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2 Current Scope and State of Nationally Compiled Crime Data
Pages 31-84

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From page 31...
... " -- that shares with the first question the vexing property that it seems simple but is very complex to answer. The pat answer is that the United States has two primary sources for nationally compiled statistics on the incidence of crime: the data gathered by the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)
From page 32...
... PROGRAM AND NATIONAL INCIDENT-BASED REPORTING SYSTEM (NIBRS) The origin of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is recounted in Chapter 1; to recap in brief, today's UCR Program compiles the voluntary data contributions from law enforcement agencies (in most cases, monthly reports coordinated through a state-level coordinating agency)
From page 33...
... -- making specific reference to "police statistics" rather than crime statistics.2 Moreover, it was only in 1988 that a definition (short of explicit authorization) of the UCR Program was etched into law: In extending UCR's scope to include crimes known to federal law enforcement agencies, Congress noted that "the term ‘Uniform Crime Reports' means the reports" authorized under the Attorney General's record collection powers "and administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation which compiles nationwide criminal statistics for use in 1 We will return to this point in our final report, but it is worth noting here for clarity: Several states have laws mandating that local law enforcement agencies report UCR-type data to a state coordinating agency (e.g., the state police or highway patrol)
From page 34...
... more completely below; together, the SRS and NIBRS may be thought of as the central components of incidence-of-crime statistics in the UCR program. Originally envisioned as the next-generation core UCR collection when it was crafted in the 1980s -- that is, as a replacement for the SRS -- the practice over time has been to treat SRS and NIBRS as distinct, parallel entities, largely due to relatively slow adoption of NIBRS standards for local data submissions.
From page 35...
... Similar to the SHR, additional detail on specific incidents are meant to be provided on separate Hate Crime Incident Reports and Cargo Theft Incident Reports. • The basic unit for "crime statistics" in SRS and NIBRS is an incident known to law enforcement; for much of the UCR Program's lifetime, a parallel UCR component switched the basic unit to arrests made by law enforcement and the "clearance" or resolution of cases through arrest.4 The full name associated with the collection is the Age, Sex, and Race of Persons Arrested series, in which separate tallies are supposed to be prepared for persons 18 years of age and over and for those under 18 years of age.
From page 36...
... and the resources available to some specific units within the individual agencies. Though this particular subcollection does not gather actual crime data, it does have some bearing on the final estimates of crime generated by the UCR.
From page 37...
... 6Xb Purse-snatching 17 Sex offenses (except rape and 6Xc Shoplifting prostitution and commercialized vice) 6Xd Thefts from motor vehicles 18 Drug abuse violations 6Xe Theft of motor vehicle parts and 19 Gambling accessories 20 Offenses against the family and 6Xf Theft of bicycles children 6Xg Theft from buildings 21 Driving under the influence 6Xh Theft from coin-operated device 22 Liquor laws or machine 23 Drunkenness 6Xi All other 24 Disorderly conduct 7 Motor vehicle theft 25 Vagrancy 7a Autos 26 All other offenses 7b Trucks and buses 27 Suspicion 7c Other vehicles 28 Curfew and loitering laws (persons 8 Arson under 18)
From page 38...
... -- the successor to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program Handbook that spelled out UCR policy in various revisions over the decades (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004) -- retains four prominent "exceptions" to the Hierarchy Rule: • The first, largely technical exception derives from the fact that motor vehicle theft is a subset -- but special case -- of the broader offense of larceny-theft.
From page 39...
... After several calls for the creation of a new UCR program, the FBI and BJS formed a joint task force in 1982 to oversee a study by Abt Associates Inc., which led to a major planning conference in 1984 and ultimately to a final report, the Blueprint for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (Poggio et al., 1985)
From page 40...
... More recently, the work-in-progress National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X; a partnership between BJS and the FBI) is poised to provide assistance to a carefully crafted sample of law enforcement agencies.
