The United States is a diverse country; its criminal justice systems differ across its 50 states. As most criminal justice activity is organized at the local or state level, understanding American criminal justice often means understanding local and state differences.
The data in "JUSTICE.SAV" will allow you to explore those social differences. Perform Pearson's correlation matrix to explore answers for the following questions.
- Howdifferentare the rates of violent crime and rates of crime against property across the 50 states? (This question is NOT about association but about difference. You need to perform the mean and standard deviation first for each variable.)
- How are the violent and property crime rates related to spending on criminal justice (report the direction and size of the association)?
- Are the states with higher rates of violent crimes more likely to spend more money on their criminal justice systems?
- How are the violent and property crime rates associated with spending onpolicingand onprisons?
- Compare the violent crime rates of the 50 states by regional patterns with a bar chart. (You need to first create a new variable "region" with four values, each representing one of the following Northeast Region, Midwest Region, South Region, and West Region; then code each state into one of the four regions according to the Census Bureau Regions. See http://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/usa-maps/united-states-regional-maps.html. Scroll down the site to the table named United States Regions Map where you can find what states belong to what region.
To answer Question 5, you should compare the mean violent crime rates of the four regions. Use the following commands with SPSS: Analysis ===> Compare Means ===> Means (You should treat Region as the independent, violent crimes as the dependent). Write your answers in a short report with statistical evidence for each specific statement and direct your readers to the supporting table accordingly. For example, "Years of education is significantly and positively correlated with income (r = .56, P = .000, see Table X).
Submit your responses in MSWord as one document. Label each section clearly. For written answers, please make sure your responses are well written, use CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements, and have the proper citation, if needed.