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The Measurement of Crime: Official Crime Data

The Measurement of Crime: Official Crime Data. UCR NCVS. Official Crime Data . Comes from a number of sources UCR (or police reports of offenses and arrests) Charges filed by prosecutors Imprisonment data Prison releases. Police Statistics on Crime (UCR). Uniform Crime Reports

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The Measurement of Crime: Official Crime Data

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  1. The Measurement of Crime: Official Crime Data UCR NCVS

  2. Official Crime Data • Comes from a number of sources • UCR (or police reports of offenses and arrests) • Charges filed by prosecutors • Imprisonment data • Prison releases

  3. Police Statistics on Crime (UCR) • Uniform Crime Reports • Begun in 1930’s • Need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation • The U.S. Department of Justice instituted the compilation (by FBI) and publication

  4. UCR • FBI receives data from more than 17,000 city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies (voluntarily reporting) • For the most part, agencies submit monthly crime reports, using uniform offense definitions, to a centralized repository within their state. The state UCR Program then forwards the data to the FBI's national UCR Program. • Coverage: 90% in cities, 87% in rural areas

  5. Three annual publications • Crime in the United States • Hate Crime Statistics • Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted

  6. Data collection • Monthly basis • FBI provides report forms, UCR Reporting Handbook (1984), and self-addressed envelops • UCR Reporting Handbook – general rules for the classification and scoring of criminal offences • Definitions are important for standardization of reporting practices

  7. UCR includes • Crimes reported to local law enforcement agencies • The number of arrests made by police agencies

  8. Index Crimes (“Part I”) Murder Forcible rape Robbery Aggravated assault Burglary Larceny-theft Motor vehicle theft Arson (1979) Non-Index Crimes (“Part II”) Simple assault Forgery Fraud Embezzlement Buying, receiving, and possessing stolen property Carrying/possessing weapons Prostitution Sex offences Drug use violations Gambling Offense against family/children Structure of UCR

  9. UCR tabulates • The number of offenses • National Volume, Trends, and Rates • The offense rate per 100,000 population • The UCR Program examines data in increments of 2, 5, and 10 years to formulate trend information (in percentage change)

  10. UCR tabulates • The offense rate by region (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) • The UCR Program aggregates crime data into three community types: Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), cities outside metropolitan statistical areas, and nonmetropolitan counties • The UCR Program collects weapon data for murder, robbery, and aggravated assault offenses • An examination of these data indicated that most violent crime (30.7 percent) involved the use of personal weapons, such as hands, fists, feet, etc. Firearms were used in 26.4 percent and knives or cutting instruments were used in 15.5 percent of violent crime

  11. UCR tabulates • The nature of the offense (age, gender, race of offenders and victims) • The arrest (or clearance) rates of offenses

  12. Clearance • Crimes are cleared in two ways: • 1. When at least one person is arrested, charged, and turned over to the court for prosecution • 2. When some element beyond police control precludes the physical arrest of an offender (for example, the offender leaves the country)

  13. Clearance (2005)

  14. Murder: Definition • The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines murder and nonnegligent manslaughter as the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another. • The classification of this offense is based solely on police investigation as opposed to the determination of a court, medical examiner, coroner, jury, or other judicial body • The UCR Program does not include: suicide, or accident; justifiable homicides; and attempts to murder or assaults to murder, which are scored as aggravated assaults

  15. Ambiguity with murder • A victim of aggravated assault dies • Follow-up investigation are important for correcting multiple monthly reports • Less reliable agencies fail to record subsequent death of the victim as murder

  16. Killings that don’t count • Corporate killings (rarely perceive as homicide or prosecuted as such) • Unsafe working conditions, unsafe pharmaceutical products, unfit food products or illegal emissions into the environment

  17. Killings that don’t count • Death by driving is not treated as “real “ homicide (because does not fit the definition) • According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 16,694 people died in alcohol-related crashes in 2004, down 2.4 percent from 17,105 in 2003

  18. Killings that don’t count • Deaths in custody and During the Course of Arrests • Issue of deaths in prison or police custody or at the hands of police in the course of arrests • When police or prison officers cause the deaths of those they encounter (suspects or convicted criminals), these deaths are often not viewed as unlawful

  19. Killings that don’t count • Hidden Bodies (no corpse = no homicide) • Missing Persons: 85% to 90% of the 876,213 persons reported missing to America’s law enforcement agencies in 2000 were juveniles (persons under 18 years of age) • Establishing Mode of Death: due to complexities in establishing cause of death • In a case of a discovered body, it is not always possible to determine whether the death was a result of foul play

  20. Establishing Mode of Death • One of key purposes of a medical-legal autopsy is to establish the mode of death • Four modes of deaths are possible: • Natural • Accidental • Suicide • Homicide

  21. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome • Distinguishing SIDS from homicide can be difficult • SIDS is characterized by the death of seemingly healthy babies where the cause of death cannot be identified • It has been estimated that around 20% of SIDS cases are in fact suspicious infant deaths

  22. Assessment of UCR data • Unknown, probably massive amount of crime that goes unreported to the police (“dark figure” of crime) • Participation in the UCR is voluntary, not all police departments send crime reports to the FBI • UCR does not include federal crimes (blackmail), white collar crimes

