Production of Crime Statistics

1
Production of Crime Statistics

• Measuring Crime Statistics
• Chapter 3

2
Categorizing and Measuring Crime and Criminal
Behavior

• When attempting to understand, predict, and
  control any social problem, including the crime
  problem, the first step is to determine its
  extent.
• Three categories of major crime data sources in
  the United States
• Official statistics
• Victimization survey data
• Self-reported data

3
Three Major Sources of Crime Statistics

• Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) - collected by local
  police departments and forwarded to the FBI.
• good or bad?
• - NIBRS - new what is it? good or bad?
• National Crime Victimization Surveys (NCVS) -
  conducted jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and
  the U.S. Department of Justice.
• - good or bad
• Self-Report Data (SRD) - conducted by independent
  researchers.
• - good or bad?

4
Review of Research Methodology

• Theories are often grounded in crime stats, stats
  are used to test theories, stats. guide theory
  and research to address increases and decreases.
• Independent and dependent variables.
• Correlation (-1 to 1) strength of a relationship
• Causality cause precedes the outcome while
  other causal/potentially causal factors are
  controlled.
• Cross-sectional and longitudinal research
  designs.
• Micro-level and macro-level analyses.
• Sampling.
• Generalizability (apply to population), validity
  correctly inferred, produced desired result), and
  reliability (replicability).

5
History of Official Crime Statistics

• Knowledge about the extent and distribution of
  crime in the United States prior to the twentieth
  century was based primarily upon local arrest
  statistics, court records, and jail and prison
  data. no uniformity! Q?- how do you work with
  that to develop any degree of understanding of
  crime?
• Answer - you cant!
• The International Association of Chiefs of Police
  (IACP). led the way for adoption of uniform
  reporting and recording in 1929
• The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) was the result.
  http//www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

6
Description of theUniform Crime Reports

• Part I (Index Crimes)
• Criminal homicide
• Forcible rape
• Robbery
• Aggravated assault
• Burglary
• Larceny-theft
• Motor vehicle theft
• Arson
• Part I offenses include those illegal acts
  considered to be particularly serious that occur
  with sufficient frequency to provide an adequate
  basis for comparison (U.S. Department of
  Justice, 19803)

• Part II (Non-Index Crimes)
• Part II offenses include most other crimes not
  itemized in Part I. Twenty specific crimes and a
  catchall other category are in this section,
  including other assaults, embezzlement,
  vandalism, sex offenses, drunkenness, and status
  offenses. (reporting only includes cries that are
  cleared by an arrest)

7
Strengths and Weaknesses of the UCR

• Strengths
• Easily accessible and relatively inexpensive to
  obtain.
• Lots of data available to work with and do
  research SHR data
• The UCR responds to political and societal
  pressures to record additional information about
  new developments example?
• May not like it but its better than arrest or
  conviction rates why?
• How do you calculate a rate? How do you compare
  it across time and place? What about different
  denominators more or less appropriate for rape,
  vehicle theft, etc.
• Weaknesses
• The UCRs emphasis upon conventional street
  crimes and its exclusion of other serious crimes.
• Internet, white collar, federal,
• The UCR can be a tool for political manipulation
  especially since street crimes seem to be the
  only thing that matters given the UCR bias. This
  is currently going on rise in murder rate and
  other violent crimes.
• Problems also arise from recording practices -
  i.e., definitions of crimes.
• Problem with the way crimes are counted.
  hierarchical rule?
• Crime rates are misleading (Las Vegas).
• It has a reactive nature - private citizens must
  report crime.

8
Figure 1. The FBI's Crime Clock

• Every 23.1 seconds One Violent Crime
• Every 32.6 minutes One Murder
• Every 5.6 minutes One Forcible Rape
• Every 1.3 minutes One Robbery
• Every 36.9 seconds One Aggravated Assault
• Every 3.1 seconds One Property Crime
• Every 14.7 seconds One Burglary
• Every 4.5 seconds One Larceny-theft
• Every 25.5 seconds One Motor Vehicle Theft

9
Alternative Measures of CrimeNIBRS
http//www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/NIBRS/ - a new
source of official records data

• Response to criticism about UCR
• Introduced in 1984 and today is used by abt. half
  of all states slow to adopt though.
• 2 purposes 1) enhance quantity, quality and
  timeliness of data collected 2) improve the
  methodology for compiling, analyzing, and
  publishing data
• Much more detail provided compared to UCR (46 A
  and 11 B offenses)
• Avoids Hierarchical rule
• Records Group A and B offenses instead of Part I
  and II
• Both groups are much more inclusive than UCR
  (list on pg. 98)
• Lots of data entry errors personal experience
  CPV age, intimidate to death

