The Measurement of Crime
Module 3 explores the importance of measuring crime and examines some of those most notable crime reports and statistics, e.g., National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Uniform Crime Report (UCR), National Crime Victims Survey (NCVS), and self-report surveys. The module provides an opportunity to explore how the measurement of crime involves various methods and indicators to quantify and analyze criminal activity and victimization. For example, crime rates are some commonly used measurements of crime. Crime rates express the number of reported crimes per population or a specific unit of measurement (e.g., per 1,000 or 100,000 people). Crime rates allow for comparisons between different areas or time periods and help assess the relative prevalence of crime within each population. However, absent incident-level data, it becomes difficult if not impossible to contextualize victimization; that is, location, relationship, etc. In addition, the module provides a cursory review of crime mapping as an effective way to analyze where crime occurs. Finally, the module will consider how crime data helps authorities, researchers, and policymakers understand the nature and extent of crime, identify high-risk areas, evaluate the effectiveness of crime prevention strategies, and make informed decisions to enhance public safety.
Learning Objectives
After completing this module, you should be able to:
- define the elements of the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and identify its strengths and weaknesses as a crime data source.
- describe methodological differences between the UCR and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
- define the difference between aggregate and incident-level measurement.
- define the elements of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and identify its strengths and weaknesses as a crime data source.
- define the elements of the National Incident-Based Reporting System.
- understand what patterns are present in the UCR and the NCVS and what they reveal about crime.
- list advantages and disadvantages of the UCR and NCVS.
- summarize what data sources tell us about the criminal justice system.
Summary
Crime reports play a crucial role in ensuring public safety. By documenting and reporting crimes, law enforcement agencies can identify patterns, trends, and hotspots, enabling them to allocate resources effectively and prevent future crimes. Timely and accurate crime reports help communities stay informed about potential dangers and take necessary precautions. They also provide essential information for criminal investigations. They contain details about the nature of the crime, the location, the time of occurrence, and any potential witnesses or suspects. This information helps law enforcement agencies initiate investigations, gather evidence, and identify and apprehend suspects. Crime reports also serve as valuable evidence during criminal trials, aiding in the prosecution of offenders.
By analyzing crime reports, law enforcement agencies can gain insights into crime patterns and trends. They can identify recurring criminal activities, modus operandi, and potential links between different incidents. This analysis allows them to develop effective strategies to combat crime, allocate resources efficiently, and implement preventive measures. In addition, they assist in determining resource allocation for law enforcement agencies. By understanding the types and frequency of crimes in different areas, agencies can deploy officers, patrol units, and investigative teams accordingly. Crime reports can also guide the allocation of financial resources for crime prevention initiatives, community outreach programs, and technology upgrades.
One of the more salient benefits of crime data is that it contribute to the formulation of crime prevention policies and strategies. When authorities have access to accurate data on crime rates and trends, they can make informed decisions regarding law enforcement strategies, legislation, and public safety initiatives. Such policies can be tailored to address specific types of crime prevalent in a particular area, leading to more effective crime prevention and reduction. In addition, they provide a basis for supporting and assisting victims of crimes. Law enforcement agencies can connect victims with support services, such as counseling, legal aid, and victim compensation programs. Accurate crime reports help ensure that victims’ needs are addressed and that appropriate resources are allocated to assist them in their recovery.
Overall, crime reports are crucial for maintaining public safety, aiding investigations, understanding crime patterns, allocating resources effectively, developing crime prevention strategies, and supporting victims of crime. They form the foundation of a well-informed and proactive approach to law enforcement and community safety.
Key Takeaways
- Crime reports and statistics are tools that convey information about the extent, nature, and characteristics of crime and how they change over time.
- Two major sources of crime reports and statistics in the United States are the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), both published by the Department of Justice.
- UCR collects data on crimes reported to law enforcement agencies, using two systems: the traditional summary system and the newer National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
UCR data cover a wide range of offenses, but have limitations such as underreporting, manipulation, and lack of incident details. - NCVS collects data on crimes experienced by individuals and households, regardless of whether they were reported to the police.
- UCR and NCVS have different purposes, methodologies, populations, crimes, and counting rules, which result in divergent estimates of crime rates and trends.
Key Terms/Concepts
Benchmark
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)
Clearance Rates
Crime Mapping
Disaggregate
Full-Participation Agency
Hotel Rule
Limited-Participation Agency
National Crime Victim Survey (NVCS)
National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
Self-Report Surveys
Uniform Crime Report
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)
Victimization Rates
Modern Application
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
The advent of personal computing machines that were available for public consumption in the late 1980s, produced unanticipated ways for would-be criminals to commit crime. Although most crimes were, “traditional crimes committed in a non-traditional way” (McQuade III, 2006), new crimes like hacking were also imagined. Despite the precipitous increase in digital crimes, there was no formal way to collect incident rate information. The private industry, e.g., Norton, Semantic, Internet Watch Foundation, etc., proactively began collecting data related to a variety of digital crimes.