  23. Assessment of UCR data • In any single event, the most serious crime is reported (”hierarchy rule”) for statistical purposes • The UCR’s Crime Index Total misrepresents the crime rate at any given year • Decrease in the number of larcenies cancels out an identical increase in the number of homicides (constant crime rate) • Auto theft, a less serious crime, has a very high reportability (artificially inflates the crime index rate)

  24. Unweighted Index • Murder has the same weight as a auto theft • Imagine two cities each with a crime rate of 100 per 100, 000 population. In city A, 100 murders were recorded whereas in city B, 100 joyrides were recorded. • The existence of the “Crime Index” may cause police agencies to concentrate on these crimes at the expense of other crimes. • Most crimes that are committed are not index offenses (Hagan, 2004)

  25. Discontinuing the use of the Crime Index • In June 2004, the CJIS APB approved discontinuing the use of the Crime Index in the UCR Program and its publications and directed the FBI publish a violent crime total and a property crime total until a more viable index is developed

  26. Assessment of UCR data • UCR data are more valid indicators of the behavior of the police than of offenders (Barkan, 1999) • Decision whether to record • Do not believe the victim’s account (Block, 1990) • May be busy to do the paperwork to record it (especially if the crime is not serious) • If there is no record = there is no crime

  27. Assessment of UCR data • Police departments have a dilemma (more crime=more resources, less crime=good work) • Poor, nonwhite males are more likely to be arrested • Public is more likely to report • Research suggests that police personnel and funds are concentrated in nonwhite poor neighborhoods (more arrests in these areas) • Arrest data gives a distorted picture of the “typical offender”

  28. Assessment of UCR data • Official number of crimes might change artificially (citizens become more or less likely to report offenses committed against them) • Example: increased number of reported rapes in the last two decades partly reflect growing awareness by women and police

  29. Assessment of UCR data • Police in various communities have different understanding and definitions of crimes • One study found that Los Angeles police recorded any attempted or completed sexual assault as rape, while Boston police recorded a sexual assault as a rape only if it involved completed sexual intercourse (Chappell, 1980) • Result: Boston’s official rape rate was much lower than that for Los Angeles

  30. Redesigned UCR • the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS • The NIBRS collects data on each single incident and arrest within 22 crime categories • For each offense known to police within these categories: incident, victim, property, offender, and arrestee information are gathered when available • Use of alcohol immediately before the offense

  31. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) • The NCVS is under the auspices of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)

  32. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) • Begun in early 1970’s to avoid the police reporting problems and bias • Provide more detailed information than UCR • Context of crime such as time of day and physical setting in which it occurs • Characteristics of crime victims (gender, race, income, age, extent of injury, and relationship with their offenders) • Characteristics of the offenders • Whether victimization has been reported to the police

  33. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) • Every six months the Census Bureau interviews about 110,000 residents age 12 and older • 50,000 randomly selected households • Aggravated and simple assault, rape and sexual assault, robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft • No homicide, arson, commercial crimes, white collar crimes, gambling • Crimes are described to respondents

  34. Forcible rape • UCR: underreported crime • NCVS: around 30% of victims do not report rape to the police

  35. Findings • Males have higher victimization rates then females for all violent crimes except rape/sexual assault • Young people have greater victimization risk than older people (victim risk diminishes rapidly after 25 years old) • African Americans had higher violent victimization rates than whites or other races

  36. Findings • People in the lowest income categories are much more likely to become crime victims • Females and African Americans were more likely to report a crime to police than were males and whites (Barkan, 1999)

  37. Males victims of DV • “I am larger than her. I was a one time amateur boxing champion. She never used weapons, so she never came close to hurting me physically. But she hit me whenever she got the notion to, she cut up my clothes and threw them in the yard, she destroyed the trophies I had accumulated in various sports competitions since childhood, and she destroyed a wedding album. Neither party was blameless, but the physical violence was all hers”

  38. Males victims of DV • “I was in a hellish marriage with a woman who had difficulty controlling her rage, which would frequently erupt with her hitting, verbal abuse, and screaming. If fighting with her did occur, it was self-defense; if she threw a punch or kicked, I defended myself. In one particular case, after she initiated a fight by kicking and throwing punches, she called the police to report me as the violent abuser! When they responded, I was seen as the bad guy, she was the victim! “

  39. Males victims of DV • “I was abused too many times and decided to end the relationship but I was unable to do so. The abuse intensified, she did not hesitate to hit me ... She also clawed me numerous time and even cut me with a knife. I was again failed to report the incidents to the authority. Many times she had threatened me that if I bring any charges against her, she would not hesitate to bring false charges against me ...”

  40. UCR and NCVS • UCR data are based on reported criminal acts (offender characteristics) • NCVS data based on individuals actually victimized (characteristics of victims)

  41. Assessment of NCVS • Document a massive amount of crime that goes unreported • Underestimate crime rate • Insignificant crimes tend to be forgotten • Victims of several crimes may also forget about all the crimes • Females do not report victimization if her abuser live in the same household

  42. Assessment of NCVS • NCVS respondents are interviewed every six months (7 interviews) • Reported victimization rates usually decease with each interview (awareness of victimization) • Overestimation of some crimes • Respondents might mistakenly interpret some noncriminal events as crimes • “Telescoping “ effect

  43. How do UCR and NCVS differ? • The UCR Program provides 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 • The NCVS provides previously unavailable information about victims, offenders, and crime (including crime not reported to the police) • The two programs employ different methodologies, but they measure a similar subset of serious crimes. Both programs cover forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft

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