Introduction
Crime is a broad topic that cannot easily be defined or measured. To fully understand crime, one must consider a wide range of crime types such as, the characteristics of offenders and victims, the various ways that crime is defined and sources of data or information about crime in our society. This essay looks at 4 major segments of modern day crime, property crime, white collar crime, violent crime and internet crime and will describe them in terms of definitions, measures, prevalence in addition to offender and victim characteristics. And will reflect on how these crime types, offenders and their victims are similar and/or different.
Body
Firstly, Property crime comes under many categories such as arson, household burglary, graffiti, vandalism, theft and vehicle theft. Most of these categories also had many separate sub-categories going into more detail or separate areas such as fraud. Property crime can be defined as the theft of another person’s possessions and/or property, or the unlawful damage of a person’s possessions and/or property. This means the focus of the crime is on the property/ possessions of a person, compared to the person themselves. An example of this is the difference between burglary and robbery. For crime to be measured, it must be either detected or reported. This information, then comes in the form of data/statistics, from criminal justice agencies such as the police and the courts, but also from offenders and victims. The easiest way to obtain most of this information, would be to access the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which categorise their data in order with the Australian Standard Offence Classifications (ASOC). Which for property crime would fall under the division titles; 07- Unlawful entry with intent to burglary, break and enter, 08- Theft related offences, 09- Fraud, deception and related offences and 12- Property damage and environmental offences. Though unfortunately this data will never be...