This paper examines the history and current state of crime measurement in criminology, surveying five major techniques: the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), self-report surveys, and drug surveillance systems such as ADAM. For each method, the paper outlines how data are collected, what purposes the technique serves, and its key strengths and limitations. The paper concludes that no single technique provides a complete picture of criminal activity, because unreported and undocumented crimes remain a persistent challenge, and argues that criminologists must develop new, more effective measurement approaches to better protect public safety.
The measurement of crime is conducted with the objective of monitoring criminal activity, much in the same way that society measures consumer prices, stock market activity, traffic fatalities, population, unemployment, and HIV infection rates (Maxfield & Babbie, 2011). However, crime measurement involves far more than simply counting events. An assortment of societal, fiscal, geographic, and medical concerns is tracked to maintain a record of community and monetary conditions, population size, age distribution, and hazards to the physical well-being of citizens. Similarly, crime measurement is primarily concerned with keeping track of criminal behavior so that probable risks to public security can be monitored in an effective and efficient manner (Maxfield & Babbie, 2011).
Measuring the characteristics of crimes and criminals is important for three reasons. First, crime measurement helps identify the motivations behind criminal behavior by testing various theories. Second, it is used to enhance knowledge of the distinctive features of a range of offenses. Third, crime measurement enables criminal justice agencies to carry out their routine operations more effectively. Despite these purposes, it is rather complex to determine the exact number of crimes committed. There is no clear picture of recorded crimes due to various factors that influence them, such as victims' willingness to report what happened to them.
In summary, crime measurement techniques are used by criminologists to assess the nature and extent of criminal behavior, as well as the characteristics, attitudes, and backgrounds of offenders. It is therefore vitally important to understand how such data are collected, so that the work of professional criminologists can be properly evaluated and applied to solving different cases.
In 1929, the International Association of Chiefs of Police envisioned the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program to fulfill the need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the United States. The responsibility for collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics was assigned to the FBI in 1930. At present, numerous annual statistical publications are produced from data provided by approximately 17,000 city, county, and state law enforcement agencies across the USA. It has therefore been since the 1930s that the FBI has administered the UCR Program, issuing periodic measurement and evaluation of the nature and type of misdemeanors and felonies across the country ("Summary of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program," 2013).
The major purpose of the Program is the generation of a dependable set of criminal statistics for use by law enforcement administrators and managers. The data contained in Uniform Crime Reports have become among the most important social indicators in the United States. Americans follow these reports to gain knowledge about variations in crime levels, and they are also used by criminologists, social researchers, lawmakers, civic representatives, the media, and students for purposes ranging from research to policy planning ("Summary of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program," 2013).
The reports generated under the UCR Program encompass a very large population. Data collection is tied to major policy issues and is embedded within the judicial system. Data spanning many years are readily available, consisting of an extensive collection of published tables that are widely used for tracking nationwide crime trends. In addition, master file records can be accessed upon request. These master files contain final, verified data rather than estimates.
As far as limitations are concerned, the reports contain summarized data, which makes it impossible to analyze the facts beyond basic tabulations based on geographic components, race, and age. Furthermore, the data largely consist of arrest tabulations and victim information, making it difficult to determine the number of distinct individuals arrested in a given year. Moreover, the UCR only contains information about crimes reported by police agencies to the FBI, which means that U.S. crime is not accurately reflected in the UCR. These crime reports from police to the FBI are also voluntary in nature.
Variations in the accuracy and completeness of these reports arise from "the personnel and computer systems available to maintain the data, the number of police officers available to respond to calls, the discretion of officers as they perform their duties, police department policies (both formal and informal) on handling certain crimes, and citizen involvement in reporting crime" (Purpura, 1997). Another limitation is that the UCR index covers only eight crimes: criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson ("Summary of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program," 2013).
A further significant problem is that UCR guidelines allow law enforcement agencies to report only the most serious crime in any given incident. For example, if a woman is raped and murdered during a burglary, the UCR will record the incident only as a murder, treating it as the most serious of the three offenses. Additionally, the UCR's definition of rape applied only to women, yet both male and female populations were considered when calculating rape rates. Finally, the UCR and various state definitions for the eight indexed crimes differ, which causes crimes to be labeled differently in many cases. For instance, many police agencies treat larceny and burglary as equivalent offenses (Purpura, 1997).
With the expanded use of UCR data and increased law enforcement capabilities for making crime information available, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) was introduced in March 1988 as an expanded and improved system for crime data collection designed to meet twenty-first century law enforcement needs.
Under NIBRS, data are collected for each individual crime occurrence by law enforcement agencies. This incident-based reporting system receives data from participating local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that maintain automated or computerized records systems. Agencies are permitted to design records systems suited to their own needs, whether for compiling and storing information required for organizational and operational purposes or for submitting report data to the UCR Program via NIBRS. The objective of NIBRS is to gather detailed information about every single incident. There are twenty-two offense categories in Group A offenses, about which law enforcement agencies are required to report specific facts. Group B offenses contains eleven offense categories for which agencies are required to report arrest data only.
Incident-based reporting systems comply with both NIBRS and the FBI's UCR Program. The advantages are numerous. First, there is no restriction on data collection, as the offense categories are not limited. Second, its crime definitions align with those used at local, state, and national levels. It provides detailed information and analysis of individual crime incidents, including information about the crimes themselves, the offenders, the victims, property, and arrests. It allows arrests and clearances to be linked to specific incidents. Unlike the UCR's hierarchy rule, NIBRS permits the recording and counting of all offenses occurring within a single incident. It also allows distinctions to be made between attempted and completed crimes, and it enables comprehensive crime analysis within and across law enforcement jurisdictions ("Advantages of Incident-Based Reporting over Summary Reporting"). NIBRS data also offer significant advantages for researchers and criminal justice students seeking a deeper understanding of the nature and scope of criminal incidents (Brown, Esbensen & Geis, 2013).
The limitations of NIBRS are in many respects similar to those of the UCR. The data recorded under NIBRS include only those crimes that are reported to police and preserved in recordkeeping systems. It is therefore a weakness of NIBRS that unreported and undocumented crimes are excluded. Second, participating local agencies bear a significant burden due to the rigidity of NIBRS reporting specifications. This is why smaller agencies in smaller U.S. states are the primary adopters of NIBRS, while larger agencies in larger states are less likely to adopt it. Moreover, the NIBRS record structure is aged and complex, and the concomitant size of its data files presents "unfamiliar challenges to researchers, analysts, and computer hardware and software" (Brown, Esbensen & Geis, 2013). There are also a number of concerns regarding the error structure of incident-based methods and NIBRS data generally.
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In criminal justice research, the importance of crime as a fundamental concept cannot be ignored. This is why a number of approaches exist for measuring crime, each demonstrating essential standards of conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement (Maxfield & Babbie, 2011). The various crime measurement techniques discussed in this paper each serve important purposes. However, researchers must understand what types of offenses each technique covers before using it, because all crime measurement approaches have different units of analysis. As discussed throughout this paper, none of the existing measurement methods is entirely perfect; each has its own strengths and limitations. It is therefore essential to have a thorough understanding of a given method and the areas it covers before selecting it for use.
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