Second Major Redesign of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

Abstract

B u r e a u o f J u s t i c e S t a t i s t i c s , U . S . D e p a r t m e n t o f J u s t i c e Michael Planty R T I , I n t e r n a t i o n a l James P. Lynch U n i v e r s i t y o f M a r y l a n d Research SummarySince 1973, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) has served as a key source of data on the level and nature of crime and its consequences. To keep pace with the changing landscape of crime, as well as with the technological advances in survey research, occasional "redesigns" of the survey are necessary to modernize and improve the utility of data collected. Policy ImplicationsThis article describes recent and ongoing efforts to redesign (a) the NCVS survey instruments to reflect the changing demographics of victims, emerging crime types, and timely issues related to victimization risk and victim responses to crime and (b) the NCVS sample to generate state and local estimates of crime. The implications of these improvements for researchers and policy makers are discussed.

Expanding Our Understanding of Crime

“…For this purpose, there are reasonable concerns that the data may not be fully accurate because the agency being evaluated by these crime statistics is also the agency reporting those data. For some research purposes, the tallies in existing crime data seem to be useful, at least for many conventional “street” crimes such as robbery and homicide, although stakeholders noted many ways that the data from police departments could be improved (as discussed by Strom and Smith [] and by Lynch []). For example, data on shootings and firearms use have been particularly difficult to obtain given the nature of the broad category of aggravated assault used in UCR data.…”

“…The redesign of the NCVS also promises to help provide a more complete national report on crime and victimization (see Lynch, ). The development of subnational estimates of crime independent of police‐based records will help answer basic and important questions about whether victims in some places have notably higher or lower levels of reporting different types of crimes to the police and, if so, why.…”

“…In this article, we summarize the activities and recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS), Engineering, and Medicine's Panel on Modernizing the Nation's Crime Statistics (hereafter, “the panel”) for improving crime data . We do not focus on the improvements currently underway for the UCR program (including wider implementation of the more detailed National Incident‐Based Reporting System [NIBRS]) and for the NCVS because the changes in these critical data systems are discussed (by Kevin Strom and Erica Smith [] and by James Lynch [], respectively) in the accompanying articles in this issue. Rather, our discussion is based on the first report of the panel ( Modernizing Crime Statistics: Report 1 – Defining and Classifying Crime [Lauritsen and Cork, ]), the principal output of which is the development of a modern crime classification framework.…”

There and Back Again

“…The efforts described in this issue, specifically to transition law enforcement to incident‐based reporting (Strom and Smith, ), redesign victimization data (Langton, Planty, and Lynch, ), and develop new measurements for crime statistics (Lauritsen and Cook, ), each deserve high praise. We have no doubt that any of these recent efforts would drastically improve data, and many of the provided recommendations are long overdue.…”

“…The hierarchy rule as currently used cannot accurately capture typical instances of crime when multiple offenses occur simultaneously, whereas incident‐based reporting allows for a complete understanding of crime. Data, as described in Langton et al (), could transform how police understand crime by providing an ability to assess unreported crimes and tailor strategies among populations not willing to report incidents to police. Capturing crime statistics has to advance beyond categories we have used for decades, especially in light of drastic technological and social change, and Lauritsen and Cook's () approach would provide ways for police to measure incidents like “cyber crime” distinctly, rather than how they do so currently, in which such crimes are either not properly classified or combined with street crime.…”