REFERENCES:
Victims and the Police
QUESTION TYPE:
Essay
HAS VARIABLES:
False
enforcement agencies can find themselves in conflict.
48. When people fill out a complaint in a police station, they want officers to accept without question their versions of
what transpired. Define and discuss the processes of unfounding and defounding. In what ways do these processes impact
the numbers of serious crimes recorded by police departments?
Unfounding is the result of the police process where the victim’s claim is rejected either
because the officer does not believe the victim, or the case is essentially unprovable in a
court of law. Defounding concerns those cases where the officer believes the crime took
place but is not to the level of seriousness noted by the victim. In these types of cases, the
crime may be reclassified to a lesser charge. Statistically speaking, this reduces the number
of serious crimes tabulated by the police department. This can be questioned if the
tabulated reduction coincides with recent pressures to reduce violent crime from political
or other social forces.
CVIV.KARM.20.06.05 – Describe the kind of evidence that can be used to
evaluate a police department’s effectiveness in meeting the needs of victims in its
jurisdiction.
49. Explain the different ways in which “clearance rates” can be interpreted.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program
defines clearing crimes as making arrests. The FBI guidelines for tabulation state that once
an offender is turned over to the prosecutor, the crime has been cleared by police. The
UCR program counts the number of reported offenses that have been closed rather than the
number of suspects charged with those crimes. For example, several crimes may be
cleared by the arrest of one person, or just one crime may be closed by the arrests of
several accomplices. Even if the only suspect arrested is not convicted, the police still
consider the crime to be solved. Also, prosecutors may drop charges; judges may dismiss
charges; attorney negotiations can lead to plea deals to plead guilty to lesser charges; and
if the defendant is found not guilty in a trial, usually the case is not reopened. Therefore, as