rse than it actually is (Part, 1998). Police reports of crime rates are also often misleading. Reliable court data is not available for making true crime statistics available to the public. For instance, it does not indicate how overrepresented minority youth are in the criminal justice system so little attention and little legislation is directed that way.
A study by Matthew B. Robinson looked at students' perceptions of various types of behaviors, some of them criminal behaviors and some of them known as "excluded harms" (harmful behaviors which are not criminal) and looked at the myths surrounding such crimes (Robinson, 1996). The study looked at which of a set of criminal and non-criminal behaviors the students considered most harmful, most serious, most frequent, and most threatening to their personal safety. It also looked at the effects of prior victimization, and compared the perceptions of students of criminology and/or criminal justice (CCJ) and those of business students. The results showed that students perceived as behaviors which posed the most threat, those behaviors by which they had previously been victimized, and reported a higher level of perceived risk than students who had not been victimized. There was no difference between CCJ students and business students for the behaviors tested.
As a matter of fact, excluded harms are harmful, frequently occurring and serious, a myth the American public basically buys into (Robinson, 1999). The CCJ students reported a slightly higher belief in the harm of excluded harm crimes, but little. None of the students thought these were the most frequent crimes in the United States. Excluded harms include white collar crime, corporate violence, reckless and negligent behaviors,
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