In 2000, the Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), established the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). The IC3 has received complaints crossing the spectrum of cyber crime matters, to include online fraud in its many forms including Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) matters, Computer Intrusions (hacking), Economic Espionage (Theft of Trade Secrets), Online Extortion, International Money Laundering, Identity Theft, and a growing list of Internet facilitated crimes. It has become increasingly evident that, regardless of the label placed on a cyber crime matter, the potential for it to overlap with another referred matter is substantial. Therefore, the IC3, formerly known as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center ( Internet Fraud Complaint Center ), was renamed in October 2003 to better reflect the broad character of such matters having an Internet, or cyber, nexus referred to the IC3, and to minimize the need for one to distinguish “Internet Fraud” from other potentially overlapping cyber crimes.
Visit the IC3 webpage and review Annual Reports and other data related to complaints of computer crime.
Read, Review, Watch and Listen
1. Read Chapter 44: Crime Reports And Statistics by Callie Marie Rennison, University of Missouri – St. Louis (Rennison, 2009)
- Print a copy or have access to this reading via a digital device for in class review and discussion.
- You can choose to listen to the article by clicking on the listen icon
located within the navigation bar associated with the article.
2. Review the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) website
3. Review Chicago Data Portal: click HERE
4. Review Chicago Police Department’s CLEARmap: click HERE
5. Review NIBRS Participation Rates and Federal Crime Data Quality
6. Watch the FBI’s NIBRS 101 resource: [also located below]
7. Watch the Bureau of Justice Statistics’(BJS) Learn More about the NCVS: (also located below)
8. Listen to There’s A Continued Uptick in Violent Crime, According to Federal Survey (NPR, September 11, 2019)
9. Listen to the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) Justice Today’s podcast The Science of School Safety [11:55 – #17 within the list of episodes]
To access the PPT file, click HERE. Note that files are updated regularly and as such might change in content and appearance.
Read, Review, Watch and Listen to all listed materials by the due date listed within the course LMS (i.e., Blackboard) site.
Contact the professor with any course-related questions
Click HERE to report any needed updates, e.g., broken links.
Discussion Questions
- What are the main purposes and functions of crime reports and statistics and how do they help us understand the nature and extent of crime in society?
- What are the major differences between the UCR and the NCVS and how do they affect the measurement and comparison of crime over time?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of the UCR and NVCS?
- What are some of the recent developments and innovations in crime reporting systems and how do they address the gaps and problems of the existing systems?
- How would you design your own crime reporting system? What types of crimes, victims, offenders, and incident characteristics would you include? What methods and tools would you use to collect and analyze the data?
Supplemental Resources
- National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
- National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
- National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
Activity – Trends in Violent Crime
Students should review the course syllabus to determine the assignment of this activity.
This is a copy of the module’s activity that students find within Blackboard. For that reason, refer to the Activities page to submit your work for review.
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to explore the nature and extent of violent crime and better understand why some groups of people experience a greater or lower rate of violence.
Instructions
- Review Data Matters: The Story In Numbers – Trends In Violent Crime (see attached)
- Review Forbes’ [Infographic] article, Major American Cities See Sharp Spike In Murders In 2020 (Aug. 4, 2020)
- Review Statista’s data on the Number of violent crime victims in the United States from 2005 to 2021, by gender
- Review the National Crime Victim Survey’s (NCVS) Summary findings (BJS, 2020) [https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/cv20_sum.pdf]
Answer the following questions:
- Why might some groups of people experience violence at a greater or lower rate? Explain.
- If a group of people have a higher rate of violent victimization, does that mean that the same group also has the highest number of victims? Be specific and use chapter specific details to formulate your response.
- How do rates and counts differ?
- How would you explain the significant decrease in property and nonfatal violent crime rates since the early 1990s.
Key Concepts & Chapter Related Facts
- Count only really make sense if your denominator is fixed, or relatively so. For example, if as a probation officer, you see 1,000 clients each month, then a change in cases from Month X to Month X+1 is a genuine change in cases.
- Dark figure of crime – Crimes that fail to come to the attention of the police, because they were unreported, it was unclear a crime occurred, or no one learned that a crime was committed.
- National Crime Victim Survey (NCVS) – A nationally representative survey of victims of property, and personal violence in the United States.