From page 41...
... , Uniform Crime Reporting Program Offense Codes NIBRS SRS Description NIBRS Group A Offenses 09 1 Homicide offenses 09A 1a Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter 09B 1b Negligent manslaughter 100 -- Kidnapping/abduction 11 2,17 Sex offenses 11A 2a Rape (except statutory rape) -- 2b Attempts to commit rape -- 2c Historical rape a 11B 17 Sodomy 11C 17 Sexual assault with an object 11D 17 Fondling -- 17 Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution and commercialized vice)
From page 42...
... 35 18 Drug offenses 35A 18 Drug/narcotic violations 35B -- Drug equipment violations 370 -- Pornography/obscene material 39 19 Gambling offenses 39A 19 Betting/wagering 39B 19 Operating/promoting/assisting gambling 39C 19 Gambling equipment violations 39D 19 Sports tampering 40 16 Prostitution offenses 40A 16a Prostitution 40B 16b Assisting or promoting prostitution 40C 16c Purchasing prostitution 510 -- Bribery 520 15 Weapon law violations 64 A–B Human trafficking offenses 64A A Human trafficking, commercial sex acts 64B B Human trafficking, involuntary servitude 720 -- Animal crueltyc NIBRS Group B Offenses 90A -- Bad checks (except counterfeit or forged checks) 90B 25 Vagrancy 90B 28 Curfew and loitering laws (persons under 18)
From page 43...
... , with reference to Federal Bureau of Investigation (2013b) , Criminal Justice Information Services Division (2015a:9)
From page 44...
... Indeed, the special "Message from the Director" accompanying the release of 2014 UCR data (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015) notes -- 17 years after the enactment of a law requiring federal law enforcement reporting -- that "UCR program staff are [now]
From page 45...
... .L. • 1988 -- Federal Criminal Offenses and Illegal Drug Trafficking: Part of a larger Justice Department reauthorization bill, the Uniform Federal Crime Reporting Act of 1988 directed that "the Attorney General shall acquire, collect, classify, and preserve national data on Federal criminal offenses as part of the Uniform Crime Reports," albeit with such mandatory reporting by federal law enforcement agencies limited to those crimes defined by the UCR Program.
From page 46...
... Not until 2004, and action through the APB process at that time, was this practice of trying to collapse "criminality" into a single-number summary discontinued in lieu of emphasizing separate violent crime and property crime totals instead ("About the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program" document in Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015)
From page 47...
... So, the UCR data tables are characterized in the report text and overview summaries as having impressive overall participation rates ("About the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program" document in Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015)
From page 48...
... , and the misses were hardly small: For some crime types, UCR/police-report totals were one-half or onethird the levels suggested by the survey, suggesting that in some cities "only one-tenth of the total number of certain kinds of crimes are reported to the police" (President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 1967:v)
From page 49...
... to be derived in post hoc data preparation. Invoking the language that we will use later in this report, it may be said that the base NCVS uses a rough attribute-based classification, wherein crime types are derived algorithmically based on the presence/absence or levels of a set of variables (e.g., whether the incident included an element of taking property from a victim or whether entry to a site was achieved by force)
From page 50...
... of violent victimizations go unreported, with crime-specific nonreporting rates ranging from 17 percent for motor vehicle theft to 65–67 percent for household theft and for rape and sexual assault. The analysis was based solely on NCVS response data, not on any kind of match between NCVS and UCR information -- but continuity in concept does permit meaningful discussion of differences between the different sources.
From page 51...
... was to provide assistance to local law enforcement agencies; the LEAA's original statistical mandate (under which the survey was developed) was to "collect, evaluate, publish, and disseminate statistics and other information on the condition and progress of law enforcement in the several States" (in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968; 82 Stat.
From page 52...
... of fundamental crime types. An early National Research Council (1976:App.D)
From page 53...
... Completed aggravated assault with 28. Attempted motor vehicle theft injury 29.
