We're not altogether sure how much crime actually takes place. Two ways are used to measure the crime rate, both under the aegis of the U.S. Department of Justice. The better known measure is that produced by the FBI and published annually as the Uniform Crime Report. It features an Index of Crime which is known as the crime rate. It is collected from law enforcement agencies in a uniform format and covers nearly 100% of all jurisdictions. The index measures murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault, burglary, larceny/theft, vehicular theft, and arson. The measure is expressed as crime events per 100,000 population. Thus it is an index that can be compared one year to the next. This measure is also known as "reported crime" — because not all crimes are reported.
The Uniform Crime Report began its life in 1929. It was further refined in 1958 and is available from 1957 forward in the same general format.
The FBI collects data on many other crimes not included in the Crime Index — but, generally, when people or the media speak of the "crime rate" dropping or increasing, what is meant is the UCR and its index, broken into two components, violent and property crime. Other crime categories are offenses such as the sale or possession of drugs, prostitution and gambling, and offenses against the public order like drunkenness, vagrancy, driving while intoxicated, and so on. These are not used as a general index of crime.
To get a better feel for actual crime occurrence in the U.S. — including unreported crime — the Justice Department conducts the National Crime Victimization Survey. It has been under way since 1973. The graphic on the previous page displays both rates side by side. A glance reveals that there is much more crime than is reported. The NCVS series is sometimes spoken of as the "actual" or as the "estimated" crime rate.
To do this survey, Justice interviews 49,000 households twice a year, speaking to all members of the household aged 12 or older. A household participates for three years running and is then replaced by another. The sample of households is carefully drawn to be representative of the nation.
The NCVS is also divided into violent and property crime categories. Violent crime includes rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault (no weapon is involved). When publishing its data, the NCVS includes the murder rate, taken from the FBI's series. In the data shown in this panel, we have eliminated simple assault — which is not included in the FBI's index and would therefore exaggerate the gap between "actual" and "reported" crime as shown above.
Property crimes under NCVS are personal theft, burglary, theft, and car/truck theft. The NCVS, however, excludes commercial property crime whereas the FBI index includes it.
The percent of crimes reported to the police varies from a low of 29.4% for theft of objects from a car or a home to 80.4% for car theft. The data are from 2000. Reporting rates have improved over time, but only very slightly. Not including homicide, which is almost always reported, less than half of violent crime is reported (including simple assault, which is the largest category), and about 35% of household-level property crime. This suggests that the nation's experience of criminal loss and violence exists on two levels, a large and shadowy part of which is not officially recognized. The entire justice system exists to handle the smaller portion.
Both the estimated and official crime rates have been trending down. We shall explore that subject in detail in many ways throughout this book.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, and National Criminal Victimization Survey, both accessible from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/welcome.html.
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