The Measurement of Crime: Official Crime Data

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The Measurement of Crime Official Crime Data

• UCR
• NCVS

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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

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Police Statistics on Crime (UCR)

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

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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

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Three annual publications

• Crime in the United States
• Hate Crime Statistics
• Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted

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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

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UCR includes

• Crimes reported to local law enforcement agencies
• The number of arrests made by police agencies

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Structure of UCR

• 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

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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)

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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

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UCR tabulates

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

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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)

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Clearance (2005)
Offence Frequency Clearance Rate
1. Larceny-Theft 7 million 18
2. Burglary 2 million 13
3. Motor Vehicle Theft 1.2 million 14
4. Aggravated Assault 1 million 56
5. Robbery 500,000 25
6. Rape 100,000 46
7. Arson 80,000 16
8. Murder 16,000 63

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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

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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

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Killings that dont 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

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Killings that dont 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

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Killings that dont 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

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Killings that dont count

• Hidden Bodies (no corpse no homicide)
• Missing Persons 85 to 90 of the 876,213
  persons reported missing to Americas 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

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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

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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

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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

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Assessment of UCR data

• In any single event, the most serious crime is
  reported (hierarchy rule) for statistical
  purposes
• The UCRs 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)

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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)

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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

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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 victims 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

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Assessment of UCR data

• Police departments have a dilemma (more
  crimemore resources, less crimegood 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

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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

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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 Bostons official rape rate was much
  lower than that for Los Angeles

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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

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The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

• The NCVS is under the auspices of the Bureau of
  Justice Statistics (BJS)

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The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

• Begun in early 1970s 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

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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

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Forcible rape

• UCR underreported crime
• NCVS around 30 of victims do not report rape to
  the police

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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

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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)

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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

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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!

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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 ...

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UCR and NCVS

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

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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

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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

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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