Modernizing Crime Statistics: Report 2 New Systems for Measuring Crime (2018) / Chapter Skim
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2 "Traditional" and "New" Crime: Structuring a Modern Crime Statistics Enterprise
2 "Traditional" and "New" Crime: Structuring a Modern Crime Statistics Enterprise
Pages 25-48
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From page 25... ...
We then build from the recommendations in Report 1 to suggest general contours of an improved national crime statistics program. 2.1 MATCHING NEW CLASSIFICATION TO CURRENT PRACTICE The table and commentary in Appendix C illustrates our basic assessment of the match between categories in our proposed crime classification with the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)
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are capable of generating estimated counts or measures of specific offenses that may be disaggregated by geographic or demographic characteristics. For completeness's sake, the "full match" in Appendix C also includes a column indicating the extent of consistency and coverage of the offense in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
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From page 27... ...
27 Table 2.1 Summary, Match Between Panel's Proposed Classification and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Coverage in UCR/NIBRS Category in Partially Covered, Panel's Classification Covered or Different Concept Not Covered 1 Acts leading to death Murder and -- Assisting or or intending to cause intentional instigating death homicide suicide Nonintentional Unlawful homicide euthanasia Unlawful feticide Unlawful killing associated with armed conflict 2 Acts causing harm Coercion Assault Slavery and or intending to cause Threat exploitation harm to the person Acts against Negligent acts liberty Acts intended Trafficking in to induce fear persons or emotional Dangerous acts distress Defamation Discrimination Acts that trespass against the person 3 Injurious acts of a Rape Sexual assault Sexual violations sexual nature Sexual of a nonphysical exploitation nature of adults Sexual exploitation of children 4 Acts of violence or Robbery -- Terroristic or threatened violence disruptive against a person that threats to involve property buildings or critical infrastructure 5 Acts against property Burglary Property damage Acts against only Theft Acts against computer computer systems (all systems other)
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From page 28... ...
or government Corruption agencies) Acts involving proceeds of crime 8 Acts against public -- Acts against Acts against order and authority public order public order sexual standards behavioral standards Acts related to free dom/control of expression Acts contrary to public revenue or regulatory provisions Acts related to migration Acts against the justice system Acts related to democratic election Acts contrary to labor law Acts contrary to juvenile justice regulations or involving juve niles/minors
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29 Table 2.1 (continued) 9 Acts against public -- -- Acts involving safety and national weapons, security explosives, and other destructive materials Acts against national security Acts related to organized criminal groups Terrorism 10 Acts against the -- Acts against Acts that cause natural environment animals environmental or against animals pollution or degradation Acts involving the movement or dumping of waste Trade or possession of protected or prohibited species of fauna and flora Acts that result in the depletion or degradation of natural resources 11 Other criminal acts -- -- Violations of not elsewhere defined military law Violations of tribal law Torture Piracy Genocide War crimes NOTES: -- , not applicable.
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From page 30... ...
Hence, it makes sense to include controlled substance offenses as "new" crime. 2.2 CONTOURS OF A MODERN NATIONAL CRIME STATISTICS INFRASTRUCTURE Against this backdrop -- lessons learned from decades of data collection under current structures and a conceptual framework for understanding what a complete picture of crime should look like -- we now articulate our vision for a modern national crime statistics infrastructure.
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From page 31... ...
At the same time, the report Crime in the United States was largely taken to define "crime in the United States" -- presented and commonly interpreted as an exhaustive enumeration of crime in the nation when in fact it never was and (limited to selected offense types and to offenses reported to law enforcement) it never could be.
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As described in Appendix B, one of the earliest appeals for information beyond a total, aggregate incident count was for the monetary value of estimated property loss, particularly for the pure property crime of larceny-theft. That shortcoming led to the development of UCR Summary's Supplement to Return A
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From page 33... ...
on aggregate tallies, as in the UCR System -- those coarse counts, incapable of disaggregation by factors of interest or isolated from other pertinent information that are more descriptive of a particular offense better than an incident tally, are simply insufficient in a modern information environment. Counts capable of disaggregation and detailed contextual analysis may be ideal for traditional offense types, but the new crimes in particular require supplemental information because counts alone are acutely insufficient for understanding and use.
