Chapter Two:

Measuring Crime &

Criminal Behavior

Chapter Summary

Chapter Two introduces the students to

the techniques used to collect data on
crime in the United States. The chapter
covers the pros and cons of official
statistics, victimization survey data, and
self-reported data.
The second half of the chapter
discusses the financial cost of crime,
and how that cost is estimated. In the
concluding section, the chapter
highlights some of the major theories
used to explain crime trends in the
United States through time.

Chapter Summary

After reading this chapter, students should

be able to:
Understand how crimes are categorized and
measured.
Understand the concept of a crime rate.
Be able to describe the strengths and
weaknesses of official crime statistics as
measured by the Uniform Crime Reports
(UCR).
Be able to describe the strengths and
weaknesses of victimization crime statistics
as measured by the National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS)..

Chapter Summary

Be able to describe the strengths and

weaknesses of self-report data.
Understand the expected role of the
National Incident-Based Reporting
System (NIBRS).
Be able to describe the major areas of
agreement among the various measures
of crime.
Understand the difficulty of
interpreting crime trends.

Categorizing and Measuring Crime and

Criminal Behavior

When attempting to understand,

predict, and control any social problem,
including the crime problem, the first
step is to determine its extent.

Three categories of major crime

data sources in the United States:
Official statistics
Victimization survey data
Self-reported data

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially
The primary source of official crime
statistics in the United States is the
annual Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
compiled by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI).
The UCR reports crimes known to the
nations police and sheriffs departments
and the number of arrests made by these
agencies; federal crimes are not included
Participation in the UCR reporting
program is voluntary, and thus all agencies
do not participate.

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially
The UCR separates crimes into two
categories: Part I offenses (or
Index crimes) and Part II offenses.
Murder: The willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human
being by another.
Forcible rape: The carnal
knowledge of a female forcibly
and against her will.

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially
Robbery: The taking or attempted
taking of anything of value from the
care, custody, or control of a person
or persons by force or threat of force
or violence and/or putting the victim
in fear.
Aggravated assault: An unlawful
attack by one person upon another for
the purpose of inflicting severe or
aggravated bodily injury.

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially

Burglary: The unlawful entry of a structure to commit a

felony or theft.

Larceny-Theft: The unlawful taking, leading, or riding away

from the possession or constructive possession of another.

Motor vehicle theft: The theft or attempted theft of a

motor vehicle.

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially

Arson: Any willful or malicious

burning or attempting to burn,
with or without intent to
defraud, a dwelling house, public
building, motor vehicle or
aircraft, personal property of
another, etc.

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially
Determining Crime Rates
The rate of a given crime is the
actual number of reported crimes
standardized by some unit of the
population
To obtain a crime rate we divide the
number of reported crimes in a
state by its population, and multiply
the quotient by 100,000.

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially
The FBIs famous crime clock
provides estimates of the relative
frequency with which each Part I
Index crime (arson is omitted) is
committed.
Part II offenses are treated as less
serious offenses and are recorded
based on arrests made rather than
causes reported to the police.
Part II may not be true criminal
offenses, or if they are, may not be
particularly serious.

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially
Cleared Offenses
-If a person is arrested and charged
for a Part I offense, the UCR
records the crime as cleared by
arrest..
A crime is also recorded as cleared
by exceptional means, or the police
have identified a suspect and have
enough evidence to support arrest,
but he or she could not be taken into
custody immediately, or at all.

Figure 2.1

The FBI's Crime Clock for 2004

Every 23.1 seconds: One Violent Crime

Every 32.6 minutes: One Murder
Every 5.6 minutes: One Forcible Rape
Every 1.3 minutes: One Robbery
Every 36.9 seconds: One Aggravated
Assault
Every 3.1 seconds: One Property Crime
Every 14.7 seconds: One Burglary
Every 4.5 seconds: One Larceny-theft
Every 25.5 seconds: One Motor Vehicle
Theft

Source: Federal Bureau of

Investigation. (2005). Crime in

the United States, 2004.

Washington, DC: Government

Printing Office.
Note: The crime clock should be
viewed with care. The most
aggregate representation of UCR
data, it conveys the annual
reported crime experience by
showing a relative frequency of
occurrence of Part I offenses. It
should not be taken to imply a
regularity in the commission of
crime. The crime clock
represents the annual ratio of
crime to fixed time intervals.

Problems with the UCR

The UCR data significantly underrepresents the actual number of

criminal events in the United States
each year.
Drug offenses and federal crimes
are not included.
The voluntary nature of the UCR
program means that the crimes
committed in the jurisdictions of
non-participating law enforcement
agencies are not included in the
data.
Crime data may be falsified by
police departments for political
reasons.

The Uniform Crime Reports:

Counting Crime Officially

The UCR under-reports crimes

that are know to the police
because of the FBIs hierarchy
rule, which requires police to
report only the highest offense
committed in a multiple-single
incident to the FBI and to ignore
others.
The most frequent criticism has
been that these data are too
easily affected by discretionary
police policies to be considered
reliable.

Table 2.1

Estimated Number of Arrests for Part I and Part II Crimes

by Sex and Age in 2000 and 2004
Males

Females

Figure 2.2
Percentage of Crimes Cleared by Arrest in 2004

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2005). Crime in the United States, 2004.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Figure 2.4

Highlights From the 2004 NCVS Survey Data

Source: Catalano, S. (2005). Criminal victimization, 2004. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice
Statistics.

