We cannot really know how much crime occurs every day, month, or year because so much of it goes unreported. If the criminal justice system is not involved after a crime is committed, it will not be in any crime database we use to make enforcement decisions. It may or may not be a surprise to you that so much crime goes unreported. Consider what circumstances could lead to you not reporting a crime you witnessed or experienced.

Let me give you an example. I used to live in an apartment complex where my car was stolen twice and broken into more times than I can count. Both times it was stolen, I reported the crime, the police found my car, and I eventually got it back. However, I only reported the first time it was broken into and none of the others. Why? I learned very quickly that nothing good came of reporting the break in. My insurance deductible was higher than the cost of having the locks fixed, so even though I had to pay for it out of pocket, my insurance went up anyway. If there was a police report, the insurance company found out about it and charged me more. Since they were not paying to fix the car, I did not want them to know about it. Plus, I knew the police were too busy to chase down whoever had stolen my cassette tapes. (Yes, cassette tapes!) I saw no point in involving the police or the insurance company and I got to know the locksmith. That means for my car alone, although there were more than ten break-ins, only one would ever have made it to the database and crime statistics.

This may not be for only small crimes like someone stealing my Metallica tape. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports it is possible more than half of violent crimes (nearly 3.4 million violent victimizations per year) went unreported to the police between 2006 and 2010. This underreporting of crime is what criminologists often refer to as the dark figure of crime.

2.3.1 Why Crimes Go Unreported

There are other reasons people do not report crime that go far beyond insurance rates. A lot of crime goes under the radar from victims not reporting, victims not realizing they are even victims of a crime, and offenders not getting caught. Remember, too, if an officer uses discretion and does not arrest a person, even if a crime was committed, this does not get reported.

Consider these reasons why a crime could go unreported:

• The victim may not know a crime occurred.
• The offender is a member of the family, a friend, or an acquaintance.
• The victim thinks it is not worth reporting.
• The victim may fear retaliation.
• The victim may also have committed a crime.
• The victim does not trust the police.

It is important, though, to be able to look at crime trends over time, use statistics and research to create effective policies and practices, and evaluate existing policies and practices. To do this, we use what is known and recognize what is missing. One way to try to gain a more complete picture is to directly ask victims of crime.

2.3.3 National Crime Victimization Survey

One way to try to improve the data available is victimization studies. Victimization studies attempt to fill in where police reports are missing by asking people each year if they have been a victim of a crime, whether they reported it or not. This is the other main source for crime data in the United States, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is the main source of information on criminal victimization in the United States. The NCVS helps fill in gaps that the UCR and NIBRS cannot fill because that data is only crimes known to law enforcement. Every year the U.S. Census Bureau administers the victimization survey and gathers data on frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization from approximately 135,000 households, composed of nearly 225,000 individuals. The NCVS collects information on nonfatal personal crimes (i.e., rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and personal larceny) and household property crimes (i.e., burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other theft) both reported and not reported to police. This data source helps account for at least a portion of that dark figure of crime.

The NCVS also collects information on age, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status, education level, and income, in addition to whether the person experienced any victimization in that given year. Additionally, the NCVS collects information about the offender’s age, race and ethnicity, sex, victim-offender relationship, characteristics of the crime (e.g., time and place of occurrence, use of weapons, nature of injury, and economic consequences), whether the crime got reported to the police, reasons the crime did or did not get reported, and the victim’s experience with the criminal justice system. You can explore the NCVS here: https://bjs.ojp.gov/programs/ncvs

2.3.4 Challenges and Limitations

Just like with the other official data sources, there are challenges and limitations with victimization surveys, too. Respondents may have issues accurately remembering victimization, which can lead to underreporting or overreporting. If they were traumatized from the crime, events may blur together, or timing may be mistaken (it may have occurred in 2017 rather than 2018 but gets reported as 2018). Other times, respondents may lie or omit information for various reasons such as shame, fear, confusion, and a lack of trust. For example, if the victim is uncomfortable with the interviewer, they may not want to tell them that their partner abused them, out of fear it will get reported to police.

Situations like this are common concerns with self-reported data in research. Self-report statistics are data that are reported by individuals about themselves. Consider how this may be even more of a concern when we talk about asking offenders to honestly report their own crimes. Sometimes in research, people are asked to report the number of times they may have committed a particular crime during a set period of time in the past, whether they got caught or not. Think about what it would take for someone to answer honestly, especially if they did not get caught.

Consider why anyone would ever answer questions about something illegal they have done. This is actually not an unusual form of research. For example, Monitoring the Future (MTF) is a long-term study of substance use among U.S. adolescents and teenagers. Through this study, we get an idea of estimates on drug use among kids even though most of them do not get caught. The survey is conducted annually, which allows researchers to examine long term trends. MTF findings identify emerging substance use problems, track substance use trends, and inform national policy and intervention strategies. The identity of respondents is kept confidential, which means no one can link their answers to them. In other words, they can feel safe being honest and know they will not get in trouble.

Self-report statistics can be revealing and beneficial because they can help discover problems we were unaware of, like vaping. Also, they help us learn about victimless crimes, which are crimes where there is no separate victim such as with drug use, gambling, and underage drinking. We can also uncover offenses that are not as serious such as shoplifting, which are less likely to be known to police.

Of course, though, self-report data has its limitations. Respondents may exaggerate or underreport their criminal behavior, for various reasons. For example, some teenagers may not even know something they did was illegal, so they do not necessarily know they committed a crime. Plus, if we do not survey a large enough number of individuals, we may limit who gets the survey and miss out on important data.

Despite all the limitations we have discussed with each of these data sources, it is still important to estimate and attempt to measure crime in the country. However, it is essential always to be aware of the data sources’ strengths and weaknesses when reading crime statistics. Also, be cautious of how changing data collection techniques could alter statistics. For example, if a long-term survey never before collected data on prescription drug abuse all of a sudden start collecting that information, it could seem like prescription drugs are being abused at high rates suddenly when they were not before. However, that spike in abuse is most likely just because it is the first time the question was asked.

2.3.5 Which Data Should We Use?

In each type of data (official, self-report, and victimization), there are pros and cons. Additionally, each source adds a bit of knowledge to the previous one, making it more likely to produce a better picture of what is occurring depending on the area of study. In other words, something is better than nothing and the hope is that something is as good as possible. Consider which data source a person should use if they want to get the best statistics on reported homicides in the U.S. The best data source may be different if they were seeking information about domestic violence rates. It could change again if they were interested in finding out estimated drug abuse rates amongst teens in high school. The right source or multiple sources will depend on the statistics being sought and the reason they will be used.