Measuring Crime and Sources of Crime Data

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Measuring Crime and Sources of Crime Data

• Stephanie Halter
• 1/26/05

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• VARIABLES logical groupings of attributes
• gender
• ATTRIBUTES are characteristics or qualities that
  describe some object
• male and female

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• DEPENDENT VARIABLE the variable assumed to
  depend on or be caused by another variable
• INDEPENDENT VARIABLE the variable assumed to
  cause or determine a dependent variable

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Criminal Justice Research

• CRIME OR DELINQUENCY
• Most often key dependent variable
• What causes crime?
• Why are some individuals/groups more prone to
  crime?
• How much crime in a certain area?
• But can also be independent variable
• How does level of neighborhood crime affect
  individuals fear of crime?

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Issues in Measuring Crime

• TYPE OF OFFENSE
• UNITS OF ANALYSIS what or who is to be
  described or analyzed (i.e. individuals, groups,
  countries, organizations, cities, social
  artifacts)
• Offender
• Victim
• Offense an individual criminal act (a theft)
• Incident one or more offenses committed by the
  same offender, or group of offenders acting in
  concert, at the same time and place. (FBI, 1998)

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• PURPOSE OF MEASURING CRIME
• Monitoring
• Agency accountability
• Research

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Available Measures of Crime

• CRIMES KNOWN TO POLICE
• Based on police records
• Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
• FBIs national data series
• Summary-based measure of crime
• Collected since 1930 (voluntary)
• Purpose to indicate fluctuations in the level of
  crime in America and aid law enforcement in
  administration, operation and management
• Annual Publication Crime in the United States
  (CIUS)

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UCR

• Index Offenses/Part I Crimes counted if reported
  to and recorded by police
• Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter
• Forcible rape
• Robbery
• Aggravated assault
• Burglary
• Larceny-theft
• Motor vehicle theft
• Arson (since 1978)

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• Part II Offenses are counted only if a person
  has been arrested and charged with a crime
• Arrest data for
• Shoplifting, drug sales and use, fraud,
  prostitution, simple assault, vandalism,
  receiving stolen property, and all other
  nontraffic offenses
• Varying definitions of crimes from state to state
  
• Hierarchy Rule

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Incident-Based Police Records

• Supplementary Homicide Reports
• (SHR)
• Incident-based
• National-Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
• FBI and BJS joint effort to convert UCR to NIBRS
• Incident-based
• Group A 46 offenses
• Group B arrest data
• No hierarchy rule
• More accurate measure of crime

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Victim Surveys

• Asks people if they have been the victim of a
  crime
• Surveys
• Measures victimizations
• Advantage-measures crimes not reported to police
• National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
• Census Bureau since 1972
• Nationally representative survey of households
• Dark figure of unreported crime

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NCVS

• Homeless
• Status offenses
• Crimes against children

• Not good measure of
• Crimes against businesses
• Victimless crimes
• Homicide/manslaughter
• Respondent recall errors or reluctance to admit

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Surveys of Offending

• Self-Report Surveys
• asks people about crimes they committed
• National Household Survey on Drug Abuse
• National sample of households (12) by US Dept.
  of Health and Human Services since 1971
• Lifetime use, current use, and heavy use
• Monitoring the Future (MTF)
• National Institute on Drug Abuse since 1975
• Annual survey of high school students
• (12th all years, 10th 8th grades-since 1991)

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Drug Surveillance Systems

• Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM)
• National Institute of Justice (NIJ), since 1997
• Replaced Drug Use Forecasting (DUF)
• Quarterly sample of arrestees in certain cities
• Self-Report Interviews and Urine Samples

• Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN)
• Nationwide sample of hospitals and medical
  examiners in major cities since early 1970s
• Emergency room medical reports for drug
  episodes
• Emergency room visits due to illegal/non-medical
  drug use