The Pattern Is Not the Reason SOC 3333 · Crime Lab · Midwestern State University

Part 3 is where papers go wrong, and they go wrong in one specific way. A student finds a real pattern, reports it accurately, and then stops. The pattern sits on the page looking like an explanation, and because nobody wrote a false sentence, nobody notices that no explaining happened. This page is about the step after the pattern. It is also about doing that step responsibly, because the patterns in this part are about people, and a pattern reported without a mechanism invites the reader to supply their own. Nothing here is recorded and nothing is graded.

A pattern tells you where to look. It does not tell you why.

Every statement below is true. Some of them describe a pattern and some of them propose an explanation for one. Sorting them apart is the whole skill, and it is harder than it sounds, because a well-worded pattern can feel like it already contains its own reason.

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The test that separates them. Ask whether the statement could be checked by counting. If yes, it is a pattern. If checking it would require you to establish why something happens rather than that it happens, it is an explanation, and explanations can be wrong in ways that counting will not reveal. Chapter 5 gave you the patterns. Chapters 6 through 12 are the competing explanations for them, and this course spent nine weeks on the second job because it is much harder than the first.
Why this matters for your grade and beyond it. A Part 3 that reports six patterns and explains none of them is a description of a spreadsheet. A Part 3 that reports three patterns and works carefully through what might produce each one is a piece of criminology. The rubric weights the second, and Part 4 is built directly on top of it.

Two words that get used as if they were one

Part 3 asks who offends and who is victimized. That means you will be reporting group differences, and the vocabulary for doing it precisely exists for a reason.

Disparity

A difference between groups in an outcome. Group A is arrested at a higher rate than Group B. This is an observation. It says nothing about why, and by itself it accuses nobody of anything.

Disproportionality

A group's share of an outcome compared to its share of the population. A group that is 13 percent of the population and 30 percent of arrests is over-represented by that measure. Also an observation, and a different one.

Neither one is a finding about people. Both are findings about a rate, and a rate has a numerator and a denominator, both of which were produced by something. Chapter 5 spent its whole length on this. A disparity in arrests can come from a difference in offending, a difference in reporting, a difference in police deployment, a difference in what gets charged, or any combination, and the arrest number alone cannot distinguish them.

Three sentences about the same finding. Only one of them is defensible. Pick it.

The rule for this course, and for your paper. State the pattern as a statement about rates in populations. Name the mechanism you think produces it. Say what would have to be true for a different mechanism to be the real one. That is three sentences, and doing it costs you nothing except the temptation to sound certain.
The reason this is a rule and not a preference. A group difference reported without a mechanism does not stay neutral in a reader's mind. It gets filled in, and the thing readers reach for first is usually a claim about the people rather than about their circumstances, their treatment, or the instrument that counted them. You are not being asked to soften a finding. You are being asked to finish it.

One gap, four explanations that all fit it

Here is a pattern of the kind you will report. Imagine that arrest rates for your offense are substantially higher in one neighborhood than in a demographically similar one nearby. That is real, and it is the beginning of the work rather than the end. At least four different mechanisms produce that same observation, and the arrest data cannot tell them apart.

Notice what just happened. Four mechanisms, one observation, and each one implies a completely different response. If it is a difference in offending, the answer is in Chapters 8 through 10. If it is a difference in reporting, the answer is Chapter 2. If it is a difference in deployment, the answer is Chapter 14. If it is a difference in what gets charged, the answer is Chapter 11. Writing a Part 3 that names which one you think it is, and why, is worth more than a paper that reports six patterns and interrogates none.
You are not expected to settle it. Most of these questions are unsettled in the published literature, and a paper that claims to resolve one is overreaching. What earns the points is naming the rival explanations, saying which the evidence best supports, and saying what evidence would change your mind. That last clause is the one that separates a strong Part 3 from a competent one.

Getting the patterns for your own offense

Start with the five sources you already have. Most research articles report demographic and situational breakdowns somewhere, and students routinely miss them because of where they sit in the paper.

Where the breakdowns hide in a research article. Table 1 is almost always sample descriptives, and it will give you age, sex, and often race and class for whoever was studied. The methods section tells you where and when the data came from, which is your geography and your period. The results tables carry the group comparisons. The limitations paragraph tells you which patterns the authors themselves do not trust. Read those four places before you decide you need a new source.

Six kinds of pattern, and where each one usually lives.

When your existing sources genuinely cannot answer it. Then find another one, and hold it to the same standard as Parts 1 and 2. The journal is in criminology, criminal justice, or sociology, or it is a psychology journal about crime and the legal system. It reports a study rather than an opinion. You found it yourself in a library database. Adding a source because you need it is good practice. Adding one to hit a number is not.
And if a pattern simply is not known for your offense. Say so, the same way Part 2 handled missing data. Nobody has broken your offense down by age. Here is why that is hard to do. Here is the nearest thing anyone has measured. That is a real finding about the state of the field and it earns full credit.

How to write a group difference without writing something false

This is a short tab and it is the one worth rereading before you submit. Four habits, each of which takes one clause.

One. Attach the rate to the category, not the person. Write that arrest rates were higher among a group, not that a group is more criminal. The first is what the data says. The second is a claim about people that no arrest count can support, and the distance between them is the entire difference between criminology and prejudice with a citation attached.

Two. Name the instrument in the same sentence. Arrest rates, self-reported offending, and victimization rates give different pictures of the same phenomenon, and the gaps between them are themselves findings. A pattern in arrests is a pattern in arrests. Say so and the sentence becomes both more accurate and more interesting.

Three. Give the mechanism, even provisionally. A pattern without a proposed mechanism is an invitation for the reader to invent one. You do not have to be certain. You do have to say what you think is producing it and on what basis.

Four. Say what would change your mind. One sentence. If this evidence appeared, I would think the other explanation was right. It is the cheapest credibility available in academic writing and almost nobody in an undergraduate paper does it.

The same discipline you have already met three times. Chapter 5 on race and class, Chapter 10 on discrimination and strain, and Chapter 12 on the victim-offender overlap all made the same demand: state the claim as a claim about rates, name the mechanism, and license no inference from the group to the individual. Part 3 is where you do it in your own writing rather than reading someone else do it.

Before you submit Part 3

Work down this list with your draft open. Click a line when it is true. Nothing here is recorded.

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That is the list. Part 4 asks you to apply two course theories to your offense and judge which the evidence supports. The patterns you establish here are the evidence those theories will be judged against, so a careful Part 3 makes Part 4 mostly a matter of choosing well.