Modernizing Crime Statistics Report 1: Defining and Classifying Crime (2016) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction: Crime Statistics in the United States
1 Introduction: Crime Statistics in the United States
Pages 9-30
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From page 9... ...
As one example, the public disclosure in early 2016 that two hospitals in California and Texas had both made ransom payments in difficult-to-trace Bitcoin currency in order to regain control of their own internal computer networks (Cowley and Stack, 2016) raises major conceptual challenges.
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From page 10... ...
As we describe later in this chapter, this study is an attempt to step back and rethink the approach to the entire enterprise of crime data collection -- beginning, in this report, with development of a proposed classification of criminal offenses to serve as a broad, conceptual framework for what "crime in the United States" means. This new classification and framework would then be a useful blueprint for constructing new measures of crime.
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From page 11... ...
Nonetheless, crime emerged as a topic to be studied -- and measures of it as something to be improved upon -- in subsequent decades. The novelty of census statistics related to crime could not long mask a crippling conceptual shortfall inherent to them: Being based on the reports of prisoners already convicted, the data were necessarily unable to describe current crime conditions.
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From page 12... ...
. To a large degree, this stunted progress was due to a common conceptual difficulty, hinted at by the language of the Justice Department's establishing act: State criminal laws vary so greatly that a common definition of "crime" and crime types is not particularly practicable.
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From page 13... ...
Interest in understanding crime surged in the 1920s, which proved to be a pivotal decade for the collection of nationwide crime statistics. Now established as a permanent agency, the Census Bureau had gradually stepped up its work in the general field -- beginning to examine commitments to prison/jail (and the charges associated with them)
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From page 14... ...
Bringing stolen property into • Assault and battery State; Buying stolen property; • Assault with intent to commit Receiving stolen property murder or manslaughter • Larceny, all degrees, • Assault with intent to kill including -- Common theft; Grand • Attempt to commit murder or larceny; Petit larceny; Pocket manslaughter picking; Shoplifting; Stealing • Attempt to kill (including stealing any animal or • Battery other property) ; Theft • Fighting 8.
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From page 15... ...
Disorderly conduct • Using another's property • Breach of peace • Violating parole • Disorderly conduct • Violating revenue laws • Disorderly conduct and vagrancy • Violating United States penal laws • Disorderly person • All other • Loitering • Unknown NOTE: The 19 main items, dubbed an "abridged list of offenses," were intended as the main body of the classification; the specific items listed under each are "important specific offenses" that would be grouped under the headings. SOURCE: Excerpted from U.S.
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From page 16... ...
Shortly after the Census Bureau issued its manual, the IACP in convention adopted a resolution to create a Committee on Uniform Crime Records -- to begin the process of describing what a national system of data on crimes known to the police might look like, nearly 60 years after the first calls for the same. That committee of police chiefs issued its report in 1929, arguing stridently for the necessary link between police-report data and crime statistics (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 1929:vii)
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From page 17... ...
The IACP committee noted intent to base its own proposed uniform classification "directly upon that employed by the Bureau of the Census in compiling statistics of prisoners" while simultaneously criticizing "certain manifest weaknesses" in the Census classification. Chief among these weaknesses was "its failure to recognize differences in statutory definitions" across the states (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 1929:5)
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From page 18... ...
system," wrote the IACP committee, "is the Bureau of the Census" -- but that idea was deemed impractical (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 1929:12–13) : While the statistical techniques which [the Census Bureau]
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From page 19... ...
program data was initiated by the IACP in 1929, with authority transferred to the eventual FBI in 1930, where it has remained since. In the meantime, the Census Bureau's regular collection of data on crime continued into the early 1930s before being discontinued, and the special Census of Institutions connected to the 1940 decennial census made it the last decennial count to ask criminal or offense status.6 Importantly, the 1929 UCR guidelines and designations -- and their relatively unchanging nature over time -- influenced complementary and successor crime data collection efforts: • In 1957, the FBI engaged a three-member Consultant Committee chaired by sociologist Peter Lejins "for the purpose of making suggestions" concerning the UCR Program, with the charge to the committee 5 Specifically, the reasons were outlined in a companion paper by Warner (1931)
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From page 20... ...
• The ongoing National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) organized by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)
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From page 21... ...
-- published by the American Law Institute in 1962 in an effort to suggest standardization in U.S. state criminal codes and which at least informed the revisions of several states' codes.
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From page 22... ...
Still other state codes take different approaches: Connecticut Penal Code § 53a-24 distinguishes between "crimes" and "offenses," dividing the former into felonies and misdemeanors and setting aside "violations" as "every offense that is not ‘crime' ";11 Indiana's criminal code adds a clause including "a delinquent act" as "crime" for purposes of the Victim Rights article of the code (IC 35-40) ; Colorado Revised Statutes 18-1-104 take "offense" and "crime" but does not include the concept of public offense; under that state's law, "‘crime' means an actor omission forbidden by law which is not designated as a civil infraction," punishable by one or more of the sanctions mentioned in the California language save that "death" is not an option ("other penal discipline" is)
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From page 23... ...
Like the legal definition, this thread has also frequently been woven into state criminal codes -- though substitutions in wording hint at the complexity inherent in this behavioral application. For instance, Texas Penal Code § 1.02 repeats this language, albeit substituting "causes" for "inflicts" and revising "individual or public interests" to "those individual or public interests for which state protection is appropriate." Washington Criminal Code § 9A.04.020 states the first principle of construction of the code as forbidding "conduct that inflicts or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interests." Florida Criminal Code § 775.012 eschews "unjustifiably or inexcusably," stating that the code is meant to prohibit "conduct that improperly causes or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interest." More than mere semantics, these substitutions in language raise difficult questions in operationalizing a common definition.
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From page 24... ...
Given this extensive degree of diversity of concept and potential misalignment in definition, one thing that must be said clearly of the historic (and existing) UCR program standards is this: The degree of standardization in concept and reporting style that the UCR program was able to impose beginning in 1929, first under the IACP and continuing under the FBI, across widely disparate law enforcement agencies contributing information on a strictly voluntary basis, was and remains a phenomenal accomplishment.
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From page 25... ...
crimes -- and so the basic features of UCR measurement remain largely the same nearly 90 years later. The FBI annually releases tabulations of UCR data in the broad-titled Crime in the United States series, and has done so for decades -- so it is not surprising that discussions of "crime in the United States" tend to put great weight on the UCR numbers and largely follow the contours of UCR's Part I offenses.
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From page 26... ...
The census-related collections of crime data in the 19th century were premised on grouping prisoner-reported offense descriptions into rough, unstructured categories. The UCR framework developed in 1929 set out to impose more structure based on perceived seriousness of offenses and attempts to derive some "common denominator" across state criminal codes; more categories came into play when NIBRS and NCVS began development, but the coverage of today's U.S.
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From page 27... ...
. Because one major use of the NCVS is as a counterpart to UCR measures, and because UCR crime statistics are certainly relevant to the broader question of collecting statistics on the entire justice system, the BJS Review panel was obliged to at least sketch out the role of the UCR.
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From page 28... ...
1.4 OVERVIEW OF THIS REPORT Having explored basic premises of the definition of "crime" and its classification in this chapter, our argument in this first report builds toward a recommended initial classification scheme via several integral, detailed parts. Chapter 2 reviews the current, major nationally compiled sources of crime statistics, building from the historical development outlined in this introduction and establishing the vocabulary for what follows.
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From page 29... ...
INTRODUCTION: CRIME STATISTICS IN THE UNITED STATES 29 crime classifications (as a supplement to Chapter 4) and Appendix D is the long-form presentation (with specific definitions and included offenses)
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