- Rates are the number of events that occur in a defined period, divided by the average population at risk of that event.
- Uniform Crime Report (UCR) – This program, started by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the moved under the umbrella of the FBI in 1929, is a compilation of crime data.
Refer to the course learning management system (LMS); that is Blackboard (BB), for the correct due date. In addition, submit your work via BB for grading.
References
- Rennison, C. M. (2009). Crime Reports and Statistics. In J. M. Miller (Ed.), 21st Century Reference Series. 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook (Vol. 1, pp. 383-390). SAGE Reference. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3201600056/GVRL?u=cod_lrc&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=3e3598e2
- National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). United States Department of Justice (DOJ). https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/ucr/nibrs. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
- Chicago Data Portal. https://data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/Crimes-Map/dfnk-7re6. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
- Chicago Police Department CLEARMap. https://nij.ojp.gov/. https://gis.chicagopolice.org/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
- Congressional Research Service (May 24, 2022). https://cod.pressbooks.pub/app/uploads/sites/148/2023/09/NIBRS-Participation-Rates-and-Federal-Data-Crime-Data-Quality-May-2022.pdf. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
- NIBRS 101. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). United States Department of Justice (DOJ, 2018). Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
- United States Department of Justice (DOJ). Learn More about the NCVS (BJS, 2023). https://youtu.be/AT3wFwLS2uo?si=BtUo__uBJmOViTEg. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
- NPR Morning Edition. There’s A Continued Uptick in Violent Crime, According to Federal Survey (Martin Kaste,Tanya Ballard Brown, Sep. 11, 2019). Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
- United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Justice Today. The Science of School Safety. National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.
Refers to a standard or point of reference against which the performance or characteristics of something can be measured or evaluated. Benchmarks are commonly used to assess the relative performance or quality of data, processes, systems, or investments.
BJS is the primary statistical agency of the Department of Justice. It is one of the thirteen principal federal statistical agencies throughout the Executive Branch, agencies whose activities are predominantly focused on the collection, compilation, processing, or analysis of information for statistical purposes.
Represent the percentage of reported crimes that result in an arrest, charge, or other form of resolution by law enforcement. Clearance rates can indicate the effectiveness of police investigations and the likelihood of holding offenders accountable.
Involves the visualization of crime data on maps, allowing analysts to identify crime hotspots, patterns, and trends. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology is often used to map crime data, enabling law enforcement agencies to allocate resources efficiently.
Means to break down or divide something into its individual components, parts, or smaller units. This term is often used in various fields, including statistics, economics, data analysis, and decision-making, to gain a more detailed or granular understanding of a larger entity or dataset.
NIBRS participating agencies that submit data on all Group A and B offenses.
Within the context of the UCR, means that if a number of units under a single manager are burglarized and the offenses are most likely to be reported to the police by the manager rather than the individual tenants, the burglary must be reported as a single offense. Burglaries of hotels, motels, lodging houses, or other places where lodging of transients is the main purpose can present reporting problems to law enforcement.
A NIBRS participating agency unable to meet the offense-reporting requirements of full-participation agencies. That is, these agencies submit detailed incident information only on Part I UCR offenses.
Conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the United States, gathers information on criminal victimization, regardless of whether it was reported to law enforcement. The survey collects data through interviews with individuals, aiming to capture crimes that may go unreported to the police.
An advanced method of crime data collection and reporting developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States. Since January 2021, NIBRS replaced the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) as it was designed to provide a detailed and comprehensive review of crime, victims, and more nuanced factors. That is, it provides more detailed and comprehensive information about crimes and incidents.
Unlike the UCR, which only captures summary data on a limited number of offenses, NIBRS collects data on each reported incident and includes a wide range of offense types, such as crimes against persons, property crimes, and crimes against society. It captures extensive details about the incident, the victim(s), the offender(s), and other pertinent factors related to the crime.
Involves individuals reporting their own involvement in criminal activities. These surveys are typically conducted anonymously and can provide insights into less detected or unreported crimes. They are often used to study juvenile delinquency and certain types of offenses.
Was a program, maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States, collects and publishes data on reported crimes. It includes information on various crimes, such as murder, robbery, burglary, and motor vehicle theft, providing statistics at the national, state, and local levels.
Under the leadership of the Attorney General of the United States, the Justice Department is composed of more than 40 separate component organizations and more than 115,000 employees. Headquartered at the Robert F. Kennedy Building in Washington, D.C., the Department maintains field offices in all states and territories across the United States and in more than 50 countries around the world.
Measures the frequency of individuals or households experiencing crime. These rates provide an understanding of the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime within a given population.