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Report 1 notes that in 2006, and again in 2015, national and local concerns about apparent homicide and crime increases were growing. Although police departments had information about their own local crime problems, the lack of timely UCR data for comparison purposes made it difficult for law enforcement to determine whether increases were unique to their own cities or part of a broader national pattern.
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From page 35... ...
In other words, it is good to have an aspirational vision of data resources -- on crime, or anything else -- that are truly "real-time" in nature -- but even realtime may involve reconciling occurrence time lags between when an offense occurred and when it became detectable. Moreover, they should involve some lag in order to satisfy basic data quality requirements.
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36 Figure 2.1 Sequence of events in the criminal justice system. SOURCES: Adapted from President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967:8–9)
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Part of national crime statistics going forward should be ready provision of applicable noncrime data that can be used, side-by-side and in concert with levels of crime (however offenses might be measured) , to draw effective conclusions.
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will require further, dedicated thought regarding the most appropriate and accurate measure of level or trend -- whether report to law enforcement, report to a survey interviewer, arrest, conviction/ruling/imposition of sanctions, or the like. It will necessarily take some trial and error to develop the right mix of such indicators.
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those needs, either. Specifically, the three component data systems that we envision are: • an incident-based recording system covering offenses known to law enforcement agencies; • a survey data component, principally the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
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But the spirit of the conclusion remains the same: The key point is to avoid the sole collection of monolithic counts, as in the UCR Summary system, and collect detailed incident-specific data to the extent practicable. New System for Police-Report Data: NIBRS as First But Intermediate Step, and Switching from Reporting to Recording The first major component of the modern crime statistics infrastructure we recommend is an incident-based recording system covering offenses reported to or otherwise known by law enforcement agencies.
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From page 41... ...
The goal of mounting a voluntary data contribution system that is effectively an invisible by-product of day-to-day local police agency operations, requiring minimal if any direct effort, was simply not attainable in the era of the UCR Summary System. Under the guise of providing simple summary counts, the process of completing and submitting the monthly Return A and Supplement to Return A required a very intricate bookkeeping system -- effectively maintaining ledgers of offense tallies, arrests, clearances of arrests, property of stolen goods and so forth, not to mention the filing of supplemental returns (e.g., a −1 and a +1 to account for a serious assault converted to a homicide by the death of the victim)
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that, from the outset in 1930, planners of national crime statistics have frequently severely underestimated the extent, quality, and ease of conversion to requested data formats of local law enforcement agency records, and we do not make such an assumption casually now. Also, there is certainly variation across agencies in the expected rigor and format of officers' reports (and the extent to which officers are actively trained, or not, in report writing)
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From page 43... ...
A second approach is indirect: combining existing victimization survey data, existing UCR police-report information, and a variety of community and household statistical information to develop statistical models for victimization of particular types. And a third combines some elements of the other two: effectively defining subnational strata to combine NCVS sample data (and thus
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From page 44... ...
Going forward, to strengthen the survey-based component of the crime data infrastructure, methodological and development work should continue along the lines just described: continuing work on NCVS supplements (or additions to the main survey) on offense types for which survey measures of perceived victimization might have particular weight (including fraud, identity theft, and stalking/harassment)
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There are many other reasons that police report and victimization survey data are inherently limited in what they can provide. For example, local law enforcement -- traditional police -- may not have true jurisdiction relative to other regulatory agencies, such as environmental offenses that would be reportable to state or federal environmental quality authorities.
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From page 46... ...
114-140, which issued its final report on September 7, 2017, as well as another National Academies panel tasked to review the use of multiple data sources in federal statistics (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017a,b) .3 What is clear is that it is necessary to turn to sources other than police report or victimization survey data to get a more appropriate picture of all crime, and that overcoming the procedural/implementation difficulties will require great effort.
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From page 47... ...
crime statistics: Any tabulation that wishes to claim to present a comprehensive view of crime in the United States must pay serious attention to categories 6–11 in our classification, commensurate to that given to categories 1–5. The success of modernizing the crime data infrastructure depends on the extent to which the participating stakeholders accept and endorse the model.
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From page 48... ...
In the example of ransomware mentioned earlier, is there good reason to carve out a separate category for that particular offense of computer-enabled extortion? In the electronic age, should poor or negligent data stewardship -- as in the 2017 data breach involving the credit agency Equifax -- be considered a crime of negligence, even though such offenses have typically been limited to negligent acts involving the threat of bodily physical harm?
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