Crime Overview - Other Crimes And Offenses

The FBI's crime index (the "crime rate") is built around serious offenses reported to law-enforcement authorities. We've had occasion to look at these closer in the last three panels. These so-called indexed crimes have a large unreported shadow captured, to some extent, by the National Crime Victimization Survey. According to that survey, the FBI's data collection captured only 48% of violent crime and 35% of the property crime incidents. The rest went unreported. But the crimes covered by these two surveys excluded a whole battalion of other offenses, many of them felonies. We want to look more closely at these non-indexed breaches of the law. To do this, we look at the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, which also captures arrests. Clearly not all arrests result in convictions — but some kind of crime or offense gave rise to the arrest. Therefore arrests can serve as an indirect measure of lawlessness.

One glance at the pie chart tells the whole story. The vast majority of arrests in the U.S. (83.9% in 2000, excluding traffic violations), do not make it into the crime rate. These crimes and offenses produced 11.7 million arrests out of 13.89 million in 2000. Corresponding values for 1995 were higher: 12.2 million arrests out of 15.1 million total; the proportion was 80.7%, suggesting that in 2000 the relative share in crime of this "all other" category has risen by about three points.

All crime appeared to be dropping in the 1990s. If we assume that each of the arrests excluded from the crime index represented one crime/offense, and express these in terms of arrests per 100,000 population in 1995 and 2000, we see that the non-index crime rate was 4,640 in 1995 and 4,251 in 2000, a drop of 389 arrests per 100,000 population. The drop in reported, indexed, serious crimes in the same period was 1,151 crimes. Thus the "all other" category, while dropping, has not been dropping as rapidly as serious crime.

What is the nature of this mix. The FBI divides these crimes/offenses into 20 categories. Data in Part II of this volume lists them all specifically. For purposes of display, we have grouped them under eight categories for overview. The largest category is the miscellaneous. Next in order are offenses associated with alcohol, the biggest component being drunken driving; drunkenness, and offenses related to liquor laws are included. Note that the alcohol-related category is larger than drug offenses — and would be larger still if disorderly conduct were included, which is often associated with alcohol consumption. After drugs, the next largest category is simple assault — which is well tracked by the National Crime Victimization Survey. Offenses associated with the possession and carrying of weapons are included under the category. Disorderly conduct, vagrancy, loitering, and similar offenses come next. Money-related crimes/offenses include fraud, embezzlement, and buying and selling stolen property. We have included gambling offenses there. Sexual offenses and arrests for abuse are relatively small.

The non-specified ("miscellaneous") category records arrests for violations of state or local laws/ordinances not included in the other categories. These arrests exclude all traffic violations. Fraud and embezzlement are the only categories likely to capture what is known as white collar crime.

We turn next to look more closely at drug-related offenses.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, 1995 and 2000, accessible at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/00cius.htm.