After researching doing more research on my topic I have found that there is a lot that we already know regarding crime and where it happens. However, what we don’t know is why those certain crimes are limited to those certain areas and other possible factors that contribute to crime and how, where, and when it occurs. Police relations and procedures are things that could have an effect on this. When trying to find more specific information on possible new areas of the topic to explore I found a good article that illustrates my point. The article, “Why the Police Have an Effect on Violent Crime After All: Evidence from the British Crime Survey,” written by Ben Vollaard of Tilburg University does a good job of presenting sometimes overlooked problems within the topic of crime, types of crime, and geography. This article goes into depth to try to figure out why property crime and violent crimes are reported differently by police and victims with the violent crimes being those without true numbers being reported. The article uses survey data for its analysis of the problem it is investigating. After analyzing the data the article goes on to conclude that police do have an effect on violent crime and its statistics. This is something not widely known or that would be thought about. That’s why its important to broaden your question to encompass concepts and questions out of the ordinary and that have not been investigated widely yet. They found that police have a bias when reporting thee crimes. The police themselves can have an effect on the information that is even available on the topic.
Ben Vollaard; Joseph Hamed. “Why the Police Have an Effect on Violent Crime After All: Evidence from the British Crime Survey.” The Journal of Law & Economics, Vol. 55, No. 4 (November 2012), pp. 901-924