Modernizing Crime Statistics: Report 2 New Systems for Measuring Crime (2018) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B: Historical Themes in the Development of U.S. Nationa lCrime Statistics
Appendix B: Historical Themes in the Development of U.S. Nationa lCrime Statistics
Pages 89-110
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From page 89... ...
As context for discussion of the structure of a modern crime statistics program and its implementation, this appendix traces a number of important historical themes, among them: • A transition from initial enthusiastic use of crime statistics as a tool for understanding the dynamics of crime to an inertial production-oriented mode that unduly limited the public concept of crime; • Promising steps in more recent decades toward broader concepts of "crime" in national crime statistics and to measuring or estimating crime (rather than giving the appearance of completely enumerating it) , including the emergence of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
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From page 90... ...
One of the most striking things about leafing through the earliest publications of crime statistics is that crime data were presented and met with a sense of distinct enthusiasm -- bordering on exuberance -- at the new and major insights that the data could yield and the policies they could inform. The very first issue of the Uniform Crime Reports bulletin -- the publication that would evolve into the annual Crime in the United States -- sounded naturally cautious notes on the source and nature of the new data (Bureau of Investigation, 1930a:1–2)
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From page 91... ...
By the third bulletin in the series, the Bureau of Investigation analysts began assessing the content of the new data they had accumulated. "One of the purposes of collecting and publishing crime statistics is to show, as adequately as can be determined from the data available, the rise and decline in crime, or in certain selected crimes, over a given period of time," the bulletin noted.
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From page 92... ...
Similarly, a 10th-anniversary history of the UCR program (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1939:77) noted early and persistent concern over the consistency with which local police departments were heeding instructions that "all assault with a deadly weapon or with intent to kill should be listed as aggravated assaults;" that "simple assaults, assault and battery, fighting without weapons, and similar minor assaults" should not be so counted; and that ambiguous cases (such as "cases of assault with deadly weapons even though the assault was more or less the outgrowth of a fight")
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From page 93... ...
B.3 RECURRING ASSUMPTION: THE DEPTH OF IN-HOUSE LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT DATA The point of this appendix's historical discussion is to suggest themes in the development of national crime statistics. One such theme that recurs frequently is that planners and analysts tend to assume -- often correctly, but sometimes radically overestimating -- that local law enforcement agencies have ready access to highly detailed data and records internal to their own departments.
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From page 94... ...
This basic survey of trends gives direction to his additional studies of the local crime problem, such as: special types of robberies or burglaries; areas in his city with the greatest frequency of these crimes; time of day that they occur; possible rearrangement of patrol to combat the problem; and the like. B.4 OSSIFICATION OF CONCEPTS, DIVERGENCE OF CRIME STATISTICS FROM THEIR USE, AND THE 1958 PROGRAM REVIEW Just as UCR planners assumed that local law enforcement agencies might benefit from comparison of their local crime information with national numbers, they also recognized what the overriding interest in the nationally compiled data was likely to be.
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From page 95... ...
This began from the start, with the first issue of the Uniform Crime Reports bulletin and its concise description of the work-in-progress nature of national crime statistics, quoted above in opening Section B.1. By the following year (Bureau of Investigation, 1931b:1–2)
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From page 96... ...
: "Comparisons between the figures of two or more individual cities should be made with caution because there may be present any number of peculiar local conditions which may cause the crime rates to be above or below average." By 1940, though, the sentiment seems to have switched to the advisory not being specific enough about relevant "peculiar local conditions." In that year, the disclaimer expanded (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1940a:11) : A great deal of caution should be exercised in comparing crime data for individual cities, because differences in the figures may be due to a variety of factors.
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From page 97... ...
The figures published are those submitted by the contributing agencies." Nearing the 30th anniversary of the UCR Program's establishment, the FBI commissioned a three-member expert Consultant Committee on Uniform Crime Reporting in 1957 to review the conduct of the UCR Program;3 its results were published in a special issue of the UCR bulletin in 1958 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1958) , and we summarize their recommendations in Box B.1.
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From page 98... ...
"Confusion would result" if those labels were retained, and "new terms applied to a new classification would promote clarity." (However, the committee separately recommended that the FBI retain the Part I and II labels "at least for the time being" if deemed useful for internal communications with participating police departments.) • The committee suggested a twofold primary "objective of publishing statistics on criminal offenses," comprising both "a meaningful index of crime for the United States (presently accomplished by reporting of [Part I]
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From page 99... ...
