Measuring Crime

Measuring Crime

1. Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)

   • Generates reliable crime statistics from more than 18,000 city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies.
   • There are 8 specific crimes reported: 1) Murder and Non-negligent Manslaughter, 2) Forcible Rape, 3) Robbery, 4) Aggravated Assault, 5) Burglary, 6) Larceny-Theft, 7) Motor Vehicle Theft, and 8) Arson. The reason these crimes were selected is because these crimes are most likely to be reported and most likely to occur with sufficient frequency to provide an adequate basis for comparison.
   • Primary Objective: Provide a reliable set of criminal justice statistics for law enforcement administration, operation, and management, as well as to indicate fluctuations in the level of crime in America.
   • Disadvantages: Reporting practice, law enforcement practices & methodological issues
     • Advantages: Inexpensive, source of data & may provide additional information

2. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

   • Designed to compliment UCR, NCVS was established to obtain and provide previously unavailable information about victims, offenders, and crime including crime not reported to the police.
   • Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 interviews on criminal victimization, involving 160,000 unique persons in about 95,000 households. Persons are interviewed on the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States.
   • The NCVS collects both reported and non reported information to the police, on information on nonfatal personal crimes (rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and personal larceny) and household property crimes (burglary/trespassing, motor-vehicle theft, and other types of theft)
   • Disadvantages: Under-reporting/underestimation, Over-reporting /overestimation & limited population number
     • Advantages: Provides data on reported and not reported crime to the police, offers a wide range of criminal victimization variables, survey has been ongoing for over three decades with a stable sample and methodology & has high response rates
   • Survey respondents provide information about themselves (e.g., age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, marital status, education level, and income) and whether they experienced a victimization.
     • For each victimization incident, the NCVS collects information about the offender (e.g., age, race and Hispanic origin, sex, and victim-offender relationship), characteristics of the crime (including time and place of occurrence, use of weapons, nature of injury, and economic consequences), whether the crime was reported to police, reasons the crime was or was not reported, and victim experiences with the criminal justice system.

3. National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

   • Created to improve the overall quality of crime data collected by law enforcement. It captures details on each single crime incident, as well as on separate offenses within the same incident, which includes information on victims, known offenders, relationships between victims and offenders, arrestees, and property involved in the crimes.
     • The program has the ability to provide circumstances and context for crimes like location, time of day, and whether the incident was cleared.
       • NIBRS submissions based on 5 units of count: 1. Incident 2. Offenses 3. Victims 4. Known Offenders 5. Arestees
   • Advantages: Provides a more comprehensive view of crime in the United States, and offers greater flexibility in data compilation and analysis.
     • Disadvantages: Only about a third of all US law enforcement agencies currently participate in NIBRS.