10
Strengths and Weaknesses of the NIBRS

• Strengths
• Has both a victim file and an offender file that
  can be worked with a various levels of
  aggregation local, state, U.S., etc.
• Lots of data available to work with and do
  research
• Can study and look at event characteristics
  including weapons, drugs, alcohol ,etc. not as
  many as would like but a few
• Broader age rage for both victim and offender
  available than some other sources provide
• Individual level data is available from arrest
  records and victim reports available
• Etc.
• Weaknesses
• Only crimes reported to the police are recorded
  similar to UCR in this respect.
• Has a steep learning curve for departments and
  requireds a good deal of training and resources.
• States, counties, depts. Have been slow to
  embrace and adapt hence only about half of all
  states participating
• Major prob. Is doing longitudinal and looking at
  trends over time each year more places join or
  drop off reporting list.Problems also arise from
  recording practices - i.e., definitions of crimes.

11
Alternative Measures of Crime

• Self-Report Studies been instrumental in
  explaining etiology delinquency. Primary target
  population is juveniles.
• Short and Nye (1957) first major work -
  revealed a different image of the juvenile
  delinquent and the extent of delinquency than
  official records had previously portrayed (SES
  and quality of family life not related to
  delinquency)
• The National Youth Survey (NYS) 1977-
  outstanding study great methodology cohort
  study of 1700 - expensive elaborate - developed
  to resemble the crime categories of the UCR
• The Project on Human Development in Chicago
  Neighborhoods (PHDCN). MacArthur funded project
  a longitudinal probability sample of 80 city
  neighborhoods (6200 kids in 7 cohorts w/ follow
  up)

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Strengths and Weaknessesof Self-Report Data

• Strengths
• Uncovers the dark figure of crime - the police
  were only being informed about or discovering a
  relatively small fraction of the crime that was
  occurring.
• Self-report studies go straight to the point of
  investigation.
• The self-report technique is not subject to
  manipulation or politicization.
• Weaknesses
• Self-report studies have been conducted primarily
  with adolescent populations. Etiology has been
  focus so this is understandable but should be
  validated with other populations.
• Places an emphasis upon trivial offenses and
  status offenses (?) , especially in the NYS
  making comparisons to adult crimes impossible .
• The time frame it considers memory recall
  issues - i.e., one year in the NYS.
• Methodological concerns - sampling, selective
  responding/socially desirable, falsification,
  validity, reliability, memory decay, interviewer
  measurement error.
• Solution identify deception, promote anonymity,
  new techniques (UCT)

13
Victimization Studies

• The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
  (pg. 114)- http//www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/NCVS/
  
• Conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau with DOJ.
• Questions are asked about fear of crime, the
  perceived decline or improvement of the
  neighborhood in regard to crime, and about steps
  that have been taken to protect the household
  against victimization.
• Has been redesigned to help with incident recall

14
Strengths of Victimization Surveys

• Can be compared with the UCR and therefore is a
  validity check.
• Violent crime down but rape up how so?
• Can be used to study geographical and temporal
  variations in the crime rate.
• Can provide a basis for evaluating local and
  national law enforcement practices.
• A lot of information is collected about
  relatively few crimes.
• Because of its panel design, it is also possible
  to examine the psychosocial effects of
  victimization upon victims.

15
Weaknesses of Victimization Surveys

• Problems with falsification, series events,
  interviewer effect, and sampling, coding see
  rape example on pg. 116.
• Underreporting resulted from the
  household-respondent method of data collection.
• Cost.
• Recording difficulty because many victimizations
  reported represent trivial offenses, and the
  surveys record crimes committed against
  households and individuals.
• Problems with reliability because individuals
  vary in their reporting of victimization.

16
Comparison of UCR, SRD,and NCVS Data Sources

• They paint different pictures of crime in the
  United States.
• Definitional differences among the three sources.
• UCR and NCVS allow city comparisons - the UCR
  records crimes that occur in the city, whereas
  the NCVS measures crimes that happened to city
  residents.
• Differences exist with regard to how the data get
  recorded.

17
Other Measures of Crime

• Cohort Studies
• Biographies
• Observational Studies
• Another important source of data for theory
  testing in Crim. and operationalization (?) comes
  from the Census Bureau examples