Data gathered by criminal justice agencies, such as police, courts, and prisons

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Official Crime Data
Crime reports come to the social scientist from
three sources
Data gathered by criminal justice agencies, such
as police, courts, and prisons Victimization
surveys Offender surveys
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UNIFORM CRIME REPORT
http//www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
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Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
Statistics collected from criminal justice
agencies are of various sorts and tailored to the
needs and the agenda of the agencies. The data
filter through many steps from the moment the
police become aware of a crime, crime reports are
increasingly aggregated and increasingly
reduced. Why are data gathered from police
reports ideal for use in statistical studies
about crime, and not reports from other criminal
justice authorities? Because the criminal
justice system weeds out most offenders before
they get to court or to corrections. Reports
come from campus, city, state, national levels.
Departments (some 17,000) voluntarily send
police reports to FBI who collect them and
standardize them. Departments are responsible for
standardization. The quality of the data
varies. Data are (ideally) standardized according
to the Uniform Crime Reporting system, which
produces the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), titled
Crime in the United States every year.
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Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)

• Why focus on these eight?
• Regarded by the public as very serious.
• Relatively frequent in occurrence.
• Often come to the attention of the police.

Part I Index Crimes. The UCR organizes crime
around eight serious crimes, or "index crimes."
These are murder-homicide assault robbery
rape burglary larceny-theft motor vehicle
theft arson
UCR contains statistics on crime volume crime
rate violent crime property crime crime
clearances arrest rates law enforcement employee
state rates
Part II Non-Index Crimes. Everything else,
including drug offenses.
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Crime rate offenses/population X 100,000 267
burglaries in a town of 235,000 113.6 per
100,000 Prevalence offenders/population 34
burglars in a town of 235,000 14.5 per
100,000 Incidence offenses/offenders 267
burglaries committed by 34 burglars 7.85
burglaries per burglar Crime rate prevalence X
incidence 14.5 X 7.85 113.8 per 100,000
Rates, Prevalence, Incidence of Crime
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Total crime rate
Non-violent rate
Violent rate
Non-Index
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Problems with the UCR No way to know what data
were collected by police agencies but not sent on
to the FBI. When an individual commits multiple
crimes, only the most serious crime is
reported. When a crime is committed by more than
one person it may be reported as a single crime
in some instances (robbery), and as multiple
offenses in other instances (assault). Not all
victims report crimes (part of the dark figure
problem). Police do not judge all crimes to be
worthy of reporting. Police departments do not
all share the same level of commitment to
recording crime. Police departments have agendas
that conflict with the goal of collecting
accurate crime data. For example, the 1994
Federal Crime Control Act allocates more funds to
states with higher crime rates providing an
incentive to police departments to inflate the
number of crimes in their districts. UCR
statistics are inflated because of improvements
in the recording the tabulating of crimes and
police activity. A proportion of the increase in
crime rates over the past three decades is
attributed to increased use of computers. In
1973, police were recording approximately half of
all the crimes reported to them In 1988 police
were recording well over 95 percent of crimes
reported to them. Whereas the number of
aggravated assaults did not increase much between
1973 and 1988, improved record keeping made it
appear that rates doubled.
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Five Problematics (Black 1970)
Whether a crime gets recorded as such depend
on Legal seriousness of the crime Complainant's
preferences Relational distance Complainant's
deference Complainant's status
Donald Black
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Crime in Green Bay
http//greenbay.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm
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National Crime
Click on logo
Victimization Survey
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NCVS
The major alternative to police-gathered data are
victimization studies. Researchers construct
victimization reports from surveying homes and
interviewing victims of crime. The US Justice
Department administers the National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS). Survey is a
random-sample, phone administered. Interviewers
gather information on who are victims of larceny,
burglary, car theft, robbery, assault, and rape
whether the victim reported the crime to the
police and, if not, why not and other
information. Many criminologists consider the
NCVS to be a better measure of crime than the
UCR. There are problems with the accuracy of
victims accounts. Depending on the type of crime,
trauma can interfere with accurate recollection
of events. Unfortunately, the NCVS does not
break crime data down by state, thus regional
changes in crime are difficult to gauge.
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Comparing UCR and NCVS Data
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Offender Reports
Offender reports involve interviewing offenders.
Insight into motivation, selection of victims,
choice of weapons, etc. Studies involve a wide
range of techniques from talking directly with
convicted criminals at home or in prison through
participant and naturalistic observation and
self-report surveys.
Despite certain advantages, such as disclosures
of crimes not recorded by police, there are
obvious problems with these studies Many (maybe
most) crimes never come to the attention of the
police Police never catch most offenders Fewer
offenders are processed through the system, and
therefore the potential pool of offenders is
limited.
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The Dark Figure