UCR NIBRS and NCVS

Crime Statistics

UCR/NIBRS and NCVS

UCR vs. NCVS

The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program UCR and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) were established with two different intents and purposes. The FBI's UCR is the older of the two databases. "Since 1930, participating local, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies have voluntarily provided the nation with a reliable set of crime statistics through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program" (Uniform Crime Reporting statistics: Their proper use, 2011, FBI). The FBI releases the data to the public for the purpose of informing citizens about the crime rates throughout the nation and also to better enable law enforcement plan their budgets and allocate their resources. Additionally, "chambers of commerce and tourism agencies examine these data to see how they impact the particular geographic jurisdictions they represent. Criminal justice researchers study the nature, cause, and movement of crime over time. Legislators draft anti-crime measures" using the data (Uniform Crime Reporting statistics: Their proper use, 2011). Participation in the program is not mandatory, however: although 94% of law enforcement agencies were compliant with the request for data in 2006, 6% did not comply (Chapter 3: Crime, offenders, and victims, n.d, Exploring Criminal Justice: 63).

The UCR by its nature has one deficit which the NCVS was designed to rectify. The UCR does not record unreported crimes, despite the fact that many crimes (particularly sexual assaults) may go unrecognized by law enforcement, because of victim shame or other issues. It also does not take into account the impact of crime upon the lives of victims, despite the fact this may vary, even amongst victims of the same crime. Since 1973 and the rise of the victim's rights movement, the NCVS "has been collecting data on personal and household victimization & #8230;An ongoing survey of a nationally representative sample of residential addresses, the NCVS is the primary source of information on the characteristics of criminal victimization and on the number and types of crimes not reported to law enforcement authorities. It provides the largest national forum for victims to describe the impact of crime and characteristics of violent offenders" (National Crime Victimization Survey Resource Guide. 2010, National Institute of Justice). Thus, while the UCR relies upon voluntary, quality-controlled data from law enforcement agencies, the NCVS relies upon data straight from the victims themselves.

The NCVS is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Justice. "Twice each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of roughly 49,000 households comprising about 100,000 persons on the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States" (National Crime Victimization Survey Resource Guide. 2010, National Institute of Justice). The crimes are divided into personal crimes and property-based crimes. Objective data such as the basic demographic information about the victim, the "crime, month, time, and location of the crime, relationship between victim and offender, characteristics of the offender," the nature of the crime (such as what weapons were used and if alcohol was involved) and "self-protective actions" are recorded, as well as more subjective estimations such as the consequences of being a victim of a violent crime (National Crime Victimization Survey Resource Guide. 2010, National Institute of Justice).

In contrast, the UCR only reports on the type of weapons used for violent offenses. It also obeys what is known as a 'hierarchy rule.' This means that during a single incident, it only records the most violent crime. This is designed to streamline reporting on one hand, but it can also result in underreporting of certain types of crimes. In the case of a rape-murder, only the murder would be recorded (Chapter 3: Crime, offenders, and victims, n.d, Exploring Criminal Justice: 63). In fact, only rapes upon females are recorded (on males they are recorded as aggravated assaults) and weapons used in rape cases are not recorded. With NCVS data, all crimes are reported and rape includes both male and female cases (Chapter 3: Crime, offenders, and victims, n.d, Exploring Criminal Justice: 63-64).