From page 54...
... . Short of overhauling the underlying crime classification, the redesign consortium gave strong consideration to simply augmenting the list of crime types derived from and estimated by the survey; the summary document (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989:15)
From page 55...
... 106-534) explicitly mandated that BJS, "as part of each National Crime Victimization Survey," collect information on "crimes targeting or disproportionately affecting seniors," including "crime risk factors for seniors" such as the "time and locations at which crimes victimizing seniors are most likely to occur." This mandate, in part, led to the eventual fielding of an Identity Theft Supplement to the NCVS for the first time in 2008.
From page 56...
... . The PPCS might not yield estimates of new/different crime types, but it is a rich potential source of information for understanding crime (and reaction to it)
From page 57...
... • Other supplements that have delved into specific crime types or the effects of crime on special populations include the Workplace Risk Supplement sponsored by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in 2002, examining nonfatal violence in the workplace. 2.2.3 Conceptual Strengths and Weaknesses of NCVS Crime Coverage In terms of the types of crime for which the NCVS can generate measures, and as a data collection platform in general, the principal strength and weakness of the NCVS can be stated simply and directly.
From page 58...
... In short, then, it remains true that the NCVS's principal weakness is that it is sharply limited in its capacity for highly detailed annual geographic, demographic, or crime-type disaggregation, simply because a large number of events must occur in the data in order to yield reliable estimates. Individual states, and perhaps some large law enforcement departments, have fielded their own victimization surveys, but the NCVS sample is not designed to produce estimates of crime at the local-jurisdiction level that would be most useful to a variety of users.
From page 59...
... Yet crime, and related behavior, is of sufficient public importance that numerous other data collections have emerged over the years, to cover some very specific offense types in a more detailed manner or to focus attention on a specific victim (or offender) population group in more detail than is possible in the more omnibus, nationally compiled crime datasets.
From page 60...
... . shall be compiled in accordance with the definitions used in uniform crime reporting system" of the FBI, as modified pursuant to the Hate Crime Statistics Act (P.L.
From page 61...
... As mentioned above in Section 2.1.4, the enactment of the Uniform Federal Crime Reporting Act of 1988 did not result in much increased reporting to the UCR Program -- but it did partially spur the development of what would become the Defense Incident-Based Reporting System (DIBRS)
From page 62...
... . In addition to personal and property crimes, the UCMJ defines what are generally termed inchoate offenses -- as those inchoate offenses apply to other UCMJ-specific offenses.
From page 63...
... . As of August 2015, DoD remains in the process of obtaining FBI certification for DIBRS to clear the way for transmittal of its criminal incident data for inclusion in NIBRS as required by the Uniform Federal Crime Reporting Act of 1988 and DoD Instruction 7730.47.
From page 64...
... was created in 1976, compiling voluntary data submissions from local fire departments in the same manner as the UCR Program collects voluntary submissions from law enforcement agencies. As described in Box 2.3, the agency was renamed the U.S.
From page 65...
... Though originally motivated by the desire for better quantification of fire and arson incidents, NFIRS has developed into a record system of all functions and activities performed by local fire departments, from emergency medical services (EMS) runs to hazardous material responses to "first responder" calls not actually involving a fire.
From page 66...
... National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) The original Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA)
From page 67...
... coordinates data inputs from state child welfare agencies. In its basic structure, NCANDS uncannily parallels both the core mission of BJS and emulates the methodology of the UCR Program.
From page 68...
... These seven categories constitute the full detail on the means of the abuse within these categories; NCANDS does not collect specific data on the method of abuse within these headings. Just as the UCR Program also includes a rolling census of sorts of law enforcement personnel, so too does NCANDS include a component that gathers some contextual information about the Child Protective Services entities at work in a state.
From page 69...