NIBRS:
The New and Improved UCR

The National Incident-Based

Reporting System (NIBRS) began
in 1982, and is designed for the
collection of more detailed and
more comprehensive crime
statistics
NIBRS collects data on 46 Group
A offenses and 11 Group B
offenses
There is no hierarchy rule under
the NIBRS system

NIBRS:
The New and Improved UCR

The NIBRS provides information

about the circumstances of the
offense and about victim and
offender characteristics.
Although reliable, the NIBRS still
generates concern over the dark
figure of crime, which refers to all
of the crimes committed that
never come to official attention.

Problems with the NCVS

Crimes such as drug dealing and all

victimless crimes are not
revealed, as well as the serious
crime of murder.
Crimes committed against
commercial establishments are not
included.
Victimization data do not have to
meet any stringent legal or
evidentiary standards in order to
be reported as an offense.

Problems with the NCVS

Memory lapses, answering the way

the respondent believes the
interviewer wants to hear,
forgetting an incident, embellishing
an incident may occur.
Over-reporting may occur.

Areas of Agreement between the

UCR and NCVS
Both the UCR and NCVS agree on
the demographics of crime.
Males, the young, the poor, and
African Americans are more
likely to be perpetrators and
victims of crime than are
females, older persons,
wealthier persons, and persons
of other racial or ethnic
categories.
Both agree on recent crime trends.

Self-Reported Crime Surveys

Self-reported surveys of criminal
offending are a way criminologists are
able to collect data for themselves
without having to rely on
governmental sources.
These surveys involve asking people to
disclose their delinquent and criminal
involvement on anonymous
questionnaires or face-to-face
interviews.

Self-Reported Crime Surveys

The greatest strength of self-report

research is that researchers can
correlate a variety of characteristics
of respondents with their admitted
offenses that go beyond the
demographics of age, race, and
gender.
Self-report crime measures provide
largely accurate information about
some forms of anti-social offending,
and reveal that almost everyone has
committed some sot of illegal act
sometime in their life.

Problems with Self-Reported Crime

Surveys
The great majority of self-reported
studies survey convenience
samples of high school and college
students.
Self-report studies typically
uncover only fairly trivial antisocial
acts such as fighting, stealing items
worth less than $5, smoking, and
truancy.

Problems with Self-Reported Crime

Surveys
Even though most people are
forthright in revealing their
peccadilloes, most people do not
have a serious criminal history, and
those who do have a distinct
tendency to under-report their
crimes.
Reporting honesty varies across
race/ethnicity and gender

The Dark Figure of Crime Revisited

For official statistics, the dark

figures are highly concentrated at
the non-serious end of the crime
seriousness spectrum.
Dark figures for victimization
data are primarily concentrated in
the non-serious end of the
spectrum, although to a lesser
degree than in the case of official
data.
Most of the dark figures in the
case of self-reports are
concentrated in the upper end of
the seriousness continuum.

What Can We Conclude about the Three Main

Measures of Crime in America?
UCR data is probably the best
single source of data for
studying serious crimes,
especially murder rates and
circumstances.
For studying less serious types
of crimes, either victimization or
self-report survey data are the
best
If the interest is in drug
offenses, self-reports are the
preferable data source.

The Financial Cost of Crime

Most estimates of the annual

financial cost of crime focus on
the costs of running the
criminal justice system, which
includes the salaries and
benefits of the personnel, and
the maintenance costs buildings
and equipment. These costs are
known as the direct costs of
crime.

The Financial Cost of Crime

The indirect costs of crime

include manner of surveillance
and security devices, protective
devices, and insurance costs,
medical services, and the
productivity and taxes lost of
incarcerated individuals.

Interpreting Crime Trends

There is no single cause of crime

or criminality, there is no single
cause that explains crime trends
Possible reasons for crime rate
fluctuations since the 1960s:
Poverty: Changes in the poverty
rate can be accompanied by
wither an increase or decrease in
the crime rate, depending on
what years we begin and end with
and what other process are
operating at the same time.

Interpreting Crime Trends

Affluence: The affluent society

offers many targets for criminals to
aim at, as well as more goods available
to steal.

Interpreting Crime Trends

Moral Breakdown & Societal WellBeing:

Many think that a breakdown in the

general moral order that occurred in the
tumultuous 1960s may be the
explanation for the rise in crime
through the early 1990s.

Interpreting Crime Trends

The Family: Problems of the family,

such as divorce, can be expected to
impact other areas of society.

Interpreting Crime Trends

Deindustrialization: The
workplace transition has
impacted minorities and
whites of low socioeconomic
backgrounds most severely
resulting in a lot of
frustration and the
hardening of poverty.

Interpreting Crime Trends

The Prison Boom: Advocates of

get tough policies credit the
increased numbers of offenders
being imprisoned for the decrease
in crime.
The Baby-Boomer Bubble: When
the first cohort of baby-boomers
became teenagers in the early
1960s, there would be a rather
dramatic increase in crime.

Interpreting Crime Trends

Drug Market Stability: Just as

prohibition of the manufacture
and sale of alcohol in the 1920s
and 1930s spawned large
increases in violent crime as
violent gangs vied for control of
the alcohol market, the illicit
drug market spawned huge
increases in the violent crime in
the 1980s.

Figure 2.6 Incarceration Rates for Selected

Countries in Mid-2004

Source: Mauer, M. (2005). Comparative international rates of incarceration: An examination of

causes and trends. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. Reproduced with permission.