Barkan quoted in BDN analysis on unreported Maine crimes
Steve Barkan, a sociology professor at the University of Maine and author of “Criminology: A Sociological Understanding (6th Edition),” was quoted in a Bangor Daily News analysis on why Maine crimes go unreported. Although crime throughout Maine hit a 40-year low last year, only one in five crimes were reported to police, according to the 2015 Maine Crime Victimization Survey released Tuesday by the Maine Statistical Analysis Center at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service. The primary source for information about the nature and extent of crime at the national and state level is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system, according to the article. A weakness of the system is that not all crimes are brought to the attention of police, which sociologists call “the dark figure of crime,” or the gap between the reported and actual crime rate in a given community, the article states. “The actual crime problem is a lot worse than what we hear about” from the Uniform Crime Reporting system, Barkan said.