... Other users of NCANDS data include the American Humane Association, which frequently updates "fact sheets" on child abuse and neglect using the compiled data. 2.3.2 National Self-Report Surveys Self-Report Surveys of Criminal Offending Independent of the NCVS, which focuses exclusively on obtaining selfreports of recent victimization experiences, there are very few national-level self-report estimates of criminal offending.
From page 70...
... Although each of these data sources has served as an important resource for understanding the correlates of delinquent and criminal activity, each is limited in some ways for purposes of estimating levels of crimes. Some of 15 Additional information on Add Health may be found at http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/ addhealth.
From page 71...
... . Like other victim surveys, these data include incidents that are not captured in official records by either the police or by child welfare agencies, or captured in the NCVS because it excludes respondents under the age of 12.
From page 72...
... Federal Trade Commission Consumer Fraud Surveys The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has two data collections that may be partial indicators of the occurrence of fraud in the United States.
From page 73...
... . One article by FTC staff using data from the initial survey, examining the demographics of identity theft, appeared in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing (Anderson, 2006)
From page 74...
... The data consist of unverified complaints filed by consumers directly to the FTC, along with those filed with numerous state law enforcement agencies, federal agencies and departments (such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, and the Departments of Defense, Education, and Veterans Affairs) , and nongovernmental organizations (such as Better Business Bureaus, Green Dot, MoneyGram International, and Western Union; Federal Trade Commission, 2015)
From page 75...
... : • Your contact information: name, address, phone number, email • The type of product or service involved • Information about the company or seller: business name, address, phone number, website, email address, representative's name • Details about the transaction: the amount you paid, how you paid, the date. Consumer Sentinel data access is available to any federal, state, or local law enforcement agencies and select international law enforcement authorities.
From page 76...
... Suspicious Activity Reports The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) , established in 1990, is tasked with safeguarding the financial system from illicit use, combating money laundering, and promoting national security through the collection, analysis, and dissemination of financial intelligence and strategic use of financial authorities.
From page 77...
... The range of institutions filing SARs under the BSA has expanded since the 1992 Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act that initially required financial institutions to report suspicious activity. SAR filers now encompass (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, 2015)
From page 78...
... The SAR has five parts: Part I -- Subject Information; Part II -- Suspicious Activity Information; Part III -- Information about the Financial Institution Where Activity Occurred; Part IV -- Filing Institution Contact Information; and Part V -- Narrative. Detailed descriptions of each item on the SAR form are included in official guidance available on FinCEN's website (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, 2015)
From page 79...
... For example, FinCEN in 2012 issued guidance on suspicious activity related to mortgage loan fraud (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, 2012b) and in 2014 issued guidance on recognizing financial activity that may be associated with human smuggling and human trafficking (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, 2014)
From page 80...
... locks on the explosive materials were defeated; whether "employee-involved theft" is suspected; and "Circumstances Pertaining to the Theft, Loss or Suspicious Activity (Any details you can provide) " (capitalization and italics in original)
From page 81...
... administered by NCHS, to which birth and death certificate information is routed for compilation. Akin to the UCR Program, a primary ("underlying")
From page 82...
... of the UCR Program. It could, for instance, provide insight on mental health history of perpetrators and victims, in addition to the kind of precision of drug involvement or weapon use that may only be available through postmortem examination.
From page 83...
... . 2.4 RECENT AND CONCURRENT EFFORTS AT IMPROVEMENT Having described a patchwork of crime-related data resources, we turn in Chapters 3 and 4 to broader context -- to the demands on crime statistics made by their users and to alternative strategies for mapping out the full range of "crime" through classification schemes.
From page 84...
... Members and staff of our panel have participated in several of the working group's discussions, and what might be most telling about them is the fervency with which the need to be able to study crime data in neighborhood and broader context is raised. Indeed, many of the discussions of the Crime Indicators Working Group center around the type of non-crime statistics -- demographic and socioeconomic indicators for small geographic areas -- that are highly desired as part of an overall, new crime statistics system.


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