Crime Victims: An Introduction to
Victimology
Seventh Edition
By Andrew Karmen
Chapter Three: Sources of
Information About Crime Victims
The UCR and the NCVS
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Introduction
The Big Picture
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When and where do crimes occur?
How often are weapons used?
Are victims usually strangers?
Do victims resist? Should they?
How often are victims injured?
What do victims lose?
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Introduction
 How do we “put together” the Big Picture?
– Official statistics gathered by government
– Criminologists and victimologists gather their
own data
– Special interest groups gather crime data
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Use and Abuse of Statistics
 Statistics—meaningful numbers that reveal
important information
 Official statistics—compiled and published
by government
– Statistics—
 Provide realistic assessments of a threat posed to
individuals by criminal activity
 Reveal patterns of criminal activity
 Reflect trends in criminal activity
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Use and Abuse of Statistics
 Statistics –continued–
– Reveal costs and losses by criminal activity
– Project number of possible victims of a
particular crime
– Evaluate effectiveness of recovery efforts and
prevention strategies
– Identify statistical portraits (profiles) of a typical
victim
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Use and Abuse of Statistics
 Interpretation of Statistics
– Can be used to influence decision makers
– Can be used to reduce fears
– Can be used to support police administration
– Can be used to show something is not working
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Caution
 However, be aware that statistics can be
used to present one viewpoint, or be
presented with a “spin.”
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Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
 FBI gathers data from local police
departments and publishes an annual report
of crime statistics called the Uniform Crime
Report (UCR)
 Part One Crimes Reported—8 Crimes
– Violent Crime Data—(4) Murder, Forcible Rape,
Robbery and Aggravated Assault
– Property Crime Data—(4) Burglary,
Larceny/Theft, Motor Vehicle Theft and Arson
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Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
 One method of illustrating the UCR data is
the “Crime Clock,” which shows how many
seconds or minutes apart a particular crime
or criminal event occurs—see Figure 3.1,
Page 55
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Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
UCR reflects data for cities, counties and states
Reports include:
Number of complaints filed with police
Proportion of cases solved
Characteristics of offenders arrested
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Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
 Shortcomings of UCR Report
– Underreporting a major problem
– Focus is offenders, not victims (homicide
exception)
– Mixes attempted crimes and completed crimes
– Robbery includes all targets, does not single out
households, banks, stores, etc.
– Uses ‘hierarchy rule,’ which reports only the
most serious crime in a sequence of several
criminal incidents
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National Incident-Based Reporting
System (NIBRS)
 Tracks 46 Group A Offenses—Greater
Breakdown in data:
– i.e. simple assault, vandalism, blackmail, fraud,
statutory rape, kidnapping
– Gathers data relating to commission of crime,
victim information, value of theft, race/ethnicity
– Originally scheduled for year 2000
implementation
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The NCVS
Another set of data is collected by the Bureau
of Justice Statistics and is based on surveys
with victims. It is called the National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS) and it often
paints a different picture than the UCR
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National Crime Victimization Survey
(NCVS)
 Crime rates determined by public survey
randomly selected by U. S. Census Bureau
 First survey, 1966—President’s Commission
on Law Enforcement and the Administration
of Justice
 The NCVS reports crimes in the form of
rates per 1000
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National Crime Victim Survey
(NCVS)
 Crimes studied:
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–
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Forcible rape & sexual assault
Robbery
Aggravated assault & simple assault
Theft
Household burglaries
Motor vehicle thefts
 Only surveys those 12 years of age or older—
Does NOT include crimes against those under 12
years of age
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Four Reasons NCVS Questioned
 Bias of Information
 Credibility of Information
– Wives reporting abuse, girls reporting date rape, boys
reporting robberies on bad drug deals
 Crimes against children under 12 not probed
 Over reporting
– Pollsters, not detectives, to sort out conflicting stories or
facts
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Estimated Victimization Rates
 Table 3.1, Pages 65-66
 Crime rates reported by NCVS & UCR for
2006 presented
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UCR vs. NCVS
 During 70s and 80s, there appeared to be
low correlation between the two official
sources of data in regards to victimization
rates
 The two reporting systems again gave
conflicting signals at the end of 2001
regarding violent crimes and property crimes
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UCR vs. NCVS
 UCR—No data for victims except murder
 NCVS—No data on crimes of murder, bias/hate
crimes, line of duty assaults on police
– No data on offenses against children under 12
– No data on business robberies or burglaries
– No data on arson or victims of arson
UCR—computes rates/100,000 population
NCVS—computes rates/1,000 age 12 and older
or/households (no number)
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Key Terms
Statistics
Official Statistics
Patterns
Trends
Profiles
Spin
Crime Clock
Uniform Crime
Report
National Crime
Victimization Survey
Correlation
Index crimes
Hierarchy Rule
Self report survey
Memory decay
Forward telescoping
Range (Confidence
Interval)
Victimization Rates
Raw numbers
Big Picture
Rates
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