Surveying Victims Options for Conducting the National Crime Victimization Survey (2008) / Chapter Skim
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2 Goals of the National Crime Victimization Survey
2 Goals of the National Crime Victimization Survey
Pages 25-40
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From page 25... ...
Agencies sent in monthly totals for crimes in seven categories, which the FBI later published as yearly totals. The UCR program produced national data on the characteristics of specific incidents for only one crime type (homicide, through the Supplementary Homicide Reports)
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From page 26... ...
Crime surveys promised to provide an alternative, often better, and certainly more adaptable source of data on crimes and victims, one that could shine new light on the dark figure. Surveys commissioned by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967)
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From page 27... ...
Based on these findings, the commission's final report recommended the creation of a National Criminal Statistics Center, a "major responsibility" of which "would be to examine the Commission's initial effort to develop a new yardstick to measure the extent of crime in our society as a supplement to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports" (President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 1967:x) .1 That is, in addition to obtaining information from the oft-neglected perspective of victims of crime, the commission envisioned what would become the NCVS as a complementary measure to the crimes-reported-to-police measures of the UCR program.
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From page 28... ...
In 1970, the first proposed study plan for a national victimization survey refined this list and suggested that the survey's primary purpose would be "to measure the annual change in crime incidents for a limited set of major crimes and to characterize some of the socio-economic aspects of both the reported events and their victims" (reprinted in Work, 1975:220)
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From page 29... ...
The document also specified that certain statements should not be goals of the victimization survey. Although "good NCS data for metropolitan areas" might have "unique and valuable research potential," the document argues that "the NCS is not a suitable mechanism for informing local law enforcement planners and administrators about crime within their jurisdiction." Likewise, the survey "cannot be, and must not be promoted as being, a vehicle for evaluating local programs aimed at reducing crime or improving the criminal justice system." Following the publication of Surveying Crime (National Research Council, 1976b)
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From page 30... ...
promotion of analysis of national data to understand local implications; (b) provision of national guidance on the feasibility, conduct, and utility of local victimization surveys; and (c)
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4.0 To provide, in addition to national data, crime indicators for se lected cities and states. 4.1 To assist state and local governments in evaluating the feasi bility and utility of local victimization surveys.
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From page 32... ...
2–B DATA ON CRIMES AND VICTIMS At the most fundamental level, the NCVS is intended to do what the name implies: provide measures of criminal victimization. This statement is a great understatement, though, as the implementation of the NCVS opened up several dimensions of understanding of crime that were not well or systematically considered in earlier measures: • Unreported crime: Before the first crime surveys, no one had an inkling of the magnitude of the "dark figure" of unreported crime, nor was there any systematic knowledge of the factors that facilitated or dis couraged victim reporting.
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From page 33... ...
The role of NCVS as a "continuous and comparable national social indication" to the UCR program's official counts is directly envisioned by the BJS authorizing legislation, as discussed in Section 2–F. The duality between the NCVS and the UCR is a major part of the public's awareness of the victimization survey: each year, the release of new data from the NCVS and UCR pro
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From page 34... ...
a basis for collecting information on more and varied types of victimization incidents than police records permit. Yet the NCVS remains decidedly tethered to some features and concepts of the longer established UCR program.
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From page 35... ...
argues that BJS' sponsorship of the NCVS fills "a distinctly federal role," generating data that no single state can afford to produce on a regular basis.4 We discuss victimization surveys that have been conducted by individual states in Section 3–D. 2–D ANALYTIC FLEXIBILITY In the early 1970s, as now, the UCR gathered monthly and yearly crime totals in only a few (currently eight)
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. 2–E TOPICAL FLEXIBILITY: NCVS SUPPLEMENTS From the beginning it was anticipated that the NCVS would provide a flexible vehicle for gathering occasional or one-time data to supplement the ongoing core data required to track national trends in crime.
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From page 37... ...
trol and Safe Streets Act of 1968] directly authorizes the bureau to "collect and analyze information concerning criminal victimization, including crimes against the elderly, and civil disputes." The authorizing language further directs that BJS should: collect and analyze data that will serve as a continuous and comparable national social indication of the prevalence, incidence, rates, extent, distribution, and attributes of crime, juvenile delinquency, civil disputes, and other statistical factors related to crime, civil disputes, and juvenile delinquency, in support of national, State, and local justice policy and decisionmaking.
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From page 38... ...
included a brief provision that "the Attorney General shall, through appropriate means, acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers." As a direct result of this mandate, BJS developed the Police-Public Contact Survey to measure the extent of all types of interactions between the police and members of the public (of which those involving "excessive force" is logically a subset)
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From page 39... ...
collect and pub lish data that more accurately measures the extent of domestic violence in America, especially the physical and sexual abuse of children and the elderly." The addition of NCVS content and topics due to legislative mandates implicitly recognizes the importance of the NCVS as a source of information. However, it also adds to the burden on the survey and on BJS as a whole, particularly since these changes have not been matched by budgetary increases.
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