Critique of Media Representation on Quantitative Research

Title of the News Report: Victorian Government Vows to Focus on Youth Reoffending as Crime Rates Remain Stable

Source of the News Report: Online Report

The topic that was brought to discussion by this news report (Victorian government vows to focus on youth reoffending as crime rates remain stable) was the good fact that the rates of crimes have generally remained stable for the last one year; nevertheless, the youth reoffending cases have been reported to increase. The research findings record that office robbery cases have dropped by 14% while robbery with violence to records a drop of 4.5% (Brown, 2013). In addition to this, the crime statistics agency showed that the rate of crime reports have remained unaffected although the figures of reported offenses have increased by 0.5% (Fatouros, 2015) The news report also points out of that in every six minutes the police at least handles one incident of family violence.

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Additionally, there was a 9% increase in the number of females aged bellow 19 years accused of crimes (Lynch, 2012). The target audience for this report is the youths who are certainly the cause of many severe injuries in society. The purpose of reporting this research is to enlighten the community on the urgency needed to address youth reoffending. This seems like a more serious article report.

Original Article Title: Characteristics of Chronic Offenders in Victoria

The research looked into the frequency of the offenders of all age brackets recorded within the ten years. The researchers also explored the features of the chronic offenders and made a comparison with the behaviors of the criminals with less offending frequencies. The research was conducted in response to the notion that crime rates are stable with reoffending being high with the youths. The research findings reported that; during the ten years, a small group of about 6.3% of the alleged offenders was chronic offenders who were also responsible for the 43.9% of the criminal incidents that were recorded (Markard et al., 2015). Moreover, more than half of the chronic offenders (54.2%) were found to be people aged below 25 years, with 83.3% being male (Markard et al., 2015). Besides this, 84 percent of the criminals were recorded to be born in Australia. The non-aggravated burglary was found to the most common offense recorded for chronic offenders, followed by retail store thefts (Brown, 2013). These chronic offenders often faced arrest as the common outcome from the police in more than ten alleged groups.

This research was conducted in Victoria in June 2019. The key questions for the investigation included: what portion of criminals was recorded for more than one criminal case within the ten years? What were the ages of the alleged criminals across the five frequency groups? Were the alleged offenders across the five frequency group born in different nations? Which offenses were commonly recorded for the alleged offenders across the five frequency group? Were the alleged offenders across the five frequency group of a different gender? What were the police outcomes across the offending frequency group? The subjects on the research were the youths since they are highly involved in criminal activities. The methods employed for data collection comprised of a statistical survey from the victims (the study of victims), which purely depends on individual's honesty and memory (Tubex et al., 2015). Secondly, the research team used law enforcement reports, which are only limited to reported and recorded crimes that have not been canceled. The statistical research findings prove that young people are chronic offenders in society since they had the highest frequency across the five group frequencies (Edgely, 2016). The hypothesis of the research was therefore true; reoffending was highly evident among the young people.

The news report and the original report have a lot of research findings in common; with the news report presenting the results from the original article in an accurate manner. The original report records that the most common type of offends committed by the alleged criminals includes store thefts and non- aggravated burglary. This is reflected in the new report, which records a decline in incidents of store breaking by 4.5%. Furthermore, the common police outcome in both types of research is arrest (Fatouros, 2015). However, the original research article points out high frequencies of the alleged chronic offenders in young people who are below the age of 25 years. The new report, on the other hand, points out that many youths are the cause of severe injuries in the community with the number of females under the age of 19 years increasing in crimes; there is a slight distortion on the age (the original report says below 25, the new report under 19 years of age).

Nevertheless, the information in the news report was presented in the strengths of the original study. This is evident by a high percentage of corresponding statistical data covering the same area of interest. There were no distortions made that gave the impression of prejudice or biases. The news report fit with my impression for reporting original report since the information conveyed was similar. On the other hand, if the news report would have included the general public when collecting data, the would have compiled a more reliable report after making comparisons with what the public has on the rates of criminal cases and the information provided by the law enforcement unit.

The exercise has enlightened me on how to read, interpret, and analyze statistical research findings. This comparison between the original and the news report has changed how I will be approaching news articles and research in future; it has enabled me to realize key features to look at in an article, interpretation of different research data and finally how to analyze the data to get meaningful information. While doing this critique, I was keen on statistical figures and findings made about the hypothesis of the study (a practice have not been considering while reading such kinds of articles).

The degree of similarity between the content in the original research study and the news report is better; this proved by the fact that the message portrayed by both types of research are compatible and they are addressing the same area of interest with the same objective. In addition to this, both the research findings have similar information although the statistical figures may be slightly distorted; a situation which can be given the benefit of the fact that between the periods when both types of research were conducted a change could have occurred though just a small change.

References

Brown, D. (2013). Looking behind the increase in custodial remand populations. International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(2), 80-99.

Edgely, M. (2016). Addressing the solution-focused skeptics: Moving beyond Punitivity in the sentencing of drug-addicted and mentally impaired offenders. UNSWLJ, 39, 206.

Fatouros, H. (2016, July). Is our youth justice system broken? In Paper delivered at the Castan Centre for human rights law conference (Vol. 22).

Lynch, N. (2012). Playing catch-up? The recent reform of New Zealand's youth justice system. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 12(5), 507-526.

Markard, J., Raven, R., & Truffer, B. (2012). Sustainability transitions: An emerging field of research and its prospects. Research Policy, 41(6), 955-967.

Tubex, H., Brown, D., Freiberg, A., Gelb, K., & Sarre, R. (2015). Penal diversity within Australia. Punishment & Society, 17(3), 345-373.