While emphasizing the need for the UCR Program to consider non-law enforcement users, the committee also suggested that a special section in the crime statistics cover "the group of offenses which at a given time are especially important to the police in its work, so as to increase the effectiveness of the police in combating the particular offenses by focusing attention on them and providing additional information on their frequency and distribution and their success in suppressing them" Tentatively, the committee suggested that manslaughter by negligence be one of these special offenses; for another, the committee suggested that the FBI examine "the traffic-fatality data collected, tabulated, and published by the National Safety Council," perhaps establishing a continued measure of traffic fatalities "provided the source is competent and reliable." 7. "In making changes to the UCR's, the utmost care should be taken not to destroy the continuity of the statistical series.
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From page 100... ...
lamented that "UCR data have been used by some as if the data were a valid social indicator of the total incidence of crime," even though "the UCR was not created to be such a social indicator," generally. But a major reason for this is not hard to intuit -- branded as Crime in the United States, the UCR Summary data came to define "crime in the United States," to reduce the national conversation on crime mainly to the reporting of shortterm changes in a few, broad categories of crime rates, and to lend themselves to less-than-careful comparisons across jurisdictions because they were all that were available.
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From page 101... ...
considered the implicit limitations of an "omnibus" survey vehicle like 5 Itis "Surveys," plural, because the survey program initially included a separate sample of businesses as well as essentially stand-alone surveys for some individual surveys; these did not long survive initial review, and the program consolidated behind the single National Crime "Survey" of households thereafter.
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From page 102... ...
. The task force used the terminology "unit-record reporting" to describe its primary vision for next-generation UCR data collection, though the term that ultimately took hold would be "incidentbased reporting." The task force's recommendations are shown in Box B.2 and suggest -- like the 1958 committee before it -- a thoroughgoing review of operations but one that stopped short of considering crime data collection more generally.
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From page 103... ...
4.2 Convert the entire UCR system to unit-record reporting in which local law enforcement agencies submit reports on each individual arrest. 5.1 [Level I reporting agencies only]
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From page 104... ...
First-phase implementation of incidentbased collection would be targeted at a sample of law enforcement agencies (the nation's largest and hence, arguably, its best resourced police departments, plus a representative sample of smaller departments)
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From page 105... ...
In 1996, the FBI received NIBRS-format data representing 1,550 departments -- under 10 percent of the more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies then contributing to UCR programs. For a system that the Blueprint authors suggested should focus first and heavily on the largest police departments, those 1,550 departments included only one with a service population of more than 500,000: Austin, Texas (Roberts, 1997)
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From page 106... ...
NIBRS provides law enforcement with that tool because it is capable of producing more detailed, accurate, and meaningful data than produced by the traditional summary UCR Program. Many individual law enforcement agencies have very sophisticated records systems capable of producing the full range of statistics on their own activities.
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From page 107... ...
. B.7 THE STATUS QUO: "NEW" CRIMES IN "OLD" STRUCTURES On the UCR/police-report side of national crime statistics, a firm axiom developed over time, being restated several times by the FBI at several meetings of our panel: The only way to alter the content of the UCR Program is either through formal recommendation of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)
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From page 108... ...
-- the most recent and arguably the most curious one being the provision etched into fiscal year 2015 appropriations law requiring the NCVS to produce estimates of honor violence. The coda to this historical theme is that the current channels by which national crime statistics can be changed are predisposed to try to fit "new" and difficult concepts into "old" structures, rather than begin with the question of what is the most appropriate and accurate method by which statistical information on the topic could be derived.
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From page 109... ...
Early NCS-X activities included interviews with state UCR programs, a survey of all 400 sampled agencies, and readiness assessments and coordination with both state programs and sampled agencies. Importantly, the early work also included outreach to pivotal groups including the Association for State Uniform Crime Reporting Programs (ASUCRP)
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From page 110... ...
In a foreword message to the 2014 release of Crime in the United States, then-Director Comey alluded to another major improvement being made in the program: 27 years after enactment of the Uniform Federal Crime Reporting Act mandated that federal law enforcement agencies report offenses to the UCR Program, there would finally be a concerted effort to get them -- including the FBI itself and its field offices -- to do so. As Director Comey closed his note: Most worthwhile changes involve growing pains.
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