is concerned with.
In criminal justice practice, reducing crimes demands criminal justice professionals identify where most of the crimes happen in a given period of time.
How does this problem relate to your discipline’s values?
The problem we are dealing with speaks directly regarding how to use empirical evidence to identify the “hot spots” of crimes and allocate limited resources to the hot spots to maximize the utility or efficacy of criminal justice practices.
Why does your discipline use these particular methods as the means to solve these problems?
The field of criminal justice uses the following tasks or methods because it relies on empirical and scientific evidence to inform practices, which is a superior method to using ideology politics, which did not in the reduction of crimes. On the contrary, the non-scientific methods have created many more unintended consequences and social harms, such as mass incarceration.
Tasks:
1. Download the FBI UCR Data (Assignment 1 – California Universities) Download Download the FBI UCR Data (Assignment 1 – California Universities). You find the following variables in the dataset, but we will not use all of them for conducting analyses.
The “University” variable indicates the name of the college.
Note: This is a sample (N=50) of all the colleges in California. The 50 colleges are randomly selected into this data.
The “Student_Enrollment” variable describes the number of students enrolled in each college in 2018.
The “Burglary” variable is the raw total number of burglaries on university campuses.
The “Burglary_Per_Capita” variable is a rate variable that indicates the number of burglaries per 100,000 people.
In other words, it is a standardized measure of the burglary rate.
We create this variable because campuses with more students will naturally have more crimes.
Therefore, we will create a rate variable to eliminate the influence of the number of students enrolled.
This is how the variable is created: (Burglary/Student_Enrollment)*100,000
This rate variable is a better estimation of the seriousness of the crime problems on campus because it is a standardized measure.
The “ZBurglary_Per_Capita” variable represents the z-score for the “Burglary_Per_Capita” variable.
2. Perform all the types of descriptive analyses and create a histogram with a curve on the variable “Burglary_Per_Capita.”
I know some of you might not be able to do so right now because we do not have university resource access. If you can perform them on your PC, please practice performing all the necessary analyses on the variable “Burglary_Per_Capita.” If not, you can download this PDF document
Actions
(Ignore the information in the Notes Box in the PDF), which contains all the same results and visualizations.
3. Report and interpret the results for the following descriptive statistics.
Evaluate the variability of the data by examining Minimum, Maximum, Range, and S.D.
Examine the normality of the data by using skewness statistics and histograms.
Report and interpret the Median and Mean, then choose either one to represent the data.
Note: The data is not normally distributed; however, we will complete the rest of the tasks by assuming the normality of the sample,
Use the Mean to represent your sample, and then evaluate the representativeness of the sample by using S.E. of the Mean.
Identify the outliers using the z-score.
Estimate the true mean of the university population by using the Confidence Interval.
4. Make a decision based on the stats used, reports created, and interpretations made above.
You are proposing to allocate 100,000 dollars to address the burglary problem on campuses.
You are required to write a short memorandum to the California State general attorney by using the report with the interpretations of the descriptive stats you just completed above.
Note: Be sure to include your estimation of the true population mean by using your 95% C.I. statistic.
In the memorandum, you should also discuss the reasons regarding how to allocate 100,000 dollars to which campuses.
You can give 100,000 dollars to one college, or you can divide the budget and give the money to multiple colleges.
In your decision, you might want to consider identifying the “outliers” that have serious burglary problems.
Note: This is a good place to use z-scores to identify extreme cases/colleges that have more than the usual number of burglaries.
You should not discuss what you will do with the money. Instead, this assignment only concerns which college or colleges should receive the money and how much.
This is an open-ended question. However, your decision has to be made based on an empirical understanding of the burglary problem on California college campuses.
Final Note: Because we use the variable “Burglary_Per_Capita” for our analyses, you are advised to use the appropriate language. For instance, every time you discuss the crime problem, you should clearly use the phrase “number of burglaries per capita” instead of “number of burglaries” because we conducted the analyses with the variable “Burglary_Per_Capita.”
Submission Format
Please submit your assignment by uploading a Microsoft Word Document.
Rubric
Some Rubric (2)
Some Rubric (2)
Criteria Ratings Pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeReporting the descriptive analyses
3 pts
Reported all descriptive stats correctly
2 pts
Reported most of the descriptive stats and most are reported correctly
1 pts
Reported only a few of the descriptive stats and some are reported incorrectly
0 pts
No descriptive analyses results reported
3 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcomez-scores and hot spots
3 pts
Identified all the universities with the right threshold z-scores when identifying outliers
2 pts
Identified most the universities with the right threshold z-scores when identifying outliers
1 pts
Did identified some universities with the incorrect z-score to identify outliers
0 pts
Did not use z-scores to identify outliers (hot spots)
3 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeUsing scientific evidence to inform practices
3 pts
Decision was made based on the descriptive stats (i.e., z-scores) and the hot spots (outliers) identified
2 pts
Decision was made based on all relevant descriptive stats except for the z-scores and the hot spots (outliers) identified
1 pts
Decision was made based some of the relevant descriptive stats except for the z-scores and the hot spots (outliers) identified
0 pts
Decision made without considering evidence
3 pts
Total Points: 9
