National Crime Victimization Survey

Gathering statistics on crime is important because it helps determine how and where to distribute policing resources, as well as whether certain interventions and programs are working. Until 1972, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) is the country's only nationwide statistical measure of criminal events. It's a useful tool, but is limited because it only records crimes known to the police. The National Crime Victimization Survey, or NCVS, uses a different approach. In this ongoing study, 50,000 randomly selected households are visited by trained interviewers, who meet with family members over age 12 and ask a series of questions about victimization experiences during the previous six months. The interview process is repeated twice more with each family, so that every household provides information covering an 18-month period. Answers are analyzed and published in a yearly report, Criminal Victimization in the United States.

The NCVS is far more successful than the UCR in tallying the overall number of crimes, which, for a multitude of reasons, are not always reported to the police. For example, the 1998 UCR will report 93,103 rapes, while the NCVS will report 333,000 — a remarkable difference.

Of course, no statistical measure is ideal. The NCVS doesn't measure homicide or commercial property crime. Though self-reporting is thought to be fairly accurate, the survey records victims' perceptions and memories, which are bound to be imperfect. Nevertheless, it offers a more comprehensive view of the country's crime, or rather victimization, trends than has ever